D-Backs lose to Mets in 10 innings
Ketel Marte pursed his lips, holding his bat out from his stomach and turning clockwise, slowly, away from home plate and back to the Diamondbacks dugout. He didn’t want to believe it, not when Seth Lugo’s 1-2 curveball appeared to miss the strike zone by a solid inch or two, but his strikeout put the Diamondbacks’ comeback on the brink of being extinguished.
Two batters later, when Christian Walker popped out to shallow centerfield, that became the fate of Arizona’s night, as it lost, 6-5, to the Mets in 10 innings, falling to 5-9 on the season.
For two weeks, these losses followed a template. The Diamondbacks would get good starting pitching, decent bullpen work and abysmal offense. Through 11 games, their team batting average sat at .156, even as players and coaches alike extolled the quality of their bats, promising that hits and runs would soon follow.
They have now, over the past three days. Arizona has averaged 6.7 runs and 9.0 hits per game since Wednesday, up from 2.0 and 4.8, respectively, in its 3-8 start.
“Those little things, we've done well over the past couple games, where we have executed and scored some runners from third base with less than two outs by having a good approach,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said.
Unlike in two wins to close a fourgame set in Washington, though, the Diamondbacks’ offensive improvement wasn’t enough Friday night.
Early on, right-hander Zac Gallen continued the most promising trend of the Diamondbacks' young season — entering Friday, its starting pitchers had the third-best ERA of any group in baseball. Gallen commanded his fastball well, using the pitch to strike out four consecutive batters across the first and second innings before getting Robinson Cano with a curveball in the dirt to make it five strikeouts through two.
He ultimately struck out seven in five innings of two-hit ball, only allowing one run on a bloop single.
Outfielder Daulton Varsho knocked in a run with a sac fly in the seventh and Christian Walker redeemed a critical sixth-inning strikeout with a two-run eighth inning homer into the left-field bullpen.
That set the stage for Varsho, who came to the plate with two outs in the ninth against right-hander Edwin Diaz.
Diaz left a slider over the middle of the plate and Varsho turned on it, sending a fly ball deep into right field. When Mets’ right fielder Starling Marte leapt at the fence, Varsho thought he had come up inches short. Then, just as his disappointment started to set in, the Chase Field home run music played and Varsho, rounding second base, realized he had tied the game.
“Starling's a really good athlete and I've seen him do it many times before so I thought he did catch it,” Varsho said.