In the Dbacks Cardinals season finale, it was all Dbacks Thursday afternoon! On what would’ve been an off day for this team, the Dbacks had to go back to St. Louis today to play a makeup game as they were rained out earlier this month, and boy this one came at the perfect time as this offense and Brandon Pfaadt are rolling!
Pfaadt ran into a little bit of trouble in the first inning as he got papercutted to death. He was not giving up hard contact at all, but balls kept finding holes and before Pfaadt could even get settled in, the Cardinals had a 2-0 lead with nobody out. This likely would have been a moment that would have snowballed for Pfaadt earlier this year, however this version of Brandon Pfaadt was able to lock it in and hold the Cardinals to just the 2 runs and get out of the first inning. After the first, Pfaadt was in total control holding the Cardinals offense scoreless over the next 5 innings, and needing just 87 pitches to get through 6. Pfaadt is now 5-0 since being recalled from Reno and he has come up huge when this team needed him the most and the season was on the line.
On the offensive side, Tyler Locklear wasn’t even supposed to start today as he was a late addition due to Ketel Marte experiencing some lower back tightness before the game, but boy did he finally break through today. Locklear went 3-5 today including his first home run of the season and finished a triple short of the cycle. Really feel good for Locklear to get off to such a hot start as he has been battling back and forth from the minors to the majors the past couple of seasons, and has been struggling with injury. If he continues to produce at first base, that would be a massive development for this team!
Gabi Moreno also continued to look like the hottest hitter on planet earth going 3-4 but having some great at bats and coming through with guys on base getting 2 RBI’s. Ildemaro Vargas and Adrian Del Castillo also both added 3 hit performances today as this offense appears to finally be firing on all cylinders! They had a couple of big innings as they put up 3 runs in the 4th and 5 runs in the 8th inning driving this offense to 10 runs on the afternoon marking double digit run production in back-to-back games.
The Dbacks will now head to DC as they have the Nationals this weekend who are just 2 games back behind the Dbacks for the 3rd wild card spot. Eduardo Rodriguez gets a chance Friday to bounce back from his lone rough outing of the season his last time out. This weekends games and whether or not the offense can continue to stay hot may very well dictate the rest of the season for these boys as the front office is in the final stages of deciding whether to buy or to sell. Having exciting, must-watch baseball this time of year is certainly a treat!
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