It sometimes shocks me how quickly the “vibe” around a baseball team can change. Just two weeks ago, the Diamondbacks finished off a road sweep of the Giants in a solid, all-around effort. That win put the team a season-best seven games over .500 heading to Seattle. Since that game, they’ve gone 3-9 and haven’t won a series since then. The offense has completely disintegrated, averaging just three runs a game, hitting a miserly .205, and averaging just one homer a game. If you combine that disintegration with an ugly downturn in the pitching, it’s not that surprising to see the team’s fortunes fall all the way to just one game over .500 on the season.
There are times watching a pitcher perform that a big inning seemingly comes out of nowhere. That was not the case tonight for Ryne Nelson. The Marlins quickly identified that Nelson did not have command of most of his arsenal, attacking early and often, creating a lot of hard contact while Nelson struggled to generate much swing and miss. Thankfully, early in the game that hard contact turned into outs with some excellent defense behind Nelson – one of the few highlights for the D-Backs all night. Of course, that kind of luck couldn’t hold forever, and the dam broke in the fourth. Nelson allowed a leadoff single to Heriberto Hernandez, but responded with a couple quick outs to put himself on the precipice of escaping again. Owen Caissie had other ideas though as he blasted the first pitch he saw into the first row of the right field bleachers for a 3-0 lead. It clearly bothered Nelson as he followed the blast with a single, a hit batter (his second of the night), an RBI single, and then a big three-run no-doubter to last year’s breakout star Kyle Stowers. When the dust settled, the Marlins had firmly taken control of the game with a six-run frame and knocked Nelson out of the game.
I don’t want to imply the D-Backs offense was completely lifeless. They may have been shutout, but they created a few scoring opportunities for themselves with six hits and four walks, but they never found a way to cash in, stranding 10 runners and going a woeful 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. There were two different innings when the team had a runner at third with less than two outs – the second time including a bases loaded situation – but were unable to score. It’s useless to direct blame at a single player or even a single part of the team for this current swoon. There’s very little that’s going correctly for the team right now and it’s incumbent on Torey Lovullo and the team’s leaders to find ways to change the dynamic before everything starts to spiral out of their control. That change has to start tomorrow with Merrill Kelly finding some way to keep a rocking Miami offense (18 runs on 25 hits in the series) down and avoid the sweep.
