Diamondbacks continue momentum, throttle Giants
The Diamondbacks got another night of tremendous pitching. They swung the bats well, ran the bases with aplomb and played a crisp nine innings on defense. All told, they continued what for them has been an inspiring stretch of games by clobbering the San Francisco Giants in a 7-0 win on Monday night.
For months, the Diamondbacks had been unable to get their baseball chakras aligned: They could not hit and pitch and play good defense all at the same time, at least not for more than a one-off performance every now and then.
But suddenly the Diamondbacks have won three times in four days since returning from the All-Star break, and each of the three victories has been resounding and complete.
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Of course, their accomplishments can be discounted by the quality of the competition. Not so much the Giants, though they look nothing like the team they were a year ago, but taking two of three from the Washington Nationals is nothing to get too worked up about.
Still, there is no denying that the Diamondbacks have looked good — very good. The question is how long they can keep it up.
“I think we’re just playing good baseball,” said Diamondbacks right-hander Merrill Kelly, who fired eight shutout innings in what might have been his best start of the season. “Before the break there were things that would go wrong throughout the game. Whether it was pitching, defense, hitting, I think there was one piece of the game that just wasn’t fitting in the puzzle. I think after the break we’ve played pretty good, all-around baseball.”
Kelly allowed just three hits with no walks and seven strikeouts. He erased two of those three baserunners — one on a double play, the other on a pickoff — and faced just one batter over the minimum through eight innings.
“As far as execution and pitch location, today was probably one of the better ones I’ve had all season,” Kelly said. “Fastball command was good. Kept the change-up down for the most part. Landed the curveball. (Catcher) Carson (Kelly) did a great job calling pitches back there. We had a lot of stuff working today.”
It was the latest in a string of sparkling performances; in his past seven starts, Kelly owns a 2.09 ERA. It also was the latest impressive performance from the Diamondbacks’ rotation. Since the break, the group has a 1.00 ERA in 27 innings, with most of the heavy lifting coming from the club’s top three starters in Kelly, Zac Gallen (seven scoreless) and Madison Bumgarner (eight innings, two runs).
“The starters have pitched pretty well, obviously Gallen and (Bumgarner) the games before,” Kelly said. “We’ve put up some offense. We’ve manufactured some runs. We’ve played some really good defense.”
Kelly admitted he would have liked to have had a chance to return to the mound for the ninth; now in his fourth season in the majors, Kelly has proven to be a dependable, innings-eating workhorse, but he remains in search of his first career complete game.
But with Kelly’s pitch count at 99, manager Torey Lovullo said the decision was not particularly difficult, even with a comfortable lead. He pointed back to the last time Kelly pitched into the ninth — on May 6 vs. the Colorado Rockies, when he pushed his pitch count to 106 — and noted what came next. For the next few weeks, Kelly struggled, turning in a clunker at Dodger Stadium with three mediocre outings surrounding it.
“I just want to protect him,” Lovullo said. “He’s throwing the ball really well. … I thought it was the best decision for him and this team together.”
Carson Kelly had another productive night at the plate, delivering a pair of doubles. Josh Rojas, David Peralta and Jake McCarthy each reached base three times. The Diamondbacks scored two in the fifth, three in the sixth and two more in the eighth, showing the kind of relentless offense they have featured only infrequently for most of the year. Counting their win on the final day before the break, the Diamondbacks have won four of their past five.
“I really want to emphasize that when we do things right, it looks very good,” Lovullo said. “I want us to continue to keep working hard so we can have more games like this.”
Lovullo acknowledge the flip side to these sort of stretches like this: It makes losses like Sunday, when they somehow came away with a 4-3 loss to a bad Nationals team, that much harder to stomach.
“The painful part of it is when you play a really, really good game and you don’t close it (out),” Lovullo said. “We’ve got a long way to go. We’ve got a long way to go and a lot to prove. When we do things like we did today and have been doing for the past several games, it makes me happy.”
Reach Piecoro at (602) 444-8680 or nick.piecoro@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickpiecoro.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks continue momentum, throttle Giants
