Diamondbacks blow lead with two outs in bottom of 9th, fall to Padres
SAN DIEGO — Silence resonated in the visitors’ clubhouse on Tuesday night, a stillness that tends to follow brutal defeats. The Diamondbacks suffered one of those, a 6-5 gut-punch of a loss to the San Diego Padres, a game that would hurt no matter the circumstances.
They took a lead into the ninth, then watched as their closer, Ian Kennedy, coughed it up for the second time in the past four days. Kennedy stood at his locker, fuming, waiting for reporters to approach, waiting to put the night squarely on his shoulders.
But the loss felt worse, perhaps, because of what has been happening — and because of what the Diamondbacks had begun to believe might be possible.
For the past two weeks, they have played their best baseball of the year, racking up wins with an inspiring, team-oriented style of play. As they crept ever closer to the .500 mark, they began to think not just that they could be a winning team — some players had begun to talk in hushed tones about sneaking into a National League wild-card race filled with struggling teams.
Rather than winning for the 10th time in their past 12 games, the Diamondbacks allowed a game they seemed to have under control spiral away from them. They led, 5-0, after 4½ innings. At that point, right-hander Merrill Kelly had yet to allow a baserunner. After cruising to an easy win the day before, the Diamondbacks seemed poised to roll to another one.
“It just goes to show you that things shift,” said manager Torey Lovullo, whose team fell to 65-70, leaving them nine games out of the third wild-card spot. “You’ve got to be ready for everything at every time.”
Josh Rojas, Daulton Varsho and Christian Walker each homered. Corbin Carroll reached base three times. Kelly worked seven innings for the seventh time in his past nine starts, then handed off a one-run lead to his bullpen.
But Kennedy could not finish the job in the ninth. He walked two and allowed a pair of singles, including Jorge Alfaro’s walkoff-two-run single that brought in the tying and winning runs. Kennedy could not forgive himself for the walks.
“I shouldn’t even have got to Alfaro,” he said. “It shouldn’t have been that far.”
After walking Josh Bell to lead off the inning, Kennedy nearly erased him on a double play. Jake Cronenworth grounded a ball to second, where Josh Rojas fielded and had a tricky decision. He could have tried to tag pinch-runner Eguy Rosario, but instead flipped to shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, whose throw to first was a smidge too late to get Cronenworth.
“With the tag there, it’s easy to get caught up,” Rojas said, explaining his thinking. “Maybe he slides or runs into me and we don’t get two there. I thought the best option was to give it to Domo, whose momentum was going towards first.”
Kennedy got Ha-Seong Kim to pop to right for the second out, but Wil Myers lined a fastball into center for a single and Jose Azocar battled through nine pitches to work a walk, bringing Alfaro to the plate with the bases loaded.
On June 21, Alfaro faced a similar situation, facing Kennedy with the game on the line in the bottom of the 10th. On that night, he singled to left to walk it off. This time, he shot a first-pitch fastball into center to secure another win.
Kennedy threw 22 pitches. Eighteen of them were fastballs. Both of the Padres’ hits in the inning came off fastballs. Kennedy believed the issue was less about pitch selection than execution; had he not yanked fastballs to Azocar, he does not think he would have ended up walking him.
“I’m more mad at the walks than anything,” Kennedy said. “Getting behind guys and walking them. That’s not me. That’s not what I want.”
After Kennedy finished, Kelly spoke to reporters in a quiet voice in the corner of the clubhouse.
“I think you can tell (how tough this loss is) from how quiet it is,” he said. “As tough as this one was, I think we can’t let it derail what we’ve been doing. That was a good game today. We’ve just got to keep it going. We’ve got to flush this one and move on.
“I know this year is probably a long shot with the barrel that we’re looking down, but if we can continue to play this brand of baseball for the rest of the season I think it bodes well for the mind-set and the momentum going into next year.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks blow lead with two outs in bottom of 9th, fall to Padres
