Walker wonders why
D-Backs can’t seal sweep as pitcher gives up hits
SAN FRANCISCO –Taijuan Walker threw the curveball where he wanted it, down and out of the strike zone, bouncing it front of the plate in hopes of tempting Brandon Crawford. It worked. Crawford started his swing, thought better and tried to stop.
Walker pointed to third, as did home plate umpire Pat Hoberg. Standing down the line, third base umpire Ben May signaled no swing.
“I think that was probably one of the more important moments of this game,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said after his team’s 7-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants on Sunday. “The umpires do their best. I’ll leave it at that.”
Instead of a key strikeout with the bases loaded, Crawford shot a fly ball to left field for a sacrifice fly, the first of three runs the Giants would score in the fifth inning. Walker couldn’t help wondering how the inning might have unfolded had May made what was, in his mind, the proper call.
Walker imagined himself escaping the inning with at least one fewer run scoring. He imagined J.D. Martinez still connecting for a two-run homer the next half inning, cutting the Giants’ lead to one. He imagined something different than what transpired the rest of the afternoon, that is, a game Lovullo described as “kind of a dud.”
“He swung,” Walker said of Crawford. “I came back and looked at it (on video). Nobody’s perfect. There’s going to be mistakes. But that’s a tough one. Maybe I get out of there with three runs instead of four, and then J.D. hits that home run and it’s 3-2. It’s a different game.”
Instead, the Diamondbacks never got on track. Besides the Martinez homer, the Diamondbacks couldn’t manage a key hit against Giants right-hander Chris Stratton or the four relievers who followed. Of the Diamondbacks’ six hits, only Martinez’s homer went for extra bases.
“Just didn’t really hit well today,” Martinez said. “(Stratton) pitched a good game. You’ve got to tip your hat to them. … But you know, the mood in here is, ‘Whatever.’ Keep riding. We won the series. That’s what we’re looking at. We’re not looking at the negative.”
For the Diamondbacks, it was nothing gained, nothing lost. Their magic number remained at six and their lead for the top wild-card spot over the Colorado Rockies, who lost in San Diego, remained at five. They’ll arrive in San Diego for the opener of a three-game series on Monday having won four of their past five games.
Walker gave up four runs in five innings, the first time since last season he’d given up more than three runs in a road start. He had few answers as to what went wrong.
Walker found himself in bases-loaded situations in three of his five innings, twice with nobody out. The Giants kept putting balls in play, those balls kept finding holes and Walker couldn’t seem to minimize the damage as much as he hoped.
“It’s a little frustrating,” he said. “I felt like I got the ground balls. It just didn’t go my way today.”
Martinez’s homer was the lone highlight of the day. He destroyed a firstpitch fastball from Stratton in the top of the sixth. Like most the 23 homers he’d hit for the Diamondbacks, who acquired him in a July 18 trade with the Detroit Tigers, there was little doubt it was gone the second it left his bat.
The blast gave him 40 home runs on the season, the first time he’s reached that mark in his career.
“It’s definitely an achievement that I never thought I could reach,” Martinez said. “To reach it is definitely a blessing.”