PHOENIX – It is not necessarily Torey Lovullo’s fault. The Arizona Diamondbacks manager is trying to navigate a best-of-seven playoff series that requires four starting pitchers when he only has three.
Yet one of the ugliest games in World Series history will go down on his record, even if the symptom was an industrywide dearth of starting pitching and the disease was Tuesday night’s 11-7 shellacking by Texas, a conquest that put the Rangers on the cusp of their first World Series title in franchise history.
The big finish can come Wednesday in Game 5 at Chase Field, a fitting spot to crown a Rangers team that seized a stunning 10-0 Game 3 lead and moved to 10-0 on the road in this postseason. The Diamondbacks will have their best pitcher, Zac Gallen, lined up to save their season, opposed by steady postseason hand Nathan Eovaldi.
What the Diamondbacks had to offer Tuesday was an ugly display of modern baseball when the eyes of the nation are focused on the game’s shiniest jewel event.
“We’ve had guys that have been throwing the ball extremely well, picking up the baseball on defense,” says Lovullo after the loss, an indirect reference to a Christian Walker error that led to five unearned runs. “It all came unraveled on us there in a matter of two innings.
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“And it’s 10 runs.”
Commissioner Rob Manfred knows it too well: A 10-0 game after two innings on Halloween night is no way to retain eyeballs in the ever-diminishing attention economy. And the only sight of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift on this night came from two Valley residents dressed up as the Chiefs tight end and pop megastar.
You might say Arizona’s Game 4 roadmap was a charade, too.
For the second time in as many Game 4s, Arizona opted for a “bullpen game.” The D-backs survived the first one, deploying eight pitchers to eke out a crucial 6-5 win in the NLCS. Yet that victory had as much to do with the Phillies’ own eight-man relay and mismanagement thereof, along with a Craig Kimbrel late-inning pratfall that gave the game away.
Come Game 4 of the World Series, perhaps Lovullo felt confident they could do it again. Lefty Joe Mantiply was to run the leadoff leg again, and before the game, Lovullo eagerly anticipated what was to come.
“Of course, I’d love to have four starters,” he says. “It would make my life so much easier. It’s going to be a chess game. I love that game.”
Well, consider Corey Seager the Garry Kasparov of World Series play.
When he destroyed a Kyle Nelson pitch for a two-run homer and 3-0 lead in the top of the second, Arizona was backed into a corner. When Marcus Semien clubbed a three-run homer an inning later, it was 10-0 and Texas became the first team in World Series history to post consecutive five-run innings.
And a bagful of Almond Joys probably sounded more appealing to most viewers Americans than watching the final six innings of this game.
Arizona’s early playoff success camouflaged this scenario. The D-backs swept the Brewers in two games in the wild card series and trucked the Dodgers in three in the NLDS. And it’s not like the World Series bullpen game was anything new.
The Braves won a World Series title in 2021 despite a pair of “Johnny Wholestaff” games, winning one and losing another. But their pitching plan was torched in Game 1, when Charlie Morton suffered a broken foot. It was a marvel to survive that and take home the trophy.
The Phillies (Noah Syndergaard), Rays (Ryan Yarbrough) and Dodgers (Julio Urías) have employed at least partially intended bullpen games in the past four World Series. But this was full-fledged bullpenning, with Mantiply only expected to face six batters, taking him through Rangers lefty slugger Nathaniel Lowe in the second inning.
And then it imploded.
Kyle Nelson had retired Seager in a big spot in Game 1, a groundout with the winning run on in the 10th inning. The lefty had recorded seven outs in the Series and given up no runs.
But the bullpen game bugaboo is asking your fourth through 10th-best pitchers, give or take, on the staff to keep repeating success, the odds increasingly stacked against you. On this night, Nelson threw a center-cut slider. Seager demolished it for his third home run in this World Series, most ever by a shortstop.
It was 3-0 by the second inning, but blink and it was 10-0 an inning later after Semien’s three-run homer off the fourth Arizona pitcher, Luis Frías.
Four pitchers to record the first nine outs. Is this the best the game could offer?
“It wasn’t your traditional World Series game with a lot of World Series moments,” says Lovullo, although the Rangers might beg to differ. “But at the end of the day we’re just trying to win a baseball game and find the best way to do so.
“But the game is a little different than it was in 1975, right, when I was watching the Big Red Machine against the Boston Red Sox. That was a totally different feel. This game has changed a little bit, and we just did all we could to win a baseball game today.”
Funny that Lovullo would mention the ’75 Series; Game 7 would produce the second-highest viewership in World Series history, 51.6 million viewers. Sure, a half-century of cultural and competitive change makes ratings comparisons like apples and avocados, but Lovullo’s point remains: Aesthetic pleasure can be elusive these days.
And it’s almost cruel what happened next.
Ryne Nelson, one of the last pitchers on the roster, came into a 10-0 game in the fourth and just kept pitching, quieting the Rangers, posting zeros, and most important, keeping the D-backs’ top relievers holstered so they’ll be fresh for the must-win Game 5 on Wednesday.
Nelson made 27 starts for Arizona this season, but inconsistency earned him an August demotion to Class AAA for four starts. He came back with an improved slider, but little runway remained to earn Lovullo’s trust for a postseason start.
Nelson’s Game 4 line – 5 ⅓ innings, three hits, one run, six strikeouts – tempts the second-guesser to suggest the D-backs simply could have started Nelson. He knows it’s more complicated than that.
“It is (frustrating) but at the same time, it’s no frustration toward anybody but myself,” says Nelson, 25. “I can’t expect them to put me in the game like that when I haven’t had the results to earn it. I know what I can do and I haven’t shown it to earn that trust.
“Had I earned that, maybe the game looked different.”
That fourth starter has been a sinkhole for Arizona. Seems like eons ago, but Madison Bumgarner was in this rotation, at least until posting a 10.26 ERA and getting released in April; the D-backs took off just a few weeks later.
Veteran Kyle Davies? He was so bad the D-backs released him, after 18 starts produced a 7.00 ERA, just a week before the playoffs.
See the pattern? This isn’t necessarily a Diamondbacks problem but an industry problem, what with every team short a starter or three, with horses so in demand that Max Scherzer, 39, and Justin Verlander, 40, can command $43.3 million a year because there aren’t enough younger arms to carry the load.
And so that No. 4 hole was lurking, likely keeping D-backs brass up at night, while their players kept kicking that can down the road with a pair of sweeps.
In World Series Game 3, the bill came due. And the tossing and turning evolved into a nightmare.