Wasted opportunities haunt Diamondbacks offense in narrow Game 3 loss
Tommy Pham leaned back in an office chair with a scowl on his face. He had taken off his jersey and untied his cleats, but as he sat in front of his locker, Game 3 of the World Series was still fresh on his mind.
With an assistant hitting coach standing over his left shoulder, Pham watched slow-motion video of the final swing of the night on an iPad, over and over, trying to pinpoint what he did wrong. Every few times that he watched the video back, he interjected with a thought. “That’s a great pitch” was one. “I’m late” was another.
These are the details that the Diamondbacks were left to analyze Monday night. They were not uncompetitive, as they were twice in their three losses to the Phillies. There was not an obvious moment to scapegoat, as there was when Paul Sewald blew a ninth-inning lead in Game 1 of this World Series to the Rangers. But in a 3-1 loss, each player had a moment or two to reflect upon with regret. That’s how an anemic offensive day comes together, squandering a strong pitching effort. Little miscues, stacked on top of one another.
The most glaring came from Christian Walker. With no outs in the second inning, he was on second base when he said “got a late read” on Tommy Pham’s single to right field.
“I was a little hesitant to just turn my back and go,” Walker said. “And I think I just got a little bit sped up trying to make up for that shuffle.”
The result was that he sprinted towards home with his head down and missed third base coach Tony Perezchica’s stop sign. Moments later, he was thrown out at the plate.
“Probably just trying to do too much there,” Walker said. “Should've been more aware.”
Afterward, Alek Thomas reflected on that play as a wasted chance to carry over the momentum that the Diamondbacks’ built in their 9-1 Game 2 win.
Greg Moore: Corbin Carroll, rest of offense fail Diamondbacks in Game 3 loss to Rangers
“Sometimes we don't put together at-bats and we don't get something going and that's pretty much what happened,” Thomas said. “Early, we did have something going and we lost it.”
The Diamondbacks never got a similar chance again. They did not put multiple runners on base at the same time. Their first run did not come until the eighth inning. Altogether, they looked nothing like the team that collected 16 hits two nights earlier.
Still, they had every opportunity to claw out a low-scoring win. Already in this postseason, they have winning scores of 4-2, 4-2, 2-1 and 4-2. That possibility was in front of them Monday, when Brandon Pfaadt worked 5 1/3 innings of three-run ball and the bullpen combined for 3 2/3 scoreless innings.
Plus, they got a boost when Rangers starter Max Scherzer exited with back tightness while warming up for the fourth inning. That sent Jon Gray into the game on little notice. The Diamondbacks, though, had planned for Scherzer.
“I'm gonna bet on our offense, second time, third time through a lineup,” Walker said. “So to switch it up right there, it's not an excuse or anything. … But I feel like maybe we missed some pitches.”
One he missed, in Walker’s mind, was when he looked at a first-pitch slider from Gray that caught the middle of the plate. A pitch later, he grounded out. By contrast, Thomas regretted being too aggressive and tapping back to Gray on a first-pitch curveball.
“We had a chance against him,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “We had a chance against Scherzer. But it's a game of capitalizing on the right pitch at the right time.”
The flip side is that now Gray is likely unavailable for Game 4, when he was set to be among the Rangers’ starting pitching options. That could give the Diamondbacks an advantage they weren’t expecting.
But in the postgame clubhouse, their focus was still on Monday night, when the biggest missed opportunities came after Gray exited.
After Pham doubled with one out in the seventh, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. flailed at a two-strike curveball that bounced three feet in front of home plate. Though Gurriel entered on a seven-game hit streak, his chase rate on breaking balls has jumped from 31.2% in the regular season to 39.1% in the playoffs. Thomas has had better plate discipline in the playoffs than in the regular season, but he followed by striking out on an inside curveball to finish a nine-pitch at-bat and end the inning.
In the eighth, the Diamondbacks were punished by the opposite sin: being too passive. With no outs and a runner on first, Corbin Carroll struck out looking on a slider right over the middle from Aroldis Chapman. Carroll hit .340 with a .717 slugging percentage against such pitches this year, but this time, he said the pitch “came out of a little different tunnel” than some of the fastballs Chapman had thrown him for strikes.
So instead of swinging away, Carroll watched. It was his first strikeout looking on a breaking ball over the heart of the plate since May 20. A pitch later, Ketel Marte grounded into a 114 mph double play and the inning was over.
The ninth inning, too, featured some misfortune. Ahead in the count 3-1 as the lead-off batter, Gabriel Moreno watched a cutter sail over the opposing batter’s box. But as Moreno made his way down to first base, home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez inexplicably called the pitch a strike. Moreno ended up grounding out.
“I'm not happy about it,” Lovullo said. “… If they were off the plate and there were missed calls, (the umpires) have got to tighten it up.”
A batter later, Walker struck out swinging on a slider away. Similarly to Gurriel, he has chased breaking balls far more since the start of the NLCS than he did in the regular season. Then came Pham, who went down swinging on a fastball off the plate. In contrast to Walker and Gurriel, Pham’s mistake was an unusual one. He swings at fastballs outside the strike zone just 17.8% of the time, one of the best rates in the league.
Characteristic mistakes, uncharacteristic mistakes and a little bit of luck. That’s how a World Series opportunity goes missing.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Wasted opportunities haunt Diamondbacks bats in Game 3 loss
