PHOENIX — Well, I guess the only good news is that the San Diego Padres won’t have much to play for this weekend.
The Arizona Diamondbacks had the Los Angeles Dodgers up against the wall on Wednesday night and let them off, sparked by a decision to bunt with Geraldo Perdomo to lead off the bottom of the 10th inning. The move took the bat away from Perdomo, Corbin Carroll and Gabriel Moreno with an opportunity to hop into a playoff spot.
That backfire loomed over Thursday’s disaster, as the Dodgers walloped the Diamondbacks 8-0 to clinch their 12th National League West crown in 13 years.
The Diamondbacks (80-79) were knocked back to two games out (technically) from the third National League Wild Card spot with three games remaining.
Arizona opted to push back Zac Gallen to Friday against the San Diego Padres, a move explained as matchups based and necessary to give Gallen an extra day of rest after he had been battling illness.
So, the Diamondbacks went with an opener in Jalen Beeks, followed Nabil Crismatt as the planned bulk innings eater of a bullpen game.
It did not work.
Beeks recorded a 1-2-3 first inning but gave up a home run to Freddie Freeman to lead off the second. Crismatt entered and immediately allowed a home run to Andy Pages. Shohei Ohtani and Freeman both homered off Crismatt in the fourth inning, and this game grinded quickly off the rails.
Manager Torey Lovullo mentioned pregame, “If it starts to wobble a little bit, we have no margin for error, zip. We gotta move fast.”
In contrast, Crismatt — who had been a great story of the second half with a 2.61 ERA as a Diamondback since signing a minor league contract — was lit up for seven runs (five earned) in three innings of work.
“We were four runs down and I just wanted to stretch things as far as I could so I didn’t have to use up an entire bullpen,” Lovullo said. “It just didn’t work out.”
Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, meanwhile, threw six scoreless innings, as Arizona scored one run off Dodgers starting pitching this series (18 innings). The Diamondbacks mounted four- and three-run comebacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, but 8-0 was another story.
Arizona’s four-man rotation left the Diamondbacks needing one more Crismatt outing, but with every game being vital to making the postseason, having the bullpen game come now when it isn’t certain Saturday or Sunday will be meaningful was a failed strategy. That is, unless Gallen really needed the day off. Lovullo said this was a team decision, not a player decision.
Where it leaves the Diamondbacks is likely having to sweep the Padres this weekend for a prayer at the postseason.
“We backed ourselves into a corner,” Lovullo said. “We know where we stand, and we gotta go out and we gotta fight our way out of that corner. The Padres are a good team, so I can sit here and tell you we gotta sweep them. We do. I think that’s the mindset. We’ve gotta win every game we can, and we’ve got three left.”
What happened to the Diamondbacks in the Wild Card race?
The Reds (81-78) defeated the Pirates 2-1 on Thursday to avoid getting swept. Reds right fielder Noelvi Marte robbed Bryan Reynolds of the game-tying home run in the ninth inning, a potential season-saving play.
Cincinnati is one game ahead of Arizona in the standings, but its tiebreaker makes that a two-game lead. The Reds won four of six games against the D-backs this year.
The Reds close the season on the road against the Milwaukee Brewers, who have locked up the NL Central and will have a Wild Card Series bye.
The Brewers need a win or a Phillies loss to ensure home-field advantage in the NLCS should they get there. Quinn Priester (3.25 ERA) will start Friday’s game for Milwaukee, and the Brewers are 19-0 in his last 19 starts. The Reds are going with Zack Littell (3.86). Milwaukee has not announced the rest of its rotation, and how it deploys its regulars factors into Arizona’s playoff chances.
The Mets (81-77), meanwhile, wrap up their series with the Chicago Cubs on Thursday evening. With a win, the Mets would be back in the third NL Wild Card spot, one game ahead of the Reds and two up on Arizona. A loss would put them in between.
New York ends the season at the pesky Miami Marlins with Sandy Alcantara (2.70 ERA last seven starts), Eury Perez (4.20) and Edward Cabrera (3.66) lined up.
Over in San Diego, Padres manager Mike Schildt told the Foul Territory podcast that they will be smart about deploying their regulars with a scripted pitching plan. The postseason starts on Tuesday, and the Padres have a series against the Cubs to look forward to.
The Diamondbacks will roll with Gallen, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Pfaadt at Petco Park.
This will be the third straight season in which the Diamondbacks’ playoff chances come down to the final weekend. They clinched in 2023, lost out on tiebreakers last year and now face long odds to get back into October games.
“Just try to win all three games, that’s our mindset,” Perdomo said. “That’s the last three games of the season, and we have to give everything we have in the tank.”
The Diamondbacks can be eliminated on Friday with a loss paired with a Reds win or Mets wins on both Thursday and Friday. The D-backs can ensure they live to fight another day with a win on Friday, but the tragic number, so to speak, is at two.
