Gallen solid again as Arizona wins 1st series from LA since ’19
Ketel Marte stepped forward, fielded a bouncer off the bat of Edwin Rios and fired to first. With that, the Diamondbacks bench climbed over the dugout railing and onto the turf at Chase Field, celebrating something that hadn’t happened here — or anywhere — since Sept. 1, 2019: a series win over the Dodgers, punctuated by Wednesday’s 3-1 final that moved Arizona to 8-11 on the season.
Entering this week, the Dodgers had gone 24-5 in recent matchups between the teams, taking all nine series over the past two seasons. “They've been clobbering us,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said, not mincing his words.
Early on, this three-game set looked as if it would follow the same trend. Los Angeles won, 4-0, on Monday night before opening up Tuesday’s game with an early 3-0 lead. The Diamondbacks, though, battled back to win, 5-3, setting up Wednesday’s rubber match.
In the Diamondbacks’ clubhouse, the recent struggles were of minor concern. Zac Gallen, Wednesday’s starter, vaguely knew of the nine-series losing streak. Shortstop Nick Ahmed emphasized “trying to stay in the moment.”
What did matter, though, was proving their capabilities in the here and now with their first series win of the season.
“When you add them up and you sit on the bus heading to St. Louis, you think you won a series,” Lovullo said. “It hasn't happened a lot here for a while. And this is a different team. It's a different group of guys with a different mindset.”
Once again, the Diamondbacks were buoyed by an excellent start from Gallen, who struck out five while allowing just two hits in six scoreless innings.
“He is on the attack and in the zone with his fastball and he's throwing it exactly where he wants to,” Lovullo said. “I think there's a cutter, slider combination, I think he's just changing speeds on that. And then you mix in the curveball and the changeup and when those pitches are landing, he's pretty good.”
Through four innings, Gallen was one-upped by his opposite number, lefthander Julio Urias. After a Carson Kelly groundout to open the fifth, though, Urias left a fastball over the middle and was punished by Ahmed, who sent it into the left field seats for his first home run of the year.
“First at-bat, I was aggressive on two fastballs,” Ahmed, who missed the first two weeks of the season with a shoulder injury, said. “Just missed one to center field, I was a little bit late on it. And then he threw me three straight off-speed pitches the second at-bat to start and I knew he was gonna come back with a fastball at some point so I was just ready for it and he made a mistake in the middle.”
The Diamondbacks gave that run back in the top of the eighth. Set-up man Ian Kennedy struggled to get through the heart of the Dodgers’ order, allowing a
hard-hit single to Mookie Betts, moving him over with a wild pitch, inducing a fortunate lineout from Freddie Freeman and then letting Trea Turner tie the game with a liner into left.
The tie didn’t last long.
Daulton Varsho walked to open the
bottom half, setting up a sacrifice bunt attempt from Sergio Alcantara. That’s when it all went haywire for the Dodgers. Coming in on the ball, third baseman Max Muncy sailed his throw over the head of second baseman Gavin Lux, who
was covering first. With the ball tucked into the right field corner, Varsho came all the way around from first, while Alcantara made it to third before scoring on a Jordan Luplow sacrifice groundout two batters later.