The Diamondbacks were crushed by the Milwaukee Brewers 15-8 at Chase Field. Brandon Pfaadt was tagged for eight runs, seven scoring in the second inning, while recording just five outs in a game that Arizona never stood a chance of winning from first pitch. With the Mets and Braves also winning, the gap in the Wild Card has shrunk once again.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“We got to be better on the mound,” said manager Torey Lovullo on DbacksTV. “Tonight was a total lack of pitch execution. Missed pitches in the middle of the zone, lack of command with our secondary stuff. Just too many misses to a team that is going to fight you the whole way and not give in in the course of their at-bat.”
The pitching of late hasn’t been that inspiring for the team’s playoff hopes. After placing Ryne Nelson on the 15-day injured list with shoulder inflammation, their other young starter looked gassed in a disgustingly poor performance against the Brewers. The wheels completely fell off in the second inning, despite retiring the first two hitters of the inning. Seven straight reached with two outs, the last batter hitting a grand slam to knock out the Diamondbacks starter.
While Pfaadt is no stranger to giving up big innings, it was still surprising to see a complete loss of command. After giving up four straight singles, he walked two batters, including Garrett Mitchell with the bases loaded. He missed with a sweeper that was in the middle third of the strike zone that Willy Adames obliterated to put Milwaukee up 8-0. At that point, the Diamondbacks’ win expectancy was 3.6% according to FanGraphs.
“It all happened so fast, just one thing after another,” said Lovullo. “They built the inning and the hits are hits, and I’ll take that, but it was the big slug. At that point it was ‘Wow, that happened, that slug happened in a big way’. It made the lead go from 4-0 to 8-0 fast.”
Lovullo was hoping that he didn’t have to take out Pfaadt in the second, as the team needed more length out of him than the five outs he gave them. As a result, they had to push Yilber Diaz for four innings since they couldn’t use a position player down only five entering the ninth. Diaz had to throw 48 pitches, surrendering a two-run home run to William Contreras in the ninth.
At this point of the season, workload has to be considered for the 25-year-old right-hander. He’s already at 166 2/3 innings over 29 starts in his first full season in the big leagues. Lovullo isn’t worried about Pfaadt.
“He’s a big, strong body and I know he threw a lot of innings last year. That’s why we tried to push him back a little bit, give him a little bit of a blow, we’ve been doing that the past couple of weeks. I think he’s going to be fine, I think he’s going to find a way back to commanding the baseball. Do I think it could be part of a fatigue factor, it could be, but he says that he feels good.”
The Diamondbacks fell behind 13-0 after five innings, but found a way to make things a little interesting. In the sixth through eighth innings, they scored a total of eight runs. Josh Bell hit a two-run single in the sixth and Randal Grichuk crushed a two-run home run in the seventh. In the eighth, they took advantage of a Brewers defensive miscue, as Grichuk and Adrian Del Castillo each drove in a run with a single, then Geraldo Perdomo hit a two-run single. They could have gotten more, if not for a great diving catch by Joey Ortiz on a sinking liner from Luis Guillorme.
Next Game
The Diamondbacks will have to go out and play their best game of the season, as Lovullo pointed out. They’ll send their ace, Zac Gallen (12-6, 3.55 ERA), to the mound while the Brewers will count with left-hander DL Hall (1-1, 4.03 ERA). First pitch at Chase Field will be at 1:10 P.M. MST.
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Michael McDermott covers the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Cardinals, and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @MichaelMcDMLB
