Diamondbacks Again Come Back to Bite Brewers and Advance to Division Series

By overcoming Brandon Pfaadt’s rough start and connecting for three homers and four runs in four innings against Corbin Burnes, the Diamondbacks put themselves in a position to close out their best-of-three series against the Brewers on Wednesday night. In the early going, it looked like Milwaukee would flip the script by knocking around Arizona ace Zac Gallen and forcing a third game. The 28-year-old righty pulled himself together after allowing a pair of first-inning runs, however, and his teammates finally solved Freddy Peralta after he dominated them for five innings, breaking the game open in the sixth and hanging on for a 5-2 win at American Family Field. The Diamondbacks will advance to face the Dodgers in the Division Series.

For much of the night, it appeared these two teams were headed for a rubber match. Gallen was one of the majors’ top pitchers this year, and spent much of the season as the frontrunner for the NL Cy Young Award, but a flurry of home runs from June to August, and a whole lot of hard contact in general, probably took him out of serious consideration. Still, he finished second in the league in innings (210), third in WAR (5.2), fifth in FIP (3.27) and seventh in ERA (3.47).

The Diamondbacks looked to be in good hands, but from the outset on Wednesday, Gallen hardly pitched like an an ace. While he ranked sixth among qualified starters in first-pitch strike percentage during the regular season (66.4%), he fell behind each of the first three Brewers, preventing him from going to his secondary stuff more quickly, and the hitters made him pay. Christian Yelich laced a 2-0 fastball to right field for a leadoff single. William Contreras got ahead 2-0 as well, but ultimately whiffed on a curveball on the seventh pitch of the plate appearance while Yelich — who had already drawn two pickoff throws from Gallen — stole second. Carlos Santana got ahead 3-0, and twisted the knife by working a nine-pitch walk.

Even when Gallen got ahead of Mark Canha 0-2, Canha battled him to seven pitches before lining a single to left field, loading the bases. Likewise, Gallen quickly went 0-2 against Sal Frelick, but he lofted a towering fly ball to the warning track in right center field, scoring Yelich. On Gallen’s next pitch, Willy Adames lined a single to center, plating Santana. Gallen needed 32 pitches to complete the first, 21 of them four-seam fastballs, and the Diamondbacks trailed 2-0.

Gallen extricated himself from the ropes and kept the Diamondbacks in the game, retiring the side in order in a 12-pitch second inning that was interrupted when Brice Turang hit catcher Gabriel Moreno in the helmet on his backswing. Manager Torey Lovullo and the Diamondbacks’ athletic trainer gave Moreno a lengthy going-over before allowing him to continue, but after Moreno finished the inning, he headed to the clubhouse for further concussion testing and was replaced by Jose Herrera.

Gallen got a little help from his friends with a pair of double plays. He overcame a pair of singles in the third by starting a 1-6-3 double play on Frelick’s 102-mph screamer, which knocked his glove off, then induced Josh Donaldson to hit into a double play in the fourth as well, erasing a leadoff walk by Adames.

To that point, Arizona’s bats hadn’t done much of anything against Peralta, whose turn was moved forward due to Brandon Woodruff’s shoulder injury. The 27-year-old righty, who pitched to a 3.86 ERA and 3.85 FIP with a 30.9% strikeout rate this year, was stellar in the early going. He retired 14 of the first 15 hitters he faced, with Ketel Marte’s first-inning walk the exception, and struck out five along the way as the Diamondbacks flailed at his slider.

With two outs in the fifth, Peralta fell behind Alek Thomas 2-0, then left a changeup too close to the middle of the plate. Thomas, who homered just nine times and slugged .374 during the season (and just .232 against changeups), clubbed it over the right field wall. The drive was estimated at just 351 feet, but it gave the Diamondbacks their first hit and cut the lead in half.

Peralta needed just 68 pitches to work through five innings, but he didn’t have nearly as many left as that count suggested. After getting ahead of Geraldo Perdomo 0-2 with a low fastball and an even lower slider to start the sixth, he missed high and outside four times, walking him and turning over the lineup. Corbin Carroll, who had flied out and popped out foul against him in his previous two trips, chased a 2-2 changeup just below the strike zone and hit a broken bat double past a diving Santana and down the right field line, sending Perdomo to third. Marte ran the count full before hitting a 106-mph smash past Peralta and into center field, scoring both runners to give the Diamondbacks a 3-2 lead.

Peralta’s night was over, but the Diamondbacks were hardly done. Twenty-three-year-old rookie sinkerballer Abner Uribe entered, served up a single to Tommy Pham, and then caught a break when Marte got hung up between third base and home plate on a Christian Walker groundout. Marte almost eluded Donaldson’s tag; in fact, manager Torey Lovullo challenged the play, albeit unsuccessfully, because Donaldson apparently clipped Marte’s heel. Uribe missed low with four sinkers in a row to walk Herrera and load the bases, then uncorked a wild pitch and collided with Pham while covering the plate as Contreras’ throw bounced away. Uribe was shaken up a bit, but after the Brewers deemed him fit to continue, he gave up an RBI single to Lourdes Gurriel Jr., running the score to 5-2.

Gallen, who waited 33 minutes between pitches, closed his night with a scoreless sixth inning, striking out Frelick looking at a fastball on the outside corner and then Adames chasing a curveball in the dirt. For the night, he collected only four strikeouts while walking three and surrendering five hits, but he gave up just four hard-hit balls, two of which became groundball outs. His 87.1 mph average exit velocity was over four ticks slower than his season average, much more in line with last year’s mark. Though he generated just nine swings and misses (three apiece on his four-seamer, curve, and changeup), his 32% CSW% was 3.5 points above his season average.

From there, the Diamondbacks’ bullpen, which had turned in 6.1 scoreless innings in Game 1, closed things out. Ryan Thompson needed just eight pitches to retire the side in the seventh, but the Brewers showed some fight in the eighth against Kevin Ginkel. Yelich laid down a perfect bunt towards third base, where Evan Longoria had no play, and then Contreras slapped a single to right to bring the tying run to the plate with nobody out.

Ginkel recovered to strike out Santana chasing high heat, but Canha sliced a 97-mph outside fastball into the right field corner, though Carroll saved a run given a quick recovery and the Brewers’ conservative baserunning. With the bases loaded, Ginkel exited in favor of Andrew Saalfrank, who quickly cleaned up the mess, inducing Frelick to hit a soft comebacker and throwing home for the force out, then getting Adames to hit into a force at second base on the next pitch.

The Brewers mounted one more challenge in the ninth. Closer Paul Sewald hit Donaldson on his well-padded left arm with his third pitch, but came back to strike out Andruw Monasterio on a checked swing against a sweeper on the black. Tyrone Taylor hit a soft liner that a diving Perdomo tried to catch but instead deflected; Donaldson, who must have though Perdomo would make the catch, got a late jump from first base, allowing the shortstop time to chase the ball down in shallow center and then throw to second — where Marte had been pounding his glove for what felt like several seconds — for the force out.

Still the Brewers refused to go quietly. Yelich collected his third hit of the night doubling over the head of Gurriel and off the left field wall, with Taylor taking third. Again the Brewers had the tying run at the plate, but Contreras was no match for Sewald’s sweeper, whiffing on a high one for strike one and a borderline-outside one for strike three.

The victory gave the Diamondbacks their first playoff series advancement since 2017, when their 93-win team beat the Rockies in the NL Wild Card Game before being swept by a 104-win Dodgers team in the Division Series. The gap between the two rivals is wider this year, with the Diamondbacks having won just 84 games to the Dodgers 100, but the two days off before the series begins, and the additional day off between Games 1 and 2, will allow Arizona to start Gallen twice in the event of a five-game series, and start Merrill Kelly twice as well if he can go on three days of rest if there’s a Game 4 — all against a Dodgers team whose rotation is full of question marks.

As for the Brewers, their fifth trip to the postseason in six years again ends with a quick exit; they haven’t advanced out of a series since 2018, when they swept the Rockies in the Division Series before falling to the Dodgers in a thrilling seven-game NLCS. Manager Craig Counsell, who has been at the helm for all of those series and more, is on an expiring contract, and his future in Milwaukee is in question, mainly because the man who hired him for that job, David Stearns, just took over as president of baseball operations for the Mets, who coincidentally have a managerial opening. While the Diamondbacks, Dodgers, and the six other postseason teams play on, the Brewers could be facing a very big change.