Diamondbacks 7, Colorado 10: Growing Pains

Okay, so this is my first official adventure using the new WordPress back end for a Diamondbacks recap. Its functionality seems like it may well be, um….robust? On the other hand, though, I’m not exactly finding it to be, ahem, intuitive to use. So I hope you all will have been patient with me when this finally goes live. Because it might take awhile.

That said, I’m not exactly inclined to go into massive amounts of detail with this one, because overall, the game followed what has become a sadly familiar script for us this year: Our starting pitcher does a good job, our offense produces an ample quantity of runs to support said starter, the bullpen comes in and, one or two catastrophic innings later, we wind up losing a game that it really seemed like we were going to win.

Ryne Nelson was on the mound for us. Chase Dollander was on the mound for Colorado. Ryne pitched far better than Dollander, despite not being absolutely at the top of his game. He pitched into the seventh, but didn’t record a 1-2-3 inning until the fifth. He gave up a leadoff home run in the second to Warming Burnabel, that nasty hobbitses, and another run on two-out back-to-back doubles in the bottom of the third. That wasn’t really a problem, though, as a Ketel Marte double in the first and a Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. RBI single had given us the first run of the ballgame, and we had added on two more on a Geraldo Perdomo walk to star the third, followed by another Marte double, a Corbin Carroll walk, and then a Gurriel grounder to third that was scored a fielder’s choice but resulted in no outs and Marte crossing the plate. So after three, we were still enjoying a narrow lead. 3-2 D-BACKS

We then added two more runs in the top of the fifth, thanks to a leadoff bloop single by Perdomo that dropped into the no-mans land of shallow left center, followed two outs later by a Gurriel bloop single that fell in pretty much the same place, and finally, right after he was starting to get it from certain precincts of the Gameday Thead for being only a AAAA hitter who couldn’t handle major league pitching, an Adrian Del Castillo bloop double that landed in fair territory a bit more than halfway down the left field line:

Huzzah! That gave us, and Nelson, some breathing room. 5-2 D-BACKS

Suddenly having a three-run lead seemed to agree with Ryne, as he retired Colorado in order in the fifth (on nine pitches thrown) and again in the sixth (on eight pitches thrown). That put him at 77 pitches through six, so it was pretty much guaranteed that Torey Lovullo was going to send him out to start the seventh inning as well.

Before we got to that, though, ADC and the offense decided to give our often hard-luck starter a bit more of a cushion. Corbin Carroll reached in the top of the seventh on a single to left center, and then amused himself by stealing second and then third against whoever was pitching out of the Rockies’ bullpen at this point. Gurriel’s magic shoes sort of failed him here, as he struck out for the second out of the inning. But that didn’t wind up mattering, and nor did CC’s two stolen bases, as ADC launched a no-doubter over the rather tall out-0f-town scoreboard and into the right field bleachers:

So that was fun. And surely a five-run lead with a starter who’d been dealing and only nine outs left to get would be sufficient, right? 7-2 D-BACKS

Um, well, no, sadly. Nelson did in fact come out for the seventh, and got the first out on one pitch. The second pitch he threw snuck into right center for a single. Six pitches later, he gave up a fairly towering line drive just to the right of straightaway center that wound up being scored an RBI triple. It certainly would have driven in the run, but Alek Thomas grossly misplayed the carom coming off the outfield wall. It was always gonna be a double, but if Alek were better at making plays on balls he doesn’t actually catch, that’s all it would have been.

Anyway, that earned Nelson the hook, and Kyle Backhus came in and recorded the final two outs with no real fuss or drama, though the runner on third did score to shrink the lead back into save situation territory. 7-4 D-BACKS

And so, yeah. Andrew Hoffman came out to start the eighth for us, with a three-run lead. By the end of the inning, he was four batters gone from the ballgame, and the lead had been erased as he and Andrew Saalfrank combined to cough up six Colorado runs. It’s Coors Field, and we’ve seen this time and again throughout the season, but, well, ouch. Especially because our offense couldn’t produce anything more after the Del Castillo dinger. So. 10-7 Colorado FINAL

Loss Probability Added, courtesy of FanGraphs

A New(ish) Hope: Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. (4 AB, 2 H, 1 R, 3 RBI, 1 K, +22.4% WPA)
Return of the Competent: Adrian Del Castillo (4 AB, 2 H, 1 R, 2 RBI, 1 2B, 1 HR, 1 K, +12.4% WPA), Ryne Nelson (6^1/3 IP, 8 H, 4 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, +12.8% WPA)
The Bullpen Strikes Back: Andrew Hoffman (1/3 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 1 K, -46.1% WPA), Andrew Saalfrank (2/3 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, 1 HR, -38.0% WPA)

It was a livelier Gameday Thread than last night, with a lot of good fun to be had, as well as a disturbingly strong pun game being exhibited by many participants, which is always a positive in my book. We have 225 comments at time of writing, with Comment of the Game going by popular acclaim as well as duly earned honors for the most terrible pun of the evening to Diamondhacks for their response to kilnborn’s remark about Nelson’s performance:

That was truly terrible, and therefore glorious. Well played!

Some Final Thoughts on Torey’s Bullpen Usage, etc.

So I noted in my “hello” comment at the beginning of tonight’s Gameday Thread that I wasn’t buying the recent surge of “we can still totally make the postseason” messaging that our broadcast team has been pushing since we started winning again against losing teams and once again approaching Mount .500. And I’m still not buying it. I’m certainly not ruling it out, and I’ll be more overjoyed than I have words for if it should play out that way. And yeah, it could happen. But.

If we were still really contending, and that was primarily what we were all about on August 16, 2025, a little more than two weeks after we sold off a lot of the more successful parts of our roster, I truly believe that we would not have sold off those roster parts. And yeah, especially since the “hey, we can still contend for a wild card spot” talk has started to kick up, of course Lovullo is going to say that yes, we’re totally going pedal-to-the-metal to win ballgames. And that’s true anyway, to an extent: he always wants us to win ballgames, so do the players we have playing in everyday roles now. But.

I feel like it’s important to acknowledge that, having gone through the fire sale and having gotten a bunch of nearly MLB ready prospects back in trade, August and September are and really should be a time for the team to be playing developmental baseball in preparation to try to contend again next year and in 2027. The benefit of these two months is that we have a lot of players who are on the cusp of transitioning to the majors who can now have a very long runway where they get everyday reps (position players) and a lot of looks at MLB hitters (pitchers) without having particularly high stakes attached. We’ve already started to see the benefits—cf. Blaze Alexander, especially.

So as for how Torey committed some sort of cardinal sin by not pulling Andrew Hoffman out a couple of batters earlier in the bottom of the eighth, the kid had only had ten innings of major league experience ever when he took the mound tonight. He’s been pitching well for us so far, so this was a chance to learn a little bit more about what he can do at this point and what he maybe needs to work on. And guess what? We learned something, and as nice it would have been to win tonight’s game, I don’t really feel bad that Hoffman got the chance to get into trouble and then try to pitch out of it, and that he failed. At this point in his very young career, failing can be useful and instructive. Here’s hoping it is for him and the major league coaching staff going forward.

Feel free to argue or flame me in the comments if you feel the need. That’s what the comments are for, after all.

/steps down off soapbox

Anyhow. Join us tomorrow as we try to salvage a series tie in the fearsome confines of Coors Field. When I started writing this, we were still staring down the barrel of a battle of TBDs, but that is no longer entirely the case. At this point, we are planning to send Nabil Crismatt (?!?) out to start for us, while the Rockies are still being coy about who they’re going to use as Crismatt’s opposite number. In any case, I’m sure it will be, um….a contest where something like baseball is played for at least five and a half innings, anyway. It’ll certainly be wacky, and first pitch is scheduled for 12:10pm AZ time. Hope you can stop by!

As always, thanks for reading, and as always, go Diamondbacks!