DBacks win again, complete 3-game road sweep of Reds
CINCINNATI — Arizona Diamondbacks shortstop Kevin Newman crouched in front of second base and extended his glove toward the baserunner. It looked like Newman had taken a throw and put down a tag on a stolen-base attempt — or, at least, it did for those not watching closely.
As it happened, Reds baserunner Stuart Fairchild was among those not watching closely.
Having broken from first on a steal attempt — and unaware the pitch he ran on had been hit in the air to center field – Fairchild slid headfirst into second and briefly paused to look around. By the time he got his bearings, it was already too late.
Newman’s chicanery helped secure a key double play, one of many moments that allowed the Diamondbacks to secure both a 5-4 win on Thursday and a threegame sweep of the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park.
Joc Pederson had a well-rounded afternoon, with a homer, a bunt single, another hit and a stolen base. Right-hander Slade Cecconi gave up one run in 5 1/3 innings, his final out coming on a pickoff of Reds speedster Elly De La Cruz. Corbin Carroll drove home the go-ahead run and closer Paul Sewald worked a perfect ninth for his first save.
Just like that, the Diamondbacks are winners of four in a row and riding their first prolonged win streak of the year.
“It just seems like we’re starting to play like we know we can play,” Newman said.
The day could easily have gotten away from the Diamondbacks. They led, 4-1, before the Reds rallied for three runs in the bottom of the seventh.
The Diamondbacks reclaimed the lead a half-inning later, when Carroll followed a pair of two-out walks from reliever Fernando Cruz by lining a runscoring single to center.
Then came Newman’s heads-up play in the eighth. Fairchild was on first as a pinch-runner with one out when he broke for second on a pitch Jeimer Candelario skied into center.
“In the moment, I saw him coming to second and figured, ‘Why not?’” Newman said. “I was hoping he would think the ball was coming and get him to stay on the base for an extra couple of seconds.”
Fairchild slid into second and looked toward home plate. By the time he turned toward center field, where Carroll was catching the ball, he was already dead to rights. Newman said it wasn’t the first time he had pulled off that kind of deke, though it had been in a while.
“The last time? I want to say probably in the minor leagues,” Newman said. “College it worked a lot.
“It’s not something you do all the time, but in a big situation like that, the stakes are a little bit higher and I feel like it’s a better opportunity to hopefully get somebody on it.”
It was one of three outs the Reds made on the bases on Thursday. Another important one came after De La Cruz
walked to open the sixth. He stole second, but then one pitch later he broke too early on an attempted steal of third. Cecconi wheeled and threw to third to catch De La Cruz in a rundown.
The Diamondbacks had won back-toback games three previous times before this week but had yet to stretch a streak beyond that. Now they seem to have found the momentum they had been looking for during the first six weeks of
the season. It will be put to the test this weekend against the Baltimore Orioles, who entered Thursday with the best record in the American League.
“I feel like we’ve been playing good baseball all the way through, even some of those games we lost,” Cecconi said. “We ran into some really, really good pitching in those games. I think we’ve kind of broken through the results slump that everybody was talking about.”