Diamondbacks Force Game 7 with Convincing 5-1 Victory
The Arizona Diamondbacks have shown the baseball world once again they belong right where they are, one win away from a trip to the World Series. They have shown a resiliency that can only be described as remarkable. After going down in the series to the Phillies 2-0, and 3-2, they once again have bounced back to tie it up at 3-3 following a solid and convincing 5-1 victory.
Merrill Kelly pitched five innings, giving up just one run on three hits, three walks and eight strikeouts. Two of those walks came in the first inning as he pitched around Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. He came right back to strike out Alec Bohm and got Bryson Stott to popup to record the zero in the first inning in the first.
Speaking about that approach with the two left hand sluggers, Kelly said, "Even though we did have traffic there with the walks, Harper and Schwarber are both super locked in right now. They're not missing too many mistakes, so I'm not too mad about putting them on base right now....I went in tonight being okay with that and just trusting that in between those guys that I had the confidence to get the other guys out."
The Diamondbacks offense, which had been struggling for most of the series, broke out tonight with 10 hits. Tommy Pham got it going with a solo homer off a curveball from Phillies starter Aaron Nola, and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. followed with a homer on a sinker to go back to back. It's the third time this postseason that D-backs hitters have hit back to back homers. It happened October 3rd against the Brewers, (Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte) and October 11th against the Dodgers (Gabriel Moreno and Christian Walker). The Philadelphia crowd got much quieter after those homers and other than a couple of moments were never a factor in the game.
During his pregame press conference Torey Lovullo had spoken about some information he had that suggested Pham would be a good matchup against Nola. Afterwards Lovullo said "first of all, I know he's got a warrior mentality. He didn't like watching a game the other day from the other side. I know that he feels like he got benched, but I just was giving him a little bit of a blow."
"I know that a lot of the information that I had in front of me in, very targeted information said that it was a really good matchup for him and Nola. So it ended up working out well, right? He gets a really good swing off on a breaking ball and gives us a 1-0 lead. It was a great moment for him and a great moment for this team."
The D-backs offense was far from finished. Following Gurriel's homer, Alek Thomas walked and then Evan Longoria doubled home the speedy Thomas with a drive deep into the left center field gap. Ketel Marte tripled home Corbin Carroll in the 5th, and then had another RBI knock in the 7th to score Geraldo Perdomo who had singled and stolen second base. After recording just one stolen base in the series, the D-backs had four tonight. They could have scored even more runs. Three times they had a runner on third base with one out and that runner never came home. They were just 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position.
Staked to an early lead, Kelly gave up a run on a double and a single in the second inning, but got through the next three innings scoreless, retiring the last eight hitters he faced. That included strikeouts of Schwarber and Harper in his final frame.
When he was told he was coming out of the game after just five innings and 90 pitches he was shocked and put up a bit of a fight with his manager Torey Lovullo. Asked what he told his veteran starter Lovullo said "What I can share about it is he was pounding the table to go back out there and was shocked that I was going to remove him from the game. But we had another brief conversation, and I explained to him why I was doing it, and he began to slowly understand."
Lovullo was concerned that Kelly had thrown 65 pitches through the first three innings, 48 through the first two. Sometimes it's not the total pitch count that weighs the most heavily, but rather multiple high pitch count innings. Ultimately Kelly accepted the decision.
"I just don't like ever coming out of a game. That's partly just me being stubborn. Also partly just the situation....at the end of the day, the guys behind me came in and did a great job, and at the end of the day, if we win, then that's what matters."
The bullpen took over and locked it down from there. Ryan Thompson, Andrew Saalfrank, Kevin Ginkel, and Paul Sewald combined for four scoreless innings, giving up just three singles, never letting the Phillies or the crowd back into the game.
The two teams will face off tomorrow night for an epic game seven matchup, with Brandon Pfaadt going for Arizona and Ranger Suarez starting for the Phillies. The winner will be the National League Pennant winner and go to the World Series to face either the Texas Rangers or Houston Astros. Game time is 5:07 P.M. Arizona time.
