If there’s been one constant for the Diamondbacks during their run to the World Series, it hasn’t been dominant starting pitching or shutdown relief work, though they’ve gotten their shares of both. It’s been Ketel Marte, who has not only hit safely in all 14 of Arizona’s playoff games but also set a new postseason record on Saturday night with an 18-game hitting streak, dating back to 2017. He claimed the record by slapping a two-run eighth-inning single off Martín Pérez in Game 2.

Marte’s streak began with the 2017 NL Wild Card game, when his 3-for-5 showing against the Rockies (including starter and current Ranger Jon Gray) helped the Diamondbacks to an 11–8 win. He hit in all three games of the Division Series against the Dodgers, even homering off Clayton Kershaw, but the Diamondbacks were swept nonetheless. Six years later, the 30-year-old switch-hitter picked up where he left off, with a game-tying homer off Corbin Burnes in the NL Wild Card Series opener against the Brewers — one pitch after Corbin Carroll had homered off Burnes as well. His two-run single off Freddy Peralta in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series turned a 2–1 deficit into a 3–2 lead, sending the Diamondbacks on their merry way to their first upset of the postseason. Read the rest of this entry »

This World Series has something for everyone: Up-and-coming stars, clutch heroics, veterans hanging around in search of that long-elusive ring. And if you’re like me, you know the most important question of this series is: How can I make it all about a South Carolina Gamecocks team from more than a decade ago?

This is pretty freaking cool!#Gamecocks | #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/qIozcOe4el

— Gamecock Baseball (@GamecockBasebll) October 29, 2023

On Saturday night, Jordan Montgomery and Christian Walker took the field for a World Series game together. For a second time. Read the rest of this entry »

Shintaro Fujinami has a good understanding of how NPB compares to MLB. Prior to signing with the Oakland Athletics in January (and subsequently being traded to the Baltimore Orioles in July), the 29-year-old right-hander spent 10 seasons with the Hanshin Tigers. Along the way he faced many of Japan’s top hitters, with Central League stalwarts such as Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto among the standouts. The latter was the first name Fujinami mentioned when I asked which of his former position-player opponents would best perform stateside.

“I think that Okamoto, the third baseman for the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, would be pretty good here,” replied Fujinama, who went 7-8 with a 7.18 ERA over 79 relief innings in his first MLB season. “He’s a power hitter in Japan, although a power hitter there isn’t the same as here. Power hitters in Japan won’t hit 40 home runs over here like Shohei Ohtani does. But he would do well.”

A 27-year-old right-handed hitter, Okamoto slugged an NPB-best 41 home runs this year while slashing .278/.374/.585. He’s gone deep at least 30 times in each of the last six seasons, a span that includes a .274 batting average and 108 strikeouts annually. Despite the not-low K totals, Fujinami believes that Okamoto possesses the bat-to-ball skills to handle MLB pitching. Moreover, he doesn’t feel that high heaters would bedevil the Yomiuri slugger.

“He has good contact-ability, and he’s also good at hitting fastballs,” Fujinami told me during our September conversation. “The fastball velocity here is higher than it is in Japan, but I feel that Okamoto could make an adjustment to that if he came here. I think that Okamoto can hit a fastball at the top of the zone better than Murakami. If I had to pick one to bring here to the states, I would pick Okamoto.” Read the rest of this entry »

One sleepless night after Game 1 was ripped from them in heartbreaking fashion, the Diamondbacks arose from the canvas in Arlington and swung back at the Rangers en route to a dominant 9–1 victory, evening the World Series at a game apiece as the series heads to Phoenix. Arizona’s effort was led by a masterful performance from Scottsdale Desert Mountain High School and Arizona State alum Merrill Kelly, who struck out nine across seven surgical innings en route to the win. The Diamondbacks maintained a modest lead until the final three frames, when the bottom third of their order, which combined to reach base eight times on the night, piled up six runs.

Kelly is a prodigal son of sorts, a former Rays draft pick who left affiliated ball in the U.S. for four seasons in Korea before returning to MLB and his hometown Diamondbacks in 2019. Ironically, the particulars of the postseason schedule and of Arizona’s run to the Fall Classic have prevented Kelly from making a (literal) home start during this postseason, but he looked right at home in Texas on Saturday evening as he carved up one of the season’s most potent offenses. Read the rest of this entry »

For 25 outs, the Diamondbacks’ plan had worked to perfection. Zac Gallen had worked through five gritty innings, Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte had given Arizona a lead to hand to the bullpen, and the relief corps had weathered a relentless Rangers lineup. As Paul Sewald entered in the ninth inning with a two-run lead, it looked like the Diamondbacks were on the verge of stealing a victory in Game 1 of the World Series. Corey Seager had other plans. On the first pitch he saw from Sewald, Seager launched a one-out, two-run bomb into the right field stands to tie the game at five.

With the game sent to extra innings, the momentum suddenly swung toward the Rangers, whose potent lineup could end the game quickly, even without the benefit of the Manfred Man on second base to start each inning. After a minor threat was quelled in the 10th, who else but Adolis García had the final word, blasting an opposite field, walk-off home run in the 11th to send Globe Life Field into a state of jubilation. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Series. It’s a playoff-capping battle that’s so iconic that other sports and activities borrow its name. The World Series of Poker, of Darts, of Snooker, the FINA Marathon Swim World Series, even briefly the World Series of Country Music Proudly Presents Stock Car Racing’s Entertainers of the Year – these events didn’t pick their name by accident, they’re basking in the glory of a long-running staple. Even as baseball matters less and less, the World Series is a big name on the marquee.

One of the best parts of playoff baseball, at least in my eyes, is that the brightest stage isn’t exclusively the domain of the top couple of teams in the game. Sure, the Dodgers and Astros have been there a lot in the last decade. Sure, the Cardinals and Yankees have a bunch of rings. But baseball is a variance-rich sport, and the playoffs are short. Make the dance and you might end up one of the last few teams standing, even if your squad doesn’t have its own wing in Cooperstown. One obvious example? This year’s clash between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Rangers are the closest thing we’re going to get to a postseason standby here. Sure, their last playoff appearance before this run came in 2016, but their roster is packed with playoff heroes. Corey Seager carried the Dodgers to a 2020 title. Max Scherzer seems to always be pitching in win-or-die games. Nathan Eovaldi saved Boston’s bacon in 2018 and has made a career out of coming up big in important spots. Will Smith pitched for the last two World Series winners (seriously!). Aroldis Chapman isn’t what he once was, but at his peak, he was a key figure in breaking the century-long Cubs curse. Their manager is Bruce Freaking Bochy, an October legend who has never lost a Game 7. The Rangers as a franchise might not be a World Series name brand – their trips to the Fall Classic in 2010 and 2011 ended in losses — but the ingredients are no different than what you’d expect to get in the luxury aisle. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA – “A lot of people don’t believe in us,” Diamondbacks infielder Geraldo Perdomo said before Game 7 of the NLCS. “I think that’s why we play with the patience we’re playing with right now, to prove to everyone we can do it.”

“Nobody believed in us” is such a hackneyed trope in sports motivation, one that’s been co-opted over and over by teams that everyone believed in. But Perdomo was absolutely right to invoke it; the Diamondbacks were the lowest seed in this year’s playoffs, and before that a dark horse to make the postseason at all. They were under .500 in August, for goodness’ sake. Manager Torey Lovullo was asked after Game 7 if, in mid-August, he thought he’d be in this situation now. “To be totally honest, no,” he said.

But here they are. They took two must-win games against the defending National League champions in one of the most hostile environments in baseball, the latest by a score of 4-2. And now the Diamondbacks, pennant in hand, are off for Texas and a shot at the second World Series title in club history. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball games don’t have a single protagonist. Baseball series don’t have a single protagonist either. The vagaries of a nine-man lineup, four-man rotation, and eight-man bullpen mean that the most important moments of a series feature semi-random matchups. Bryce Harper doesn’t get to bring the ball up, call for an isolation, and try to hit a game-tying home run. You can’t game plan a high-leverage at-bat for your star. It’s just probability; the big moments can’t possibly find the same guy every time, which is what makes baseball such a team sport.

Okay, now that I’ve said that: This game was Adolis García’s game, and this series was his series. He’s been at the center of everything ever since the start of the ALCS, but particularly for the past three games. First, Bryan Abreu hit him with a pitch that emptied the benches in Game 5 and eventually led to a memorable Astros comeback from García’s own three-run homer. He came back on Sunday determined to extract vengeance, and eventually succeeded. He took 16 swings at 22 pitches, first racking up four strikeouts but then hitting a majestic, game-breaking grand slam. On Monday, he was right in the middle of things again.

In the first inning, García stepped into Cristian Javier’s nightmare: Corey Seager demolished a high fastball for a 1-0 lead, Evan Carter walked and stole second, and García was at the plate threatening to break the game open before the Astros even batted. Javier threw him a fastball roughly six inches above the top of the strike zone. But García was up there to swing, not take, and he smashed a single off the face of the left field wall to score Carter. It was more of a double and a running error if I’m being honest; García, intent on celebrating his success against the Astros to the fullest, took a leisurely look at the rapidly receding baseball before he realized it wouldn’t leave the park. He scurried to first at half speed, chagrined, before stealing second immediately. Read the rest of this entry »

PHILADELPHIA — In the franchise’s biggest game in 22 years, the Diamondbacks played their best game of the NLCS. They finally did serious damage against the Phillies’ rotation, tagging Aaron Nola for four runs in five innings. Merrill Kelly navigated a rough opening stretch and grew stronger as the game grew on, holding Philadelphia to a single run in five innings of his own.

The Diamondbacks’ 5–1 win pushes this series to a Game 7, the first in franchise history for the Phillies, a club that’s been around longer than 12 U.S. states. It also raises a new set of questions: Can Brandon Pfaadt recreate his series-changing Game 3 magic? Can the Phillies right the ship offensively after a dud of a performance in an essential game? And the aliens who abducted Nola before the second inning: Who are they? Where did they come from? And what do they want? Read the rest of this entry »

The home run that Kyle Schwarber hit off Zac Gallen in the sixth inning of Game 5 of the National League Championship Series wasn’t his biggest of this year’s postseason, unless we’re talking strictly about distance. Like most of Schwarber’s homers, the 461-foot shot was a sight to behold as well as one of the biggest plays of a game that pushed the Phillies to within a win of a return trip to the World Series. With it, the legend of the 30-year-old slugger’s already impressive body of postseason work — which has been aided by his taking trips to the playoffs in eight of his nine seasons — grew even larger.

Schwarber had already helped the Phillies jump ahead of Gallen and the Diamondbacks on Saturday with perhaps his least impressive hit of the postseason. Leading off the first inning, he hit a 30-mph dribbler to third base, then came around to score via singles by Bryce Harper and Bryson Stott; Harper added another run by stealing home on the front end of a delayed double-steal. The score was still 2-0 when Schwarber came up in the top of the sixth. Gallen hung a 2-0 curveball right in the middle of the zone and Schwarber annihilated it:

If you’re wondering about distance — and with a blast like that, who wouldn’t? — that was the fifth-longest postseason homer of the Statcast era. Schwarber owns the second-longest as well, via a 488-footer from last year’s NLCS opener, which trails only a 491-footer by Willson Contreras in Game 4 of the 2017 NLCS. Read the rest of this entry »