The Diamondbacks had the kind of night that makes baseball feel unfair in a very specific way. They were competitive for long stretches, they scratched out a couple of runs, and they even won most of the innings on paper. None of that mattered once Brandon Pfaadt ran into the one frame that blew the whole thing open, and Texas walked away with a 6-2 win.
Pfaadt matched up against Kumar Rocker in a game that looked favorable for Arizona before the first pitch. Rocker, the former first-round pick, came in with the reputation of a pitcher who can be wild, inefficient, and quick to hand the ball over.
Instead, he was sharp early. Through two innings, Rocker had thrown 24 pitches, while Pfaadt had thrown 23 despite allowing two hits.
Arizona broke through first in the third. Tim Tawa led off with a triple off the wall in straightaway center, and Pavin Smith - called up from Reno earlier in the day - followed with a ground single past Corey Seager into left field to bring Tawa home. After that, Rocker escaped without further damage, but the Diamondbacks had the first run of the night and a 1-0 lead.
Pfaadt kept rolling for a while. He worked a 1-2-3 fourth, and the game stayed quiet until the fifth, when everything unraveled.
Wyatt Langford opened the inning with a homer to tie it, and then the Rangers kept piling on: a single, a stolen base, a sacrifice bunt, another single to drive in a run, a hit by pitch, and then a fielder’s choice that looked like it might end the inning. Texas challenged the play, and the call stood after review on Brandon Pfaadt’s foot not being on the bag when he covered first.
That sequence seemed to knock him off balance. The next three batters went single-double-single before he finally struck out Langford for the tenth out of the inning.
By then, Texas had turned it into a 6-1 game.
Arizona did get a little life back in the sixth. Kumar Rocker walked Nolan Arenado and Tim Tawa to start the inning, and that ended his night.
Nathan Eovaldi, back from the IL and making his first big league appearance without a rehab assignment, came on and let the Diamondbacks chip away. Gabriel Moreno and Geraldo Perdomo singled, and Corbin Carroll lifted a sacrifice fly to score Moreno and cut it to 6-2.
That was as close as it got. Jonathan Loaisiga, Derek Law, and Juan Morillo held the line the rest of the way for Arizona, but the offense couldn’t add anything else. The Diamondbacks put leadoff runners on in both the seventh and eighth and came up empty each time.
Pfaadt stayed in long enough to pitch the sixth and even got the first two outs of the seventh, but the big fifth inning had already done the damage. Texas finished the job, and the Diamondbacks took the 6-2 loss.
Pavin Smith’s return to a major league roster and starting lineup drew most of the early attention in the game thread, and one comment summed up the mood around that move: “Works for me….I think Baxter is creepy anyway.”
The series wraps up tomorrow afternoon. Hologram Eddie will start for Arizona, with Cal Quantrill going for Texas.
First pitch is set for 1:10 p.m. AZ time.
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