Diamondbacks come back again to win Game 2, wild-card series over Brewers

MILWAUKEE — Wearing a mischievous smile and holding a bottle of champagne, the Diamondbacks’ Merrill Kelly raced around a corner of the visitors’ clubhouse at American Family Field in pursuit of Corbin Carroll. It should come as no surprise that he was unable to catch him.

Moments earlier, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo had delivered another impassioned, expletive-laden, pre-celebration speech. He called his team connected. He called them dangerous. He implored them to party.

The Diamondbacks, who won just 84 games in the regular season, beat the 92-win Milwaukee Brewers twice in as many days here, the last of which was a 5-2 victory on Wednesday night to complete a sweep of their best-of-three wild-card series.

The Diamondbacks, after securing their first postseason series win since 2007, advance to face the Los Angeles Dodgers in the best-of-five division series. Game 1 is Saturday at Dodger Stadium.

Twice here the Diamondbacks won games in the same fashion that helped define their season. They trailed early. They fought back. They held on. They were down 3-0 on Tuesday and came back. On Wednesday, they fell behind 2-0 before using a four-run sixth to take control.

“I think it says a lot about the resilience of this team,” Carroll said. “It says a lot about us being the sum of the parts. When you’re down like that, you can’t get back in the game in one swing. You’ve got to have a full team bought in and willing to take quality at-bats. We had that all night both nights. It’s cool to see that pay off.”

As they staggered toward the end of the regular season, the Diamondbacks looked like a team being consumed by the pressure of reaching postseason. But once they got here, they looked like a different bunch, putting together patient, pesky at-bats and delivering timely and important hits.

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“I think sometimes you put pressure on yourselves, and maybe that could be what we did toward the end of the year,” assistant General Manager Amiel Sawdaye said. “Now, all of a sudden, we are not expected to be one of these teams, so the pressure is reversed. It’s now on the other teams. I feel like it’s the same as what we had at the beginning of the year: We weren’t the hunted, we were the hunter.”

Tough at-bats fueled their outburst in the sixth. An inning earlier, Alek Thomas had delivered both the Diamondbacks’ first hit and run of the night off Brewers starter Freddy Peralta with a solo homer. The shot “loosened us up,” third baseman Evan Longoria said. The quality of their at-bats off Peralta seemed to rise from that point.

The rally started, as many of them do, with a walk from the light-hitting Geraldo Perdomo. Carroll followed with a double down the first-base line that set the stage for the rest of the inning.

The Diamondbacks might have caught a break on it: Carroll broke his bat, which flew down the line along with the ball. The bat might have distracted first baseman Carlos Santana, or the ball might have taken a tricky hop, but either way it scooted past his outstretched glove.

“Those are the hops,” Longoria said, “that you need to win playoff games.”

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Ketel Marte singled, putting the Diamondbacks in front. Tommy Pham singled. Even Jose Herrera, who entered the game in the third after catcher Gabriel Moreno was hit on the head by a Brice Turang backswing, managed to work a walk ahead of Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s run-scoring single.

“That’s the nature of these games,” Diamondbacks first baseman Christian Walker said. “It’s not necessarily about being a hero, it’s about getting the next guy to the plate. Whether it’s a walk or a swing bunt, bunting a guy over, it’s keeping the line moving. That’s what we’re after right now.”

Right-hander Zac Gallen turned in six solid innings, and the Diamondbacks’ bullpen again turned in a suffocating display to close out the game. But it was not without some drama. After the Brewers loaded the bases with one out in the eighth against right-hander Kevin Ginkel, rookie lefty Andrew Saalfrank came on to induce a pair of ground balls to end the threat.

After Paul Sewald retired the side in the ninth, the Diamondbacks returned to their plastic-lined clubhouse to celebrate once again. It was apparent they had taken note of how many prognosticators had picked the Brewers to advance.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re making it who we are,” Carroll said, when asked if the Diamondbacks were embracing their underdog role. “But I’d say it made it taste a little sweeter coming out the other side of this one.”

The Diamondbacks last won a postseason series in 2007, when they swept the Chicago Cubs in three games in the division series. They did not win a series in either of their past two trips to the playoffs in 2011 and 2017.

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By making such quick work of the Brewers, the Diamondbacks, with their top-heavy starting rotation, managed to position themselves well for the division series. Right-hander Merrill Kelly, who did not pitch against the Brewers, lines up to face the Dodgers in Game 1 with Gallen set for Game 2. Even better for the Diamondbacks: Both can pitch again, if necessary, in Games 4 and 5, respectively.

“We’re in a good spot,” General Manager Mike Hazen said. “We have a long road ahead of us. It just keeps getting tougher and longer. But this is fun. This is what we do this for.”

Before joining his team for a group photo on the field, Lovullo stopped near the visitors’ dugout. He looked toward the end and remembered a game from two years ago. The Diamondbacks, in the midst of their 110-loss season, had so offended their manager that Lovullo rounded them up in the dugout and aired them out in the open.

“I was definitely thinking about that as I was walking up and down the dugout late in the game,” he said. “I’m like, ‘We’ve got a chance to win on the same field where I lost my mind.’ It wasn’t a proud moment. But it’s come full circle.”

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He will have a chance to do it again in a matter of days: Lovullo probably has lost his mind any number of times at Dodger Stadium. The Diamondbacks have not played well against the Dodgers — not this year, not any year in recent memory, including 2017, when the Dodgers ended their last postseason run in the division series.

All of that seemed immaterial to the Diamondbacks on Wednesday night.

“If you’re scared, stay home,” Gallen said. “That’s kind of what we feel about it. So, yeah, we’re excited.”

“They’re going to have to beat us,” Hazen said. “We’re a tough team. We do a lot of things really well. I think if we do those things, we’re going to give them a run for their money, that’s for sure.”

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks sweep Brewers in wild-card series; Dodgers up next in NLDS