It’s a rare team that can score no runs for 17 innings over two games and still come out with a 1-1 record.
I will be honest, baseball friends. I don’t even know what I say about this one.
If you’ve never recapped a game before you might not know this, but most of us, one way or another, start composing in our heads while the game is still underway. A lot of recappers here at the Snake Pit actually start writing things up as the game is playing out, if I’m not mistaken. Myself, I don’t do that—I want to have the whole experience in my head before I try to make sense of it, so I don’t start writing until the last pitch is thrown. Nevertheless, I am starting to think about how I’m going to approach it and what story there is to tell, and I usually have it broadly mapped out in my mind so that I can just sit down at the keyboard and go, once the final out has been recorded and the game is in the books.
So yeah, this one. Knowing that we were coming into the game having been shut out for nine innings in the previous one, and knowing that the very expensive question mark that is Corbin Burnes was taking the mound, I definitely had possible storylines percolating in my head before the first pitch was thrown. And those continued to evolve as the action, such as it was, played out. And then, at the end, they all went completely out the window.
But we’ll get to that.
Burnes was decent in his first inning of work—he retired the top of the Brewers lineup in order, though he needed 15 pitches to do it, which felt like a bit more than I would have liked from our putative Ace-with-a-captial-A. Still, a zero is a zero. His second inning was less good, as he encountered some Milwaukee hitting and some questionable balls-and-strikes calls from home plate umpire and old friend (not) Alfonso Marquez. The combination seemed to rattle him, and for a span of about four batters to start the inning he looked like he did last Sunday in Washington. Eventually, though, he got his crap together, and despite the bases being loaded with nobody out, he induced a double play and then a groundout to first to end the trouble. Two runs had crossed the plate, though, which was less than ideal, especially given our offense’s woes of late. 2-0 Milwaukee
Burnes settled down after that, though, facing the minimum over the next three innings while allowing only one hit—a single to Brice Turang that was quickly erased when Turang decided to try and steal second off Gabriel Moreno and was reminded why that’s generally not the best idea.
Our offense was doing nothing, though, meanwhile, against rookie starter and one-time Diamondbacks 4th-round draft pick Chad Patrick. To be clear, we got runners on base in every inning that Patrick worked, but we couldn’t get any of them home. To wit:
- Corbin Carroll and Geraldo Perdomo led off the bottom of the first with a single and a walk respectively, but Pavin Smith ground into a double play and Josh Naylor flied out to center to put the kibosh on that;
- Geno Suarez singled in the second with one out, and was left standing there when the inning ended;
- Garrett Hampson led off the third with a single, but then was doubled off on a strike-em-out-throw-em-out double play when Corbin Carroll whiffed;
- Perdomo singled right after that, but Pavin Smith lined out to left for the third out;
- Josh Naylor led off the fourth with a double to the wall in right center, and advanced to third on a Lourdes Gurriel flyout to deep center, and then was joined on the bases by Suarez, who drew a walk, but a Moreno popup on the infield and an Alek Thomas grounder to short ended that “threat”.
Perdomo walked again with two outs in the bottom of the fifth against some lefty who had replaced Patrick to start the frame, and Randal Grichuk (in to pinch-hit for Pavin) doubled down the left field line to advance him to third. But Naylor once again flew out to center, leaving both runners stranded.
I will note that, to this point, I had been religiously avoiding wearing any of my Diamondbacks hats on game days, as TheRealRamona and I had noticed a correlation between days when I wore a hat while watching the game (or when going to work on a day when a game was being played) and games that we lost. After the second stranding of runners in scoring position, though, I said “F*** it” and put on my rattiest old Diamondbacks hat, along with my old WIllie Bloomquist Diamondbacks shirt and my faded pair of Diamondbacks socks. Jinx or no jinx, it certainly seemed like I couldn’t make things any worse. I certainly wouldn’t suggest that my sartorial choices had any impact on the final outcome, but I think I learned something in that moment, anyway: Sometimes there’s no getting around a jinx, and the only way is through.
Corbin Burnes wound up pitching the sixth for us as well, as he’d settled down nicely after that second-inning kerfluffle. Sadly, however, he gave up a solo dinger to Brewers left fielder and rising star Jackson Chourio to add to the deficit. He did wind up with a quality start, and by far the best showing he’s had as a Diamondback: his night ended with a pitching line of 6 IP, 3 ER, 4 H, 1 HR, 2 BB, 3 K, and 88 pitches thrown. Nevertheless. 3-0 Milwaukee
And that was pretty much it until the ninth. A parade of relievers continued putting up zeroes for Milwaukee, Ryne Nelson relieved Burnes in the seventh and pitched two lights-out innings of relief before getting into a bit of trouble in the top of the ninth thanks to a Chourio leadoff single and then a William Contreras RBI double. 4-0 Milwaukee
At this point, I was basically tuned out, and was already doing Google Image searches for piles of broken bats….there were very few that had the vibe I was looking for, so I was thinking about going with an image of bats sleeping in a cave as an alternative.
Suarez led off the bottom of the ninth by grounding out to third, which at that point didn’t have much effect except to make me marginally more tired. Then Moreno walked, which honestly didn’t perk me up very much….Alek Thomas had already rolled over two tailor-made double play balls (though neither had resulted in a GIDP, because nobody was on base when he hit them), so I was basically waiting for another one to end it. But no! Instead, Alek squared one up on Joel Payamps and hit it within maybe a foot of being over the wall in that weird little notch in right center. That didn’t quite happen, but it wound up being a triple that scored Gabi and got us quite belatedly on the board.
That earned Payamps the hook as Milwaukee brought in their closer, Trevor Megill, to face Garrett Hampson. The Mighty Hampster walked, which seemed to afford another opportunity for a GIDP, but again, no! The Snakes weren’t done! Corbin Carroll hit a ball very much like the one Thomas had hit off Payamps, to nearly the same spot, though this one only resulted in an RBI double:
Megill then walked Perdomo, which brought Jake McCarthy to the plate with the tying run on second and the winning run on first and only one out. Jake has been very disappointing with his start to the season thus far, but he did not disappoint tonight, singling in Carroll and advancing Perdomo to third:
Megill then chose to walk Josh Naylor, loading the bases to bring up Gurriel, who to be fair has been pretty much sucking on offense to start the year. Gurriel didn’t get a hit, but then he didn’t need to with still only one out. Instead he launched a sacrifice fly to right that allowed Perdomo to cross the plate with the winning walk-off run. We’d been held scoreless for seventeen consecutive innings up to that point, but we wound up with the walk-off win! Who’d’a thunk it?
5-4 D-BACKS FINAL!
Win Probability Added, courtesy of Fangraphs
Good Sausage: Jake McCarthy (2 AB, 1 H, 1 RBI, +46.0% WPA!!!)
Sausage: Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. (3 AB, 0 H, 1 BB, 1 RBI, +15.6% WPA), Geraldo Perdomo (2 AB, 1 H, 1 R, 3 BB, +11.5% WPA)
Bad Sausage: Gabriel Moreno (3 AB, 1 BB, 1 K, -16.1% WPA)
It wound up being quite the Game Day Thread, though for the bulk of the game it was mostly gallows humor and many hilarious ham(p)ster GIFS, with 364 comments at time of writing. Comment of the game goes, without question, to kilnborn, who summed things up very nicely and in a heartfelt way as our improbable comeback was becoming a reality:
Amen, brother. Amen.
Anyhow, join us tomorrow for the rubber match of this series, as we try to win our first weekend series of this young season. Zac Gallen goes for us (gulp), while Freddie Peralta goes for Milwaukee in a matchup of the two teams’ Opening Day starters. It should be, well, a baseball game, anyway. Hopefully Good Gallen can win it for us. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10pm AZ time, in any event, so I hope you will join us.
As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!