Breaking Down the D-backs Friday Night Pitching Debacle Vs. the A’s

The Arizona Diamondbacks lost a game to the Oakland A’s Friday night that they should have won. They jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning, but blew that lead. They got the lead back in the 7th inning, going up 4-3. But they lost the game 9-4.

While scoring four runs on seven hits against the A’s last place was not a great or even good offensive performance, it was enough to win if the D-backs were able to get some good pitching of their own.

But as the case has been far too often this year, and especially this month, the downfall began with yet another short outing from their starting pitcher.

Slade Cecconi lasted just four innings. It was the fifth time in the last sixth games, and the 10th time in their last 25 and the D-backs starter failed to go more than four innings. D-backs starting pitchers have managed to go six innings or more just nine times in the last 25 games.

Lamenting this fact Torey Lovullo was blunt in the postgame press conference. “The starting pitching needs to be better. You look at what we absorbed (with the recent short outings), that isn’t going to be good for us to win baseball games. The starting pitching needs to tighten it up”

Cecconi was great for the first two innings. That’s usually been the case all year. He struggled mightily after that. Unfortunately, that’s also usually been the case all year. Through the first two innings of games he has a 1.17 ERA and from the fourth inning on that jumps to an unplayable 8.91

Last night was more of the same. He was cruising through two innings, allowing just a lone two-out single in the second and had struck out four batters. He threw 38 pitches and got 9 whiffs on 17 swings. Those were distributed equally among all four of his pitches.

But in the third inning a leadoff walk and a two out walk sandwiched around two strikeouts drove up his pitch count. Two singles followed and the A’s had tied the game. Two more singles and sacrifice a fly in the fourth inning led to a go ahead run.

Cecconi’s final line was 4 IP, 5H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 7 K. He threw 88 pitches, 58 for strikes.

There have been numerous efforts on the part of the pitching coaches to work with Cecconi to find a solution to this problem. Cecconi works hard, is earnest, and responsible in trying to correct his flaws. Nothing has worked in a sustainable way so far, but Cecconi is just 25 years old and has just 84 MLB innings under his belt.

When Thompson came into the game with two outs in the 7th inning the score was tied 3-3 thanks to Lourdes Gurriel Jr’s 11th home run an inning earlier. Thompson got the final out of the inning to get his team back in the dugout.

In the bottom half of the 7th All Star and now MVP candidate Ketel Marte had a two-out RBI knock to give the D-backs a 4-3 lead.

Thompson came into the game with a 1.13 ERA and had allowed a run in just four of his previous 30 outings. He’s been spectacular all year and there has even been some talk in the press box of him being an All Star candidate. At that point Torey Lovullo felt great about his team’s chances to win.

“I felt like it was game over. Thompson to Sewald. Book it.” Lovullo said

Thompson came back out for the 8th and promptly gave up a game tying home run to Tyler Soderstrom on a 2-1 sinker that stayed up in the heart of the zone. One out later he issued a walk, and then gave up the lead on a long triple to right center by Zack Gelof. A groundball single through the hole into left upped the A’s advantage to 6-4.

Thompson said after the game he was battling some mechanical issues and was unable to make the adjustments. “Pitching is really hard. We’re expected to do the same delivery thousands of times in a season. To do that is near impossible…….I wasn’t good tonight and I didn’t make the right adjustments ”

Still down 6-4 heading into the top of the ninth, Lovullo opted not to put Paul Sewald into the game, going instead with left-hander Brandon Hughes. Hughes came into the game having allowed 13 runs in 13 innings including five homers, all of them against right-handed batters.

Questioned why he didn’t bring in Sewald Lovullo said “I think if we closed it up a little bit more, it was two runs, I knew they had their real good closer available. I didn’t want to cash him in unless it was a little bit closer than two runs. It was right at that breaking point for me though.”

It’s true that the D-backs Win Expectancy down two runs heading to the 9th was a minuscule 6%. That’s without taking into account who the A’s had to pitch the ninth inning.

Mason Miller is one of the best closers in the game. He has 14 saves and blown just two. He has a 1.96 ERA with 64 strikeouts in 36 innings. The odds of getting two runs off him to even just tie up the game and send it to extra innings were very low. With such slim odds, it’s no wonder Lovullo made the choice that he did.

Unfortunately, Hughes proceeded to give up back to back homers to Brent Rooker and Shea Langeliers, and then a third one to Daz Cameron. The three solo shots were the final blows to a dismal Diamondbacks pitching performance.

Box Score

Arizona will hope to start turning things around on Saturday at 1:10 PM Ace starting pitcher Zac Gallen returns from a hamstring injury to pitch for the first time in a month. It’s probably not reasonable to expect him to get deep into his first game back however. Lovullo will likely need to rely on his tired bullpen more than is optimal. Again.