The Diamondbacks held a lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning. When Paul Sewald has pitched with a lead this season, Arizona had been 17-0 this season with Sewald converting all 11 save opportunities. However, that trend did not continue as the Dodgers got to the Diamondbacks closer with one out to go and won 6-5.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Sewald opened the inning by striking out Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani. Then he left a fastball out over the plate to Will Smith, who doubled off the center field wall to put the tying run scoring position. Sewald jumped ahead of Freddie Freeman 0-2, but couldn’t execute a third good pitch against the future Hall of Famer. Leaving a fastball on the outside black and about thigh high, Freeman split the right center gap to score Smith. Two pitches later, Teoscar Hernandez ripped a ball through the left side of the infield to score the winning run.
Following the game, Sewald spoke to Diamondbacks reporter Todd Walsh about his outing. The video was posted on X by Alex Weiner of Arizona Sports.
“Just made a bad pitch to Smith and got ahead of Freeman. Made a bad 0-2 pitch and that’s pretty much it. Teo is a good hitter, he hit a ground ball, I’m not usually upset about that.”
Paul Sewald addresses tonight's loss to the Dodgers. pic.twitter.com/ESAcTeQGJY
— Arizona Sports (@AZSports) July 3, 2024
With an open base and the tying run in scoring position, manager Torey Lovullo elected to let his closer pitch to Freeman. Sewald said the thought of pitching around or walking the Dodgers’ All-Star first baseman didn’t even occur and that he earned the right to pitch to the best hitters in the league.
Lovullo walked through the decision at that moment with Walsh in his postgame presser, with the video posted on X by Arizona Sports.
“I wasn’t afraid to put the winning run on base. We were talking about matchups, were were talking about count advantage, count disadvantage. We walked through every scenario, then we got 0-1, continued the conversation, got 0-2. It was firmly in place that we were going to try to finish him off with an assortment of pitches that were not going to be anywhere near the strike zone. There’s a lot of nonverbal communication, I trusted my players, we just didn’t execute, and that’s what it comes down to. A good hitter beat a really good closer and that’s part of the game.”
Torey Lovullo on the decision to pitch to Freddie Freeman with first base open in the ninth inning of Tuesday's loss: pic.twitter.com/QhmJMkbxXX
— Arizona Sports (@AZSports) July 3, 2024
The Diamondbacks, who fashion themselves as a good baseball team, will need to be able to get those types of outs if they have any chance of making a Wild Card run, and then get anywhere in the postseason. The decision to pitch to Freeman can be debated for hours on end, but at the end of the day, Sewald was one strike away from finishing off the game and did not execute the end of the at-bat.
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Michael McDermott covers the Arizona Diamondbacks and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @MichaelMcDMLB
