Arizona Diamondbacks 5, Miami Marlins 2: Zac Protects

As the season marches on, the woes of the bullpen have begun to surface recently. Fortunately, the Arizona Diamondbacks have a formidable 1-2 punch in their starting rotation with Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly. Tonight saw the end of Corbin Carroll’s twelve game hitting streak and Dominic Fletcher’s six game streak to begin his MLB career, so the margin for error was thin. Tonight, less than 10,000 were in attendance at Chase Field which is their lowest total all season.

Zac actually wasn’t as dialed in as he was during his scoreless inning streak, but the bar is so incredibly high for him that it was still a very, very good start. The beginning of the game saw Gallen retire 9 of the first 10 Miami Marlins hitters in a row. Miami hurler Braxton Garrett was able to keep Arizona to just two baserunners through three innings. The snakes offense finally put one on the board in the fourth inning on back-to-back hits from Emmanuel Rivera and Christian Walker to which Miami answered back the next half inning with back-to-back hits of their own.

At the conclusion of the sixth inning, former D’back Jean Segura was ejected after he was called out on strike three at the bottom corner of the zone. He actually had a fair argument, but being that it was his third strikeout of the game he let his frustration get the best of him and flew off the handle at home plate umpire Mark Ripperger. The former hitting machine is has had an abysmal start to the season with a .445 OPS.

Christian Walker for the second time in the game put Arizona in the lead, this time with a monstrous 459 foot solo home run out to the left field porch. That’s now six home runs in his last eight games.

Evan Longoria and Pavin Smith followed that blast with consecutive singles. Gabriel Moreno brought Longo in with a two out single, one of his three hits in the game. With the bases loaded, Ketel Marte smoked a grounder to shortstop Joey Wendle that ate him up bringing in Arizona’s fourth run. The Diamondbacks added to their lead the next inning on Emmanuel Rivera and Pavin Smith’s second hits of the game as the middle of the batting order pulled the sled this evening.

At 90 pitches after seven innings completed, Gallen passed it off to a tired bullpen that did not have a great series against the Washington Nationals. He gave up two singles in the eighth but allowed no runs, so Torey Lovullo sent him back out to the mound to begin the ninth. After giving up a lead off single, Ruiz retired the next two which allowed Lovullo to go to a lefty on lefty matchup with Joe Mantiply. That didn’t work because Garrett Hampson doubled that baserunner home, but nonetheless Arizona’s lone All Star representative last season was able to secure the 5-2 victory for their 20th victory in 2023.

FanGraphs

Apparently virtual interest in this game was just as miniscule as the in game attendance because the GDT only had 107 comments, and non rec’d more than twice. Sometimes it be like that. However...

Anytime we can collectively point at the Dodgers and laugh is worthy of a CoTD with or without recs.