Tawa, Gurriel Jr. Rescue Arizona in Extra-Inning Thriller at KC
Arizona needed 11 innings and a two-run rally to put Kansas City away, but Tim Tawa made sure the Diamondbacks left with a 5-3 win. Tawa went 3-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBI, and the D-backs survived a gut-punch two-run shot from John Rave that briefly flipped the entire complexion of the game.
Arizona drew first blood in the eighth when a Perdomo sacrifice fly to right scored Marte, making it 1-0. Tawa then extended the lead to 2-0 in the ninth with a 413-foot blast to left center — a shot that looked, at that moment, like it might be the dagger. It wasn't. Rave answered immediately with a 409-foot two-run homer to right center that scored Loftin and tied the game at 2. That swing was the single biggest momentum shift of the night: win probability moved from 4% to 53% in Kansas City's favor on one swing of the bat. The Diamondbacks had built a two-run cushion and watched it evaporate in real time.
The game stayed knotted through the tenth, though not without drama. Tawa singled to center to score Moreno and put Arizona back in front 3-2, but Pasquantino answered with a sacrifice fly to right that scored Isbel and sent the game to the eleventh tied at 3. Two leads built, two leads surrendered — this one had every reason to go sideways for Arizona. It appears the Diamondbacks' bullpen deserves real credit here: Corbin Burnes gave 3.0 innings of two-hit, scoreless ball, Blake Walston followed with 2.0 hitless innings, and Dennis Santana struck out three in a clean final frame. Michael Wacha, for his part, was sharp for Kansas City — 6.0 innings, just 3 hits, zero earned runs, 4 strikeouts — but the bullpen behind him couldn't hold the line.
The eleventh is where Arizona finally broke through for good. Gurriel Jr. tripled to right to score Vargas and put the D-backs ahead 4-3, then Marte hit a sacrifice fly to left to score Gurriel Jr. and make it 5-3. That two-run burst was the story of the night — Arizona's ability to manufacture runs in extra innings when the game was on the line. Nootbaar quietly went 2-for-3 and looks like he was a steady presence at the top of the order without making noise in the box score. In the end, Arizona's depth — both at the plate in crunch time and across a bullpen that threw five combined scoreless innings — proved to be the difference in a game that had no business being decided before the eleventh.