Guardians of the Wild Card

Guardians of the Wild Card

Following the series victory in the Steel City over another NL Wild Card in the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Dbacks made the last stop on their 4 city road trip, this time facing off against another Wild Card contender in the Cleveland Guardians. While both the Guards and Pirates are trying to make a push for October, they are doing it in entirely different ways as the Snakes would go from facing a top 3 offense OPS wise in all of baseball in the Pirates, to a team that is dead last in the majors in team OPS in the Guardians. Even though the offense in Cleveland is lackluster, they would make up for their lack of offensive production with stellar pitching as their starting staff ranks 6th in baseball in ERA.

The Cleveland staff lived up to their hype in this series, only allowing 3 ER across a combined 17.1 IP and 19 K’s, keeping the Diamondbacks offense quiet for the most part. Thankfully the snakes were able to do their damage against the guardians bullpen and steal 2 very crucial games right before the trade deadline.

Speaking of doing damage against a team’s bullpen, that’s exactly what the Guardians did in Saturday’s Game 2 win that saw a combined 20 runs on 30 hits between the 2 teams. Of the 6 runs the Diamondbacks bullpen surrendered this series, 5 of them were in because of Paul Sewald’s continued struggles over his last 30 games (more so his last 11 outings). In those last 30 outings for Sewald he has pitched 26.2 innings to the tune of a 7.43 ERA with an opposing slash line of .262/.302/.569 and 9 HR allowed. After this outing in which he failed to record even one out and allowing 5 ER, his ERA on the season is now up to 6.45, which would be the worst ERA in his entire career and his highest since having a 6.07 ERA across 56.1 IP in 2018 with the Mets (13.50 in just 6 IP in 2020 so im not counting that small of a sample size).

These struggles of late had Gabe, Brandon and I asking ourselves if this was the last time we would see Paul Sewald pitch for the Diamondbacks in 2026 and if these struggle of late would put any pressure on DBacks GM Mike Hazen to try to add a high leverage arm to the bullpen before the deadline passes. The three of us were in the same boat in saying that we appreciate and acknowledge that Paul did have some early season success and had a stretch where he was as reliable of a closer as one could ask for (outside of Mason Miller obviously), hitters have finally started to readjust to his approach and that’s being shown in not only his career high ERA, but his career high in home runs allowed. It’s one thing to struggle against a top offense like Pittsburgh is one thing, but to fail to even record an out against a team who is dead last in OPS out of all 30 Major League teams shows that Pauls time in the desert just might need to come to an end. 

If this was late April or early May I could see the thought process in keeping Paul and trying to let him work through his struggles and see if he can earn back his closer role, but in a race as tight as the NL Wild Card is this year every single game is critical to the teams playoff chances and if you can’t rely on Paul in low leverage situations against bad offense or high leverage situations against good hitting clubs, then what value does he actually bring to this bullpen going forward?

The only major excitement that the fellas and I would really get to breakdown from this series happened in Sunday’s game 3 finale, where a Tim Tawa’s decision to attempt a bunt not only led to Guardians catcher Patrick Bailey and second baseman Brain Rocchio having some words with Tim, the benches actually cleared and Guardians 3rd base coach Rouglas Odor (Uncle to former Ranger Rougned Odor) had to be held back by his own team. 

One of the many unwritten rules in baseball is that you don’t try to break up a pitchers perfect game or no-hitter with a bunt, as many find it “soft” or even “bush league” and that the hitter should try to get a “real” hit (a hit is a hit in my book) and a bunt in these situations can rub some teams and players the wrong way. The fellas and I all agreed that there are certain scenarios where that it is indeed a weak move to go for the bunt (Erik Aybar bunting in the 8th inning and with 1 out in an attempt to break up Justin Verlander’s No-Hitter) compared to a scenario like Sunday’s game in Cleveland.

Gabe mentioned that if this was similar to Verlander’s No-Hitter attempt back in 2011 where it was late into the 8th inning and the possibility was getting real then there might be some merit to the Guardians reaction to Tawa’s bunt attempt, but this drama occurred in just the 6th inning  there is not only plenty of ball game ahead, Gavin Williams would most likely not even get the chance to go for a PG (if it was still intact late into the game) due to him having a pitch count north of 80 at the time. Brandon and I were also in agreement in saying that due to how much game was still left, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with a hitter trying to get an offensive spark started with some small ball. With the rainy and wet conditions, a bunted ball that gets even slicker after rolling in the wat infield could lead to some chaos and snowball into a big inning. I personally found it very ironic that a team that is known for small ball and even dubbed plays like that as “Guards Ball” would be so upset at another team trying to spark some offense with it.

Now that the 4 city road trip has come to end with the team going 6-4, they come back to Chase for a 10 Game home stand that kicks off with a very important 4 game series against the 3rd place San Diego Padres. Brandon, Gabe and I would discuss how this series could play a big part in whether or not both, one or maybe even none of these teams can take a Wild Card spot and sneak into the playoffs.

The Padres and Dbacks come into this 4 game series tied 3-3 on the season series with 7 games left to play against each other. The Padres have turned it up a notch when they needed to most, winning 8 of their last 10 and getting themselves only 1 game behind the Dbacks and the Phillies for the last 2 Wild Card spots. Obviously winning the series or even sweeping the series are the most ideal outcomes for the DIamondbacks, but a series split, loss or even a series sweep at the hands of the Pads could take all the wind out of the Dbacks sails and have them going into a big 3 game set against the Los Angeles Dodgers with their tails between their legs.

The three of us ended the episode having hope that Mike Hazen will start to do his cooking and will address the needs this team has and will give us and the players that boost of reinforcements that we have all been asking and hoping for. With a potential lockout looming (Thank you Dodgers!) the asking price for rentals is even higher than in years past and there are more buyers than sellers, so some teams might have to give up more than they originally wanted to if they want to make improvements that could push them over the edge of contention and into October baseball.

Look out for a special Deadline Dispatch episode tomorrow after the dust has settled and before Monday night’s first pitch!