Diamondbacks Playoff Push Continues vs. Giants

With their fourth straight win last night, the Diamondbacks took the first of a two-game series with the Giants by a score of 8-4. Arizona will go for the sweep today at Chase Field at 12:40 P.M. MST. A victory would not only knock the Giants further back in the standings but also give the D-backs the head-to-head tiebreaker in the event San Francisco makes a late run over the remaining games to tie the D-backs. Viewing the standings below, one should keep in mind the Marlins and Reds hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the D-backs. The D-backs hold the tiebreaker over the Cubs.

Pitching Matchup

Giants ace Logan Webb is on the mound for the Giants today. Webb has pitched into the 6th inning in 28 out of his 31 starts and leads the majors in innings pitched. He is tied with the Yankees' Gerrit Cole for the most quality starts in MLB with 22 and also the best QS percentage at 71%. He's making his fourth start against the D-backs this year and has pitched seven innings in each of the previous three. This is what a modern-day workhorse looks like.

Merrill Kelly has pitched into the 6th inning in 22 of his 27 starts, although twice he began the 6th inning and didn't record an out in the frame. Kelly has 16 quality starts and a 59% QS rate. He is coming off a rough outing on September 14th against the Mets in which he gave up seven runs in five innings, and struggled with control, walking four batters. He had been outstanding in his previous two outings, giving up just two runs over 12.2 innings while walking six and striking out 18.

Kelly was hit hard by the Giants on June 24th in San Francisco just before going on the injured list with a blood clot in his leg. He gave up seven runs, five earned on 10 hits in just five innings. Even though there is a day off tomorrow, Torey Lovullo has to be hoping that Kelly can get through six innings today as the bullpen had to throw four innings last night.

Lineups

The Giants have six left-handed batters in the lineup including switch hitter Patrick Bailey. Kelly has a fairly even platoon split, however, .684 OPS against RHB and .672 vs LHB. The Giants are also only slightly better against right-hand pitching on the year with a .713 OPS vs. RHP and .693 vs. LHP. So on paper, the platoon splits are not very indicative of Kelly against the Giants. That said the two toughest outs for Kelly against the Giants have been Joc Pederson, who has hit .320/.370/.560 against Kelly in his career, and Mike Yastrzemski has tagged Kelly for three homers in his career, two of them last year. They have not faced each other in 2023.

One of the players with the best record against Logan Webb is Jake McCarthy, who is 6-16, .375, and a walk. McCarthy is not in the lineup as Torey Lovullo favors Alek Thomas' defense, despite his 1-13 career hitting against Webb. Christian Walker has had some success against Webb going 4-14 with two doubles.

Corbin Carroll is two stolen bases and one homer shy of a 50 SB, 25 Homer season. No rookie has ever hit both those milestones, and the only player in their age 22 or younger season to have done it is Cesar Cedeno who had 25 homers and 56 stolen bases for the Astros in 1973.