Can Diamondbacks Get Back on Track Behind Brandon Pfaadt?

The Diamondbacks(25-20) and Pirates (24-20) play game two of their three game series at PNC Park in Pittsburgh today at 1:05 P.M. Yesterday Zac Gallen had one of the worst starts in his career, giving up eight runs leading to a 13-3 Pirates victory. Win today for the D-backs today would put them back to 1.5 games up over the Pirates in the NL Wild Card race, but a Pirates victory would vault them over Arizona.

Roster Moves

Just prior to the game today the D-backs announced the following roster moves:

Selected RHP Austin Adams from Triple-A Reno.

Placed LHP Anthony Misiewicz (strained right calf) on the 15-day injured list.

Transferred C Carson Kelly (right forearm fracture) to the 60-day injured list.

Kelly was not expected to be back before June 1, so moving him to the 60-day injured list is simply procedural to open up a 40-man roster spot for Adams to join the bullpen.

Pitching Matchup

There is a tremendous amount of pressure on Brandon Pfaadt today. On paper this looks like even a bigger mismatch than yesterday's game that featured Johan Oviedo against Gallen. But Pfaadt will need to come up big and pitch at least into the 6th inning and keep his team in the game against one of the leading Cy Young contenders in the National League.

Pfaadt pitched well in his last outing, going five innings and giving up just one hit, a homer, and one run against the Giants. He walked three batters and struck out five in a vast improvement over his previous two outings. In the first two starts of his career he gave up 13 runs, on 16 hits including six homers in just 9.2 IP. Pfaadt was making too many middle middle pitches and getting rocked every time he came into the zone. Against the Giants he worked the edges more effectively, and while he walked a few batters, managed to stay out of the middle of zone. He'll need to do that again to give his team a chance to bounce back from yesterday's disaster.

Mitch Keller is off to the best start of his career. He came into 2023 with a career 5.00 ERA across 70 games, 329 innings. His strikeout rate has jumped from a career 21% to 30%. while he's reduced his walks from 9.7% to 6.1%. With those kinds of peripherals, the drop in ERA to 2.38 is not a fluke

Keller is using an arsenal of five pitches. Against right hand batters he's throwing primarily a sinker that averages 94 MPH and a sweeper. He'll also got to his cutter and four seam against right hand batters too though. Left-hand batters should expect to see mostly four seam fastballs, cutters, and curveballs. He's been extremely successful with this attack plan, never more so than in his last outing against the Orioles, when he threw seven shutout innings, giving up just four hits, not walking anybody, and striking out a whopping 13 batters.

Lineups

Torey Lovullo is running out the same lineup that got shut down yesterday, the only difference being Dominic Fletcher and Gabriel Moreno are flip flopped in the order.

Josh Rojas had two hits yesterday, including a two RBI double in the 7th inning. But he's struggled when leading off games, going just 5-26, .192 B.A as the first batter of the game, and hasn't drawn a walk yet in that situation. This is in stark contrast to last year when Rojas set the tone so often, by batting .317 with a .378 OBP leading off 45 times. Coming into 2023 Rojas average pitches per plate appearance was 4.11, but this year that's down to 3.71, well below league average 3.92

Pirates manager Derek Shelton is also using the same lineup as yesterday, and why not after rapping out 17 hits and 13 runs. Four different batters had three hit games, (McCutchen, Hayes, Bae, and Palacios) and Bryan Reynolds hit his first homer since April 7th.