ARLINGTON -- Disappointing.
That’s one of the first words that came out of Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo’s mouth to describe Monday night’s 7-6 10-inning loss to the Rangers.
“It’s disappointing. There’s no doubt about it,” he said. “This type of loss hurts.”
It hurts because Arizona had a chance to start flipping the script of what has defined its season to date – inconsistency. Whenever the Diamondbacks start to show some promise, for whatever reason, they can’t sustain it.
On Monday, they were looking to carry momentum off a weekend sweep of the Rockies. And things were trending well early on.
Arizona jumped out to a 5-0 lead courtesy of three home runs off Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi, who entered as one of baseball’s hottest pitchers with a 9-1 record and 0.90 ERA over his previous 14 starts.
Tyler Locklear started the deep-ball run for the Diamondbacks with a solo homer in the second inning, swatting Eovaldi’s 0-1 curveball 402 feet. Then, in the third, Corbin Carroll belted a two-run shot off the right-field foul pole. Two batters later, Geraldo Perdomo had his own two-run homer to right.
It marked the eighth straight game in which the Diamondbacks have scored two or more runs in the first three innings, tied for the longest such streak in MLB this season. Arguably more impressive is that the offensive outburst came against Eovaldi, who hadn’t given up multiple home runs all season.
The Diamondbacks added a fourth homer on a solo shot by Blaze Alexander to make it a 6-1 game in the sixth. At the time, Arizona appeared headed toward a fourth straight victory.
As has been the case much of the season, though, it eventually fell apart.
Starter Ryne Nelson, after throwing five innings of one-run ball, ran into trouble in the sixth. He gave up three straight hits to start the inning, including an RBI single to Corey Seager, and then a three-run home run to Wyatt Langford as his night ended abruptly.
All of the hits were surrendered on fastballs by Nelson. In the at-bat against Langford, Nelson threw seven straight fastballs.
“If I could go back in time, I would change some things for sure,” he said. “Up until that point, I didn’t feel they were incredibly on the fastball.”
Nelson went on to say he wasn’t getting the action he would’ve liked on his breaking pitches. In the end, he rode with his best pitch.
“I feel like in those big spots, the fastball is my best chance,” Nelson said. “I wish that in those spots, I could go to something else, but sometimes I feel like I’d rather win or lose with my best pitch.”
As the Rangers closed the gap, the Diamondbacks still kept the lead into the ninth. Andrew Hoffmann, who worked a scoreless eighth, was given the ninth with a chance to earn his first career save. However, he surrendered a game-tying homer to Rowdy Tellez, and the Rangers went on to win it in the 10th.
Disappointment for the Diamondbacks, indeed. They are tied with the Yankees with three losses when hitting four or more homers this season.
“At the end of it, you score six runs against a very hot pitcher in Eovaldi, you expect to win the game,” Lovullo said. “We just didn’t get it done.”
Instead, the loss becomes another learning opportunity for the Diamondbacks. Lovullo said there are takeaways for his younger players about pitch sequencing and how to make the necessary in-game adjustments.
“We’ve got to do everything we can to train these guys to make those little adjustments in-game, and they will,” he said. “They're going to learn valuable lessons from this. We won't miss the opportunity to coach this.”