Welcome to the “house money” stage of the series
Going into this series, I was hoping simply for a split of the four games. Having won the first two, it’s time for the D-backs to get greedy: but I would still be delighted with just a split of the remaining two games. You’re playing on the road, and against a division champion, still looking to improve their seeding the playoffs. Though after these two defeats, the Brewers are now four back of the Phillies, who also own the tiebreaker. Anything other than the #3 seed would be a big surprise. But if Arizona ends up at #6, they would face Milwaukee in the first round, in the Cream City. Having momentum and a series victory would certainly be no bad thing for the D-backs.
At time of writing, both the Braves and Mets are in close contests, so we’ll see how those pan out. Here, it’s going to be interesting to see how the bullpen is handled today, with a few of the A-relievers perhaps available only in emergencies. Hopefully, the offense will mean the bullpen is only needed for low-leverage work, after a strong outing from the as-yet undefeated Merrill Kelly. He has 11 starts without a loss this year: the previous high for Arizona is less than half that, being Taylor Clarke’s five in 2020. With two outings still to come for Kelly, he could end on 13. That would be the most starts without a loss in twenty years, since Noah Lowry went 6-0 over 14 starts for the Giants in 2004.