PHILADELPHIA — Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo peered into the abyss on Aug. 11, 74 days before his team captured the National League pennant in an improbable, month-long sweep of their better-known rivals with a 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. Hope appeared distant just two months ago, when the Diamondbacks lost for the ninth consecutive game. The club lost its grip on the NL West. A chance at the postseason appears to be fading. “We’ve got to get this thing back,” Lovullo said. “Howsoever. Some way.”
The Diamondbacks did not pull off a miraculous recovery. The club won the next day to end the skid. They won again the next day. They won more than they lost the rest of the month. They won enough in September to squeak into the postseason, the sixth and final seed. They were an 84-win team with a run differential that suggested they should be worse. But they have a ticket to the dance. That’s all Lovullo’s team needs. Not since 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, an 83-game winner, had a club with this little regular-season success reach the World Series.
Yes. This is true. The Diamondbacks are going to the World Series. You can say it again, if the sentence seems foreign to the tongue. You can read it again, if it looks strange on the page. You can wonder, as all of baseball has, how Arizona got here.
Ask the Diamondbacks if they care. Ask the 45,397 fans at Citizens Bank Park if they believe it, not after Philadelphia won the first two games of this series and went home after Game 5 needing just one more victory. Ask anyone in sports if they guessed this — that person is probably kidding.
In completing the comeback, earning its first World Series berth since 2001, Arizona showed all the grit and hustle that got them to this stage. Corbin Carroll, their sensational rookie outfielder, had three hits, scored twice and delivered a crucial seventh-inning sacrifice fly. Fellow rookie Gabriel Moreno delivered two RBI singles. The relief corps was strong behind the third rookie, starter Brandon Pfaadt, who avoided the barrels of Phillies sluggers Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper through four innings. Arizona reliever Kevin Ginkel did the same to Trea Turner and Harper to defuse a seventh-inning jam.
DEEP
‘Victory is revenge’: Diamondbacks want to silence Phillies to reach World Series
Phillies manager Rob Thomson was well served in his decision to stick with third baseman Alec Bohm in the cleanup spot. Bohm hit a home run and scored another run. But little else went to Philadelphia. The lineup failed to capitalize on opportunities in the fourth and fifth, before Arizona took the lead. They put up little fight against Joe Mantiply, Ryan Thompson, Andrew Saalfrank, Ginkel and Paul Sewald, a quintet of relievers who could spend the next few days learning with the Texas Rangers. Game 1 of the World Series takes place Friday night at Globe Life Field.
Seeing the World Series without the Phillies would be awesome. When these teams left Philadelphia after Game 2 last week, it looked like this series was close to being decided. The Phillies took the first two contests, including a 10-0 thrashing in Game 2. Arizona retreated to the desert without a credentialed starting pitcher lined up for the next two games. But Pfaadt turned in a great performance in Game 3. A day later, as Lovullo navigated a bullpen game, his hitters capitalized on Thomson’s odd strategic decisions.
Thomson chose to pull his own starter, Cristopher Sánchez, in the middle of the third inning. Instead of using one of his other two starting pitchers, Taijuan Walker and Michael Lorenzen, for an inning or two, Thomson favored his regular relievers. The decision backfired when veteran Craig Kimbrel blew a two-run lead in the eighth inning. Arizona rallied to even the series. Philadelphia took Game 5 but dropped Game 6 on Monday, losing at Citizens Bank Park for the first time this postseason.
All of this sets up something that was unthinkable last week: The Phillies on the brink of collapse and the Diamondbacks on the brink of a pennant. And it also allowed Lovullo to once again bury his bag of receipts, a steady stream of slights from the press and public. The latest came from SiriusXM host Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, who vowed to “retire on the spot” if Arizona won.
Lovullo smiled at the bet. He considers Russo a friend. “But I’d like to see him go if we win today,” Lovullo said. “You know what I mean? There’s nothing better than a smart New Yorker saying something and then having to chomp on those words.”
For Lovullo, Russo’s comment fits a pattern this postseason: “There’s an underlying theme here that we, A, don’t deserve to be here, B, that we’re going to get our asses kicked, and, C, there are bullies. throughout the National League who can manhandle us,” he said. “I’m really excited to know that we’re playing in Game 7, and we’re on the verge of doing something incredible. And we love proving the naysayers wrong.”
Thomson took a different approach. If Lovullo appeared to have his ears open to any national discourse about his club, Thomson appeared determined to avoid any chatter. He insisted he wasn’t listening to complaints to local sports radio institution 94.1 WIP about his refusal to change his lineup, leaving Bohm in the purgatory. “Moving people around at this point doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Thomson said.
Arizona emphasized the importance of scoring early to quiet the crowd. The team completed that task in the first inning on Tuesday. Rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll hit an infield single. Rookie catcher Gabriel Moreno flicked a single into right field. Carroll raced from first to third, where he scored on a groundout by Christian Walker, who rushed to the bag to beat a double play.
Bohm brought the people back. He beat an elevated sinker from Pfaadt. The baseball landed in the left-field seats. It was only Bohm’s second extra-base hit of the series. The timing is exceptional. Harper left the dugout to applaud Bohm. Schwarber leaned against the railing to encourage the crowd.
Schwarber had a chance to keep the fans rolling in the third, after outfielder Brandon Marsh led off with a single and advanced on a bunt by outfielder Johan Rojas. But Pfaadt composed himself and hit Schwarber a second time. Pfaadt saw a 2-2 sinker near the bottom of the zone, close enough for umpire Adam Hamari to call Schwarber. The inning ended when shortstop Trea Turner grounded a sweeper into the dirt to strand Marsh.
Bohm reinvigorated the team in the fourth. He walked one-out, passed on a series of errant fastballs, to set the table for Stott. Pfaadt tries a 2-2 sinker. Stott sent a slicing drive to left-center field, a double that scored Bohm to give Philadelphia a 2-1 lead. A single by catcher JT Realmuto put runners on the corners. Pfaadt limited the damage. He struck out outfielder Nick Castellanos and Rojas.
The Diamondbacks didn’t last long. A leadoff single from third baseman Emmanuel Rivera sparked movement in the Phillies bullpen. Jeff Hoffman, Thomson’s right-hand fireman, has been heating up, off and on, since the second inning. He is ready to face Moreno, a right-handed hitter. But before Thomson could make a move, Carroll laced a game-tying, two-out single up the middle for his third hit of the night.
Carroll continued to torture Hoffman. As Hoffman made his first pitch, Carroll jumped to second base, swiping a bag as he did 54 times during the regular season. An extra 90 feet led to a run when Moreno threw a slider to right field to put Arizona up 3-2.
DEEP
‘It’s your turn’: The Diamondbacks knew Corbin Carroll would send them to the World Series
Hoffman was stranded in the seventh, when Thomson turned the game over to Jose Alvarado, perhaps his most trusted reliever. Alvarado pitched for the fourth time in the series. The Diamondbacks look comfortable. Gerardo Perdomo greeted him with a single. Ketel Marte hit a double. Carroll overcame Alvarado’s platoon lead to lift a 99.8 mph fastball deep enough to right to score Perdomo to double the lead.
Lovullo’s bullpen put the Phillies down in the final frames. Ginkel navigated a prickly patch in the seventh, getting both Turner and Harper to pop out. In the eighth, he struck out the side. In the ninth, Sewald overwhelmed the bottom of Philadelphia’s lineup. The final out landed in Carroll’s glove in right field, a harmless fly hit by pinch hitter Jake Cave. The crowd shuffled toward the exits as Carroll ran toward his teammates.
The Phillies are on their way home. The Diamondbacks are going to the World Series. It doesn’t matter if you can’t predict it. Arizona turned this series, and this season, around. howsoever. some way.
Required reading
(Photo: Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
