Game Summary
Tonight, the Diamondbacks went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in baseball and nearly beat them at their own game. Great defense and great pitching, especially from the bullpens, was the story of this game and the loser of this was whoever blinked first. Unfortunately, it was the Diamondbacks who came up wanting. And I apologize in advance. This is going to be a little long winded.
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I’ve put a lot of notes about the first nine innings in the Outside the Box Score section, so I won’t belabor what happened too much and just skip right to extra innings. The Diamondbacks held the Brewers scoreless in the top of the 10th thanks to Taylor Clarke and some terrific defense. Needing to only score the Manfred Man to win the game, Corbin Carroll led off but was given the four fingers and he walked to first. This was now the first inflection point of the extra innings, a point which caused a lot of comments from the Pitters. Faced with runners at 1st and 2nd with 0 outs, baseball history suggests the bunt is the correct play. With Gabi Moreno stepping up to the plate, Torey opted to allow him to swing away. In defense of Torey, Gabi has been the Diamondbacks best hitter for average this season and he’s leading the team in average the past week, last 2 weeks, and last month. If I had to bet on one player to get a hit and score a runner from second on the Diamondbacks right now, it would be Gabriel Moreno. The flip side to that coin, however, is that he’s also been the most prone to hitting into double plays on the team. A bunt kills the chance of a double play and gives Lourdes Gurriel and Nolan Arenado a chance to be the hero with any ball hit out of the infield.
Gabi stepped in and hit a bouncer over the pitcher’s mound. It was a slow developing play, Corbin nearly beat the initial throw to second base, and if one of our more fleet of foot youngsters had been in the box at that moment, they likely beat out the throw to first. It’s very public that Gabi has been nursing a hamstring along the past couple weeks and not running very hard, but Moreno was busting it up the line as best he could to try and beat out the throw but he was just a tick too slow. Lourdes Gurriel then came up with a runner on 3rd and 2 outs and proceeded to pop out on the infield (which wouldn’t have scored the runner from third with less than 2 outs anyway) and end the inning. Whatever call Torey made, Gabi and Gurriel both had chances to get a hit and score a run and neither came though. I personally think Torey made a justifiable call and my final argument comes with what happened in the next inning.
The Brewers let their leadoff hitter swing away in both the 10th and 11th innings; in the 11th, Ryan Thompson came in and hit that lead off hitter. Faced with the same situation as Torey in the bottom of the 10th, the Brewers opted to bunt and moved their runners to 2nd and 3rd with 1 out. One key difference: the Brewers man at the plate was their late-game defensive sub Joey Ortiz who is rocking a .543 OPS this season. He is nowhere near the same league as Gabi with a bat in his hand. Now, with runners at 2nd and 3rd, Torey did what Pat Murphy likely would’ve done to Lourdes Gurriel: intentional walk to set up the force at any base. This last point is why I think that Torey made a fine call. If he sacrifices Gabi, his best hitter (or brings in a pinch-bunter since Gabi has 0 sac bunts in his career, hat tip to Jack Sommers), that leaves first base open for Gurriel to walk and set up the double play or force at any base. Nolan Arenado is better at hitting fly balls than Lourdes, but he’s also more likely to strikeout. Given all that information, it’s certainly not a lock that we win that game “if only Torey had bunted”. Anyway, that’s all hypotheticals. What actually happened in the top of the 11th is how the Diamondbacks lost this game.
Jackson Chourio was having a tough night at the plate, and the Brewers at large were 1/14 with RISP per the broadcast, when he stepped up with the bases loaded and one out in the 11th. Chourio hit what was likely one of the weakest base hits of his life, a swinging bunt that slammed into the ground 2 feet in front of the plate and rolled slowly into the grass between third base and the mound. Ryan Thompson reached down and tried making a wild throw to home for the force out but threw it way wide of Gabi (who was pointing for Thompson to just throw to first and get one out) and 2 runs scored. Two more runs would come around thereafter, but Thompson’s key misplay had cost his team, and in a game with so much a great defense robbing hits from each side, it only makes sense that the biggest hit of the game was on a 20 foot dribbler that the defense turned into a “line drive in the box score”.
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Tonight’s loss was a frustrating one to lose, but this Diamondbacks team proved they are pretty good. They went toe-to-toe with one of the best regular season teams in the National League of the past half-decade and they nearly beat them at their own game. The Diamondbacks had more stolen bases than the Brewers. They had a bullpen outing that was even more impressive since it was 6 different guys who threw up zeroes before Thompson compared with the Brewers who got length from their long man/sometimes starting pitcher Chad Patrick. Their only real defensive miscue prior to the Ryan Thompson debacle was the strange Tag/No Tag episode with Geraldo Perdomo, and they had made several stellar plays that easily outweighed that oddity. The Diamondbacks played great ball, just came up one play short against a very good team. I can live with that.
Now before I let you go, take a look at some of the amazing defensive plays by our defenders tonight. Hopefully it helps the loss go down a little bit easier.
Loss Probability and Box Score
Outside the Box Score
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Jose Cabrera led off the game with a 4 pitch walk of Christian Yelich with none of the pitches all that close. He then threw strikes in 8 of his next 11 pitches to retire the side without the leadoff walk advancing a base. Nice job by the young fella!
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Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is still playing effective defense out there. Like Gimli, he’s dangerous over short distances as he showed a great jump and tracking of the ball through a feet first slide to reach a sinking line drive in left field in the second inning.
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The Brewers 2-run home run in the second inning had go to crew chief review to confirm it was indeed a roundtripper. A fan at the edge of the home run porch in centerfield appeared to reach over the wall, but it wasn’t conclusive where the ball made contact with the fan so the call of home run on field stood and the D-backs were down 2-0.
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Jose Cabrera got an error on a poor throw on a pickoff attempt at first, making Vargas reach too far toward the sliding runner. The carom off Vargas’ outstretched glove resulted in a free 90 feet and a runner in scoring position for the Brewers with 1 out. Cabrera cleaned up his own mess though by getting a ꓘ (after falling behind 3-0 in the count!) and an easy fly out to end the inning.
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Lourdes Gurriel made another golden play in the outfield to save his young pitcher in the third. With 2 on and 1 run already in, Lourdes tracked a deep fly ball into the left field bleachers, timed his jump perfectly, and reached over the wall to make the catch and record a huge out! Definitely needed that play right there to take a 6-0 game and keep it at 3-0 instead!
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Ketel showed some nice hustle to get an infield single in the 3rd (though it would’ve been an incredible play if the Brewers were able to complete the 4-3 putout). That was followed by a strange at bat where Perdomo ended up striking out swinging on a ball way below the zone that would’ve been Ball 4. Fortunately Carroll and Gabi both singled (through Gabi Lane, of course!) and got the Diamondbacks on the board.
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Nolan Arenado’s bases loaded double in the third looked like a grand slam off the bat to me, but it hit off the base of the wall in left and had to settle for a game-tying, 2-run 2-bagger and it chased the Milwaukee starter from the game.
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Gerry Domo threw his name into the Play of the Game contender list with a superb defensive play to bail his team out of a jam in the 4th. With runners at 2nd and 3rd and 1 out, the infield came in and a ground ball was hit right at Gerry who was able to tag the runner going to 3rd and then throw to first to get the speedy Jackson Chourio to keep a run off the board!
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After the Diamondbacks had an inning-ending double play all but wrapped up to end the fifth inning, tomfoolery struck! A sharp ground ball right to Ildemaro at first started things into motion and Vargas stepped on first before executing short rundown and throw to Domo who was closing in on the runner going to second. Thinking he was a dead duck, he stopped and waited for the inevitable tag from Domo, but when Domo slapped the tag on, the ball squirted out of his glove and resulted in the runner advancing to second. Fortunately, Jonny Lasagna did the business and struck out the next batter to pick up his defense and get out of the inning. Another note from the play that didn’t get the replay love of the No Tag was Arenado’s perfect execution of a pickle, then a pickle-gone-wrong. When Gerry advances to make the tag, Arenado assumes the spot at second base but as soon as the play was botched and the ball went rolling toward right field, Arenado didn’t hesitate and started running to third as he knew that there was no one there covering. Excellent fundamental execution by the Master.
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After reaching first with a strong leadoff walk in the 7th, Tommy Troy took big leads to bait the lefty pitcher into throwing over a couple times. Once he got the move down, Troy bolted and stole second base easily to get himself into scoring position for Gerry and Corbin. Unfortunately, they did nothing with the opportunity.
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Brandyn Garcia got into a little trouble to start the 8th. After the first 2 runners reached, the pinch-hitter chopped it toward the hole between first and second and Vargas made a great stab to field the ball and throw to second for one out but Garcia was slow to cover first so they couldn’t complete the double play. The next batter bunted with the runner on third, but the bunt was too close to Gabi who pounced on it and threw to third to catch the retreating runner for the out. Awesome defense again for the Diamondbacks!
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The defense gets another shout out to start the 9th. A relatively routine grounder to second nearly turned into a 3 Stooges sketch. First Ildemaro started toward the grounder, realized he wouldn’t make the play so tried to turn back to 1st but instead just looked like he was running in quicksand and fell to the ground on his face. With all that happening in front of him, Ketel booted the ball. Fortunately, the carom was only a few feet away and he jumped on it and fired a missile to Paul Sewald, who seemed to be the only one able to do his job without error on this play. The ball reached Sewald’s glove right as his foot touched first base and right before Yelich’s foot touched the bag. A real blood pumping start to the 9th!
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Tommy Troy’s lineout in the 9th was the result of an outstanding diving play by the Brewers replacement third baseman. Unfortunate.
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Ketel Marte got a 2 out single to provide a glimmer of hope, then stole second base without the Brewers closer throwing a pitch! He got such a huge jump, by the time Megill turned around and tried to throw to second, Ketel had already reached second. Too bad Domo weakly grounded out to end the threat and send the game to extras.
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Comment of the Game
The GameDay Thread was well attended, though maybe less than you’d expect for an 11 inning slog of a game. The GDT reached a final tally of 371 comments at time of publishing with COTG going to kiln born and Snake_Bitten for the appreciation of Gabi and his well worn path to right field:
Coming Up
The Diamondbacks face the Brew Crew for the second game of this 3-game set tomorrow evening with a 6:40pm first pitch Arizona time. The veteran right-hander Brandon Woodruff (2-1, 2.59 ERA) is listed as the probable starter for Milwaukee and Merrill Kelly (5-8, 5.84 ERA) will get the ball for the good guys on Independence Day.
