What pressure? Marte delivers as D-backs prevail
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Jesse Rogers, ESPN Staff Writer
PHOENIX — With the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 3 on Thursday, the Arizona Diamondbacks got the matchup they wanted.
Their hottest hitter strode to the plate against Philadelphia Phillies closer Craig Kimbrel, who was trying to grind his way out of a jam. Ketel Marte wasn’t having any of it.
The Diamondbacks second baseman turned on a rising 96 mph fastball, sending it into right-center field to break a 1-1 tie and deliver Arizona a 2-1 win — its first of this National League Championship Series.
Chase Field exploded.
“I’m not a pressure guy,” Marte said later. “I know what kind of hitter I am. He threw me a fastball up and I put a good swing.”
The victory breathed life into the Diamondbacks, who now trail 2-1 in this best-of-seven series with Games 4 and 5 scheduled for at home Friday and Saturday, respectively.
Marte has six of Arizona’s 17 hits (35%) this NLCS, tied for the fifth-highest percentage through three games of a playoff series all time.
“I played against him a lot when I was in San Diego,” teammate Tommy Pham said. “He always hit. Very hard guy to defend.”
The winning run scored after a tense game featuring a pitchers’ duel from starters Brandon Pfaadt and Ranger Suarez, both of whom left without giving up a run. Pfaadt struck out nine over 5.2 innings, yielding just two hits and no walks and becoming the fifth rookie in major league history with nine-plus strikeouts and no runs allowed in a postseason game. He was denied a chance to face the top of the order a third time, including Kyle Schwarber, whom he had struck out twice.
“He was great,” Pham said of Pfaadt. “If anything, I would have left him in. You don’t want to take out a guy like that with so much momentum on our side. Let him keep going.”
Arizona manager Torey Lovullo was left explaining his decision during his postgame news conference; seven of the first eight questions asked touched on the move.
“It’s 18 hitters plus or minus four, depending on the score, depending on the situation,” Lovullo said. “We had a back-end bullpen that hadn’t thrown and they were going to pitch in this game no matter what. I wanted to engage the entire team, and there’s a portion of the bullpen that had several days off. I wanted to get them sharpened up as well.
“Why run him through that portion of the lineup?”
Asked about being taken out, Pfaadt added: “Obviously I’m a competitor. I want to keep going. Everybody does, but at the end of the day you just have to trust his decision and move forward, go to the bullpen, let them do their jobs.”
Reliever Andrew Saalfrank came on and walked Schwarber before Trea Turner grounded into a fielder’s choice. Saalfrank wasn’t as lucky in the seventh inning, allowing a leadoff walk to Bryce Harper before being replaced by Ryan Thompson, whose wild pitch allowed Harper to score the game’s first run.
But Arizona tied it in the bottom of the seventh inning when Lourdes Gurriel Jr. doubled home pinch-runner Alek Thomas.
The game stayed tied until Marte’s heroics.
“There were some missed opportunities that could have affected us, but we stayed in it, focused on the next pitch and doing our job and ended up on top,” outfielder Corbin Carroll said. “It says a lot about the resilience of the team.”
Kimbrel was asked where he wanted that final pitch after giving up two walks and a hit before facing Marte.
“Not on his bat,” he said. “Just trying to get another strike, and he put enough good wood on it to get a hit. … I got ahead. I feel like I made some pitches to get us out of it. Some days you get ’em, some days you don’t. Today just wasn’t my day.”
The winning hit let Lovullo off the hook and gave meaning to Pfaadt’s great outing. It also means the series will last through the weekend with the Diamondbacks needing to win one of the next two to send the series back to Philadelphia, where the Phillies are 6-0 this postseason.
“It’s exactly what we were looking for in Game 1 back at home here,” first baseman Christian Walker said. “Our dugout knew something was going to happen there with Marte, and he didn’t let us down.”
Added Marte: “I’m seeing the ball good. I’ve been working hard the whole year. That’s the player I am. I’m not surprised.”
BOSTON — Red Sox manager Alex Cora will miss Monday’s series opener against the New York Mets at Fenway Park so he can attend his daughter’s college graduation.
Cora’s daughter, Camila, will be graduating from nearby Boston College.
“It’s going to be a very special day — one that I’m not going to miss,” Cora said before Sunday’s game vs. the Atlanta Braves. “I 100% will miss the game for that. I will do that any given day. It’s going to be a very special day for us.”
Cora reflected on how the time has seemed to go quickly and spoke about how fast his daughter seemed to grow up.
“It went fast, it went really fast,” Cora said of her time in college. “For a girl from divorced parents, her mom did an amazing job, staying the course while I was playing and coaching and doing my ESPN thing. … She’s actually a reflection of her. I appreciate everything she’s done for her and for us.”
Asked if he’ll be able to hold back his emotions at the ceremony, Cora smiled and said “We’ll see,” before bringing up memories of when his daughter was at the 2018 World Series victory celebration and a postseason series wrap-up win over Tampa Bay in ’21 at Fenway.
“It’s going to be an amazing day. It happened fast,” he said. “You put everything into perspective, you go back to the videos of ’18, she was a little girl.
“Then you go back to ’21 when she hopped onto the field when we beat Tampa, she was still a little girl. Now, she’s not a little girl,” he said. “She’s a woman. She had fun with it. She’s a great student and the future’s bright for her.”
MILWAUKEE — Brewers pitcher Tobias Myers is going back to the minors as he continues to struggle to match the success he enjoyed as a rookie last year.
The Brewers optioned Myers to Triple-A Nashville on Sunday while selecting right-handed pitcher Easton McGee from Triple-A and transferring left-handed pitcher Connor Thomas to the 60-day injured list.
Myers is 1-1 with a 4.95 ERA in six appearances, including five starts. He allowed four runs over 3 2/3 innings in a 7-0 loss to the Minnesota Twins on Saturday.
The right-hander had gone 9-6 with a 3.00 ERA last season and was selected the Brewers’ most valuable pitcher by the Milwaukee chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. He closed that season by pitching five scoreless innings in the decisive Game 3 of the NL Wild Card Series against the New York Mets, a game the Brewers lost 4-2 by allowing four runs in the ninth.
“I love the kid, man,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said after Saturday’s game. “You saw it in Game 3, that’s in there. So we’ve got to get back to that.”
The Brewers had optioned Myers to Nashville a week ago, but he didn’t actually pitch there before rejoining the big-league club after left-hander José Quintana went on the injured list with a left shoulder issue. Now he’s heading back to Nashville.
Myers entered Saturday having walked 10 batters over 16 1/3 innings. He didn’t walk anyone Saturday, but gave up a career-high 11 hits.
“My goal was to fill the zone up and kind of get away from the walks I’ve been dealing with,” Myers said after the game. “I think I just filled it up a little too much.”
McGee went 1-0 with a 3.44 ERA and 20 strikeouts over 18 1/3 innings in 13 relief appearances with Nashville.
McGee appeared in one game for Tampa Bay in 2022 and one game for Seattle in 2023.In the only two games he has pitched in the big leagues, McGee has allowed just one unearned run over 9 2/3 innings while striking out three and allowing five hits and one walk.
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