The Athletic has live coverage of Phillies vs. Diamondbacks in NLCS Game 7.
PHILADELPHIA — Once a series, when the Arizona Diamondbacks are on the road, manager Torey Lovullo takes his coaches and staff members to play pickup basketball. His favorite venue is the Palestra, the ancient hoops cathedral on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. He visited on Tuesday before Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.
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“We’re all in on one thing, and that’s to win a baseball game,” Lovullo said before batting practice at Citizens Bank Park. “When you can step away with your staff and kind of refresh your mind and your spirit, I think it’s very healthy.”
A few hours later, after a 10-0 thrashing by the Philadelphia Phillies, Lovullo’s mind was spinning and his spirit was challenged. After losing twice here with their best starters, Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, the Diamondbacks head home to confront the Phillies’ thunderous lineup with a rookie starter, Brandon Pfaadt, and a relief parade.
Even if those pitchers subdue the Phillies, it won’t mean much unless Arizona hits — and the most efficient way to do that is with home runs. After slamming 13 in their five-game sprint to the NLCS, the Diamondbacks homered just once in two games here. The Phillies went deep six times.
How much of a mismatch is this series so far? Picture Larry Bird, Ray Allen and Steph Curry facing the Diamondbacks’ staff at the Palestra, and you’ll get the idea of how overwhelming the Phillies have been.
“It’s like having a team full of three-pointers against somebody that can only shoot twos — it happens quick, and it builds up quickly,” Lovullo said. “But we’re built to beat you in a lot of different ways.”
The Diamondbacks finished second in the majors in stolen bases and have four everyday players who hit at least 24 home runs in the regular season. Eight different Arizona hitters connected in the first two rounds.
But while the Diamondbacks beat two strong starters, Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta, to sweep a two-game Wild Card Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, they caught a break in the Division Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ once-robust rotation was a rotting husk by October, and Arizona shredded it for 13 runs in 4 2/3 innings across three games.
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By contrast, the Phillies’ top two starters, Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, have been nearly flawless this postseason. The Diamondbacks understand that they’re playing a different game now.
“Wheeler and Nola are two exceptional arms,” said Tommy Pham, who hit .241 for Arizona after a trade from the Mets and has batted third in every playoff game.
“Traditionally speaking, I’ve had a little bit more success off Wheeler than Nola. But those guys, man, there’s a reason why Wheeler got the contract he got and the contract Nola’s about to get. There’s got to be a reason. They’re bona fide 1, 1A pitchers.”
Pham — now 1-for-12 in his career against Nola — came up three times with runners on base in Game 2, striking out in the first inning and grounding twice to third baseman Alec Bohm, who is channeling Scott Rolen in the field this week.
The Diamondbacks’ cleanup hitter, Christian Walker, followed Pham in each of those chances, popping out in the first and fanning in the fourth and sixth. The last of those at-bats was bizarre: With two out, a runner on second, and the game still in reach at 2-0, Walker hacked awkwardly at Nola’s first pitch, a fastball seemingly headed for Conshohocken.
“Yeah, just a blurry contact there,” Walker said. “Ended up chasing a pitch up and in. Just needed a bit of a reset. It happens with contacts from time to time.”
Nola finished off Walker with a wicked curveball for strike three, his evening complete, and soon a rout was on. And while the Diamondbacks could barely lift the ball to the outfield — they flied out just twice — they never put their speed game into action, either.
For Arizona to have much of a chance in this series, it would seem logical to take over the tempo of the games, and not to be timid. Corbin Carroll, who had 54 steals in the regular season, reached base to start both games against the Phillies, but never attempted a steal. Neither did any of his teammates in either game.
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With no steals and only one homer, the Diamondbacks don’t resemble the team that took down two division winners this month.
“It starts with the bats, right?” Carroll said. “We’ve got to get on base, we’ve got to hit. So when we don’t get on base, we’re not going to look like the team (we’re supposed to) look like.”
So far, the Diamondbacks have looked like the plodding Moneyball A’s, minus the power and walks. When they do reach base, their runners stay so close to the bag that they don’t even have room to dive back on pickoff throws.
To Lovullo, restraint on the bases is about being smart, not passive.
“Outs are outs, and there’s 27 of them, and they’re precious,” he said before Game 2. “That’s the first thing I talk about when we start going over our stolen-base dynamics.
“When you can steal a base, let’s get up and go, we’re not going to stop. But if there’s any doubt, just pay attention to the scoreboard and the situation. And if it’s a big out, let’s just use a little more caution.”
In the game, of course, the Diamondbacks again could not get the big hit to validate their careful approach. Against Nola, Lovullo said, the Diamondbacks would not risk running into an out because they thought his slide-step delivery would make him easier to hit.
“We felt like when he does that, his stuff ticks down a little bit, but he was making quality pitches,” Lovullo said. “We were looking to take advantage of it from an offensive standpoint, knowing when we had somebody standing at first base, if it does tick down, that we can potentially get back into that slugging mentality. But we did not.”
The Phillies improved to 11-0 in the NL playoffs at Citizens Bank Park, and while the Diamondbacks dismissed that factor — “Anything that happened out there on the field today is because of the guys in the dugout, not because of the people in the stands,” Walker said — it can’t hurt to play in Phoenix instead.
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Then again …
“Look, we could be playing on the moon,” Lovullo said. “Everybody is talking about coming into this environment, and I don’t care. We have to play better baseball. Everybody has to be better. You can start with the manager and then trickle all the way down through the entire team. We’ve got to play Diamondback baseball. What we watched out there was not anything that we have done for a long period of time. So we’ve got to regroup.”
They have two more chances to do it. Basketball season starts soon.
(Top photo of Christian Walker reacting after a strikeout: Elsa / Getty Images)