The Diamondbacks pulled off a wild one Tuesday night, and the finish belonged to Ryan Waldschmidt.
Waldschmidt launched a walk-off home run off a contending team’s closer for the second time this season, turning a game that felt all but lost into a 5-4 Dbacks win over the Cubs. It came in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, with Jose Fernandez pinch-running at first base for Tim Tawa after the Dbacks had come within inches of going down quietly.
Fernandez barely managed to steal second and move into scoring position with the Dbacks trailing 4-3. Then Waldschmidt got a hanging slider and made the Cubs pay. It was a huge swing in a game that had been stuck in place for most of the night, and it also gave the Dbacks a game on both the Padres and the Phillies.
Before the late fireworks, Clay Holmes spent seven innings making the Dbacks offense look stuck in mud. The former near-Dback had a deal in place with Arizona per multiple reports, but it fell apart at the last minute because of medicals. That made the first seven innings sting a little extra for the Dbacks, especially with the state of the rotation right now.
Brandon Pfaadt gave Arizona a chance to hang around. He worked into the seventh and allowed four runs, which was enough to keep the Dbacks within reach against a Cubs offense that ranks second in the league.
The start was smooth early, with Pfaadt getting a lot of soft contact through three innings. The damage came in the fourth, when Ian Happ crushed a three-run homer on a hanging curveball.
Even so, Pfaadt settled back in and finished with 6.2 innings against a hot lineup.
Arizona finally broke through in the eighth, stringing together a three-run inning that started with a few good at-bats, some walks, a big double from the red hot Gabi Moreno, and a single from Geraldo Perdomo. That rally fit the way this offense has often worked when it’s rolling this season: the bottom of the order getting on base and opening the door for the top.
After all that, though, the night came down to Waldschmidt. As Mark Grace put it on the postgame show, “Im not sure we have seen a more unlikely Dbacks win the season”
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