No explanation, ‘just magic,’ lands D-backs in WS
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
PHILADELPHIA — Corbin Carroll was searching for the words, and he couldn’t find them. The Arizona Diamondbacks — the 84-win, negative-run-differential, underdog-at-all-turns Diamondbacks — were going to the World Series. Minutes earlier, they had vanquished the Phillies, a 4-2 undressing that exposed the flaws of Philadelphia and highlighted the brilliance of Arizona. And Carroll, the Diamondbacks’ indomitable 23-year-old rookie, the sun around which their world turns, was considering how they had done it.
“I don’t even know if there is an explanation,” Carroll said. “It’s just magic.”
Doubted and dismissed when baseball’s postseason began and throughout October — not the standard-level doubts and dismissals but real ones that reflected who they had been — the Diamondbacks have transformed into something different altogether. After winning Game 7 of the National League Championship Series on Tuesday, their second victory in two days at the hellscape for visiting teams that is Citizens Bank Park, they set up perhaps the most improbable World Series in baseball history, a showdown with the similarly surprising Rangers that begins Friday night in Arlington, Texas.
Arizona entered the season with 125-1 odds to make the World Series, with Texas at 50-1. Both teams barely snuck into the postseason as wild cards. And both needed to win Game 7s to get to Game 1, though Arizona’s was far more stomach-churning than the Rangers’ 11-4 blowout of the Houston Astros.
Carroll delivered a tour de force performance Tuesday: 3-for-4 with a pair of runs, RBIs and stolen bases. Following a solid four-inning start from rookie Brandon Pfaadt, the Diamondbacks’ bullpen, long ineffective and maligned, cobbled together five shutout innings from Joe Mantiply, Ryan Thompson, Andrew Saalfrank, Kevin Ginkel and closer Paul Sewald, who retired Jake Cave to send the sellout crowd of 45,397 home lamenting what could have been.
The Phillies thought they were the ones with the magic. They hadn’t lost at home this October, until the Diamondbacks strode into the Bank and robbed Philadelphia’s opportunity at a second consecutive World Series appearance. Loaded with stars, replete with swag, the Phillies looked the part. The Diamondbacks just played it.
“Watching them prior to this series, I don’t think anything scared that team,” Philadelphia first baseman Bryce Harper said. “I don’t think they had any doubts in their minds of coming back here and playing in Philadelphia. I don’t think that team is scared of any situation or any spot.”
That much is true. The Diamondbacks, who finished 16 games back of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West, allowed 15 more runs than they scored during the regular season, the second-worst mark ever for an eventual World Series participant, behind the 1987 Minnesota Twins, whose run differential was minus-20. Arizona’s 84 wins are third fewest for a World Series participant, just ahead of the 83-win St. Louis Cardinals — who won the 2006 title — and the 82-win Mets in 1973. Losers of their final four games of the regular season, the Diamondbacks backed into an NL wild-card spot after the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds faltered even worse down the stretch.
In the wild-card round, though, Arizona swept the NL Central champion Milwaukee Brewers. In the division series, the Diamondbacks ambushed the Dodgers and swept them too. Arizona still entered the NLCS as distinct underdogs to the Phillies, though it eventually proved itself more than worthy competition.
“When we faced teams like Philly, the Dodgers, Milwaukee, who’s going to believe in the Diamondbacks? No one,” Arizona shortstop Geraldo Perdomo said. “We were silent, and we made damage. Be happy and enjoy what you do. That’s all. That was the message.”
It took some time to take. Over the first two games, the NLCS looked one-sided. The Phillies won the opener 5-3 and filleted Arizona in Game 2 10-0. As the series headed to Phoenix, the Diamondbacks grappled with a troubling reality: lose Game 3 and the series was almost certainly over. Arizona got to Phillies closer Craig Kimbrel to eke out a 2-1 win in Game 3 and chased that with a 6-5 comeback victory that Kimbrel blew spectacularly in the eighth inning.
Following a Game 5 win, the Phillies found themselves in an ideal position: headed home, where they hadn’t lost all postseason, with a pair of chances to win one game. Philadelphia faltered in its first try, with the Diamondbacks finally starting to look like themselves.
Arizona, which prides itself on creating chaos on the basepaths, stole just one base in the series’ first five games. The Diamondbacks ripped four bags during a 5-1 victory in Game 6 and came back in Game 7 ready to do the same.
Little changed before the deciding game. Perdomo and Alek Thomas danced. Carroll maintained his meticulous pregame routine. And Pfaadt, a 25-year-old rookie, simply sat in the chair in front of his locker, preparing for the biggest game of his life.
“We were coming here to play our best baseball, and that’s been the messaging, and it’s been very consistent throughout the course of the year,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “Today is going to be our finest hour, and I just wanted to make sure that they knew that’s how I felt.”
The offense got started early, a point the Diamondbacks made a priority to quiet the raucous Citizens Bank Park crowd. Carroll, who entered the game with three hits in 26 at-bats during the series, slapped an infield single off Phillies starter Ranger Suarez and moved to third base on a single from Gabriel Moreno, who, like Carroll, is a 23-year-old in his first full season. A Christian Walker fielder’s choice scored Carroll, and Pfaadt followed with a scoreless first.
Diamondbacks players knew that, over the first six games, the Phillies had won the three in which they scored in the first inning and lost the three when they didn’t. Even with that zero in the first, Philadelphia didn’t panic. Alec Bohm, the cleanup hitter whose rough series prompted fans to call for manager Rob Thomson to drop him in the lineup, took Pfaadt into the left-field stands in the second inning to knot the game at 1. Two innings later, Bohm walked and scored on a Bryson Stott double. It looked like the rest of October had here: the Phillies leading, the Bank rocking.
Everything changed in the fifth. Emmanuel Rivera led off with a single against Suarez and advanced to second on a Perdomo sacrifice. Suarez struck out Ketel Marte, the NLCS MVP, bringing up Carroll, who after going hitless in 10 at-bats against left-handed pitchers in the series got his third single of the day off Suarez, scoring Rivera. Thomson removed Suarez, inserted Jeff Hoffman and watched Carroll steal second — one of four Diamondbacks stolen bases for the second consecutive night — and score on a Romero single, giving Arizona a 3-2 advantage.
“Six games ago, you would’ve said I was the hottest center on the planet, so just realizing that it’s always that way in baseball helps,” Carroll said. “You can get caught up in the minute. You can get caught up in all these little things, and that’s what makes baseball so hard.”
“Watching them prior to this series, I don’t think anything scared that team. I don’t think they had any doubts in their minds of coming back here and playing in Philadelphia. I don’t think that team is scared of any situation or any spot.”
Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper
The Diamondbacks added another run in the seventh when Perdomo singled, went to third on a Marte double and scored on a Carroll sacrifice fly to extend the lead to 4-2. Philadelphia had its chances. Saalfrank, a rookie, walked Cristian Pache and Kyle Schwarber with one out in the seventh, prompting Lovullo to call on Ginkel. He induced flyouts from Trea Turner and Harper — who were a combined 0-for-8 — before striking out Bohm, Stott and J.T. Realmuto in a brilliant eighth inning.
“Harper lives for those moments,” Ginkel said. “Every single guy in that lineup is so good. And so with Harper, I had to mix a lot, and I’m like, I don’t want to leave anything in the zone to give him an opportunity to get a run in or worse. Even if it’s bad contact, he still hits it hard. And he’s a generational great, honestly. So I got the better of him, and it was great. And I think that eighth inning, going out and executing my game plan, put us in the spot for Sewald.”
As Sewald added, “This guy makes my life easy. I get 7, 8, 9 with a two-run lead because this guy gets everybody out.”
Acquired at the trade deadline, Sewald helped stabilize Arizona’s bullpen. Three weeks later, the team signed Thompson, who had been released by the Tampa Bay Rays. Soon thereafter, it called up Saalfrank, a lefty who didn’t allow a run in 10 regular-season appearances. The bullpen’s ascent has been a microcosm of the rest of the Diamondbacks, and when Sewald came on to face the bottom of the Phillies’ order, he induced three flyouts, including the final one that Carroll squeezed to clinch the pennant.
The celebration started quickly and didn’t stop. While the Phillies were bemoaning their fortunes — “It’s a disgusting feeling, honestly,” said Nick Castellanos, who went 0 for his last 24 in the series — the Diamondbacks reveled deep into the night.
Around 2 a.m., after lots of beer had been consumed and empties littered the floor, a group of staffers started cleaning the mess. In the middle of it was Mike Hazen, the Diamondbacks’ general manager who traded for Sewald, drafted Carroll and constructed this team of snakes that slays dragons. He grabbed metal bottles and chucked them into waste receptacles, never above doing the hard work, a tenet that his team has embraced all October.
Effort. Talent. A little bit of magic. And now, once again, the Arizona Diamondbacks in the World Series.
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Greg Wyshynski
Boston Bruins forward Morgan Geekie can finish a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute.
“I mean, right now I’d be pretty rusty,” he said. “I’m not insane, like those kids that you see on TV, but I’m pretty good at them.”
When Geekie was around 10 years old, a cousin taught him how to speed solve the puzzle. While some have never found a way to line up that mosaic of colors despite years of trying, Geekie said it’s doable once one cracks the code. One summer at their lake cottage, his cousin wrote down its patterns. Geekie spent two weeks memorizing them and working out solutions while fiddling with the cube.
“It’s basically just all algorithms. You just do the same moves all the time once you get the pieces in the right spot. Once you do that, I mean, it’s pretty cut and dry. Everything goes in order,” he said. “I haven’t really forgot. It’s just one of those things that once you know it, you know it.”
Perhaps Geekie just knows how to score goals now, too.
That’s the simplest rationalization for the 27-year-old’s unexpected transformation into one of the NHL’s premier goal scorers. Through 34 games, Geekie is second in the NHL with 24 goals, trailing only the dominant Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche (28). Going back to the start of last season, Geekie is tied for 11th in goals scored (57).
Geekie scored 33 goals in 2024-25, which is 16 more than his previous career high set two years ago with the Bruins. He shot 22%, which obliterated his previous career best of 13.1% set in 2023-24.
There’s always an offensive player whose unexpected scoring surge in one season makes him the consensus choice for regression the following season. Entering this season, that player was Geekie.
He was the first player listed on ESPN’s rundown of regression candidates, with the expectation that he would top out at 26 goals. Sports Illustrated did the same thing, writing that his “offensive numbers are set to dip next season.” Daily Faceoff wrote that Geekie’s shooting percentage was “a strong indication that his performance isn’t sustainable, at least at this level” for the Bruins.
Geekie gets it. He called the predictions “a fair statement” given that he was scoring less than 10 goals in a season with the Seattle Kraken just a few seasons ago.
“I see it all. It’s an easy cherry to pick to be like, ‘Obviously he’s shooting 22%, it’s going to go down.’ It didn’t bother me at all,” Geekie said.
Rather than regress, Geekie has progressed this season. Through 34 games, he is shooting 28.2%.
“I mean, it’s got to go down at some point,” he said, with a laugh. “Like I said, I don’t really pay attention to that and I’m not somebody that has 10 shots a game, so I just try to make the most of my opportunities when I get the puck.”
GEEKIE IS AMUSED by the focus on his shooting percentage, because he feels there are easy explanations for it. The first is that he doesn’t believe he shoots the puck all that much. Over the past two seasons, David Pastrnak averaged 3.79 shots per game in 110 games. Geekie averaged 2.11 in that same span. Only Sidney Crosby (2.45 shots per game) has a lower average than Geekie (2.48) among the top 10 goal-scorers this season.
“I feel like I’m a big quality over quantity person,” he said.
His first season in Boston, coach Jim Montgomery stressed the need for Geekie to get chances from deep inside the attacking zone.
“I think a high-danger chance is better than just shooting it from the wall. That’s kind of the mentality that I’ve had always. I’m not trying to waste shots that aren’t good for anybody,” Geekie said. “Unless I’m trying to create something off it, I’m honestly not trying to put it on net. Maybe that’s why I end up where I end up.”
Pastrnak recently said the Bruins were reminding Geekie to shoot the puck more often. In fairness, Geekie is shooting more this season. Pastrnak said Geekie is “definitely trying to be a little more selfish to take them” when he fights into high-danger areas of the ice. But Geekie acknowledged there are sometimes philosophical differences between his striving for quality over his team’s desire for quantity.
“I think it’s a push and pull,” he said. “It’s like, I don’t think I need to be shooting this, but other people think that it still gives us an opportunity to create a chance. So I just try to keep that in mind when I have the puck”
This is Geekie’s seventh season in the NHL. He was selected by the Carolina Hurricanes with the 67th pick in the 2017 draft as a goal-scoring forward with the WHL Tri-City Americans. His first two seasons as a pro were mostly spent in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers, before playing 36 games with the Hurricanes in 2020-21.
That summer, the Seattle Kraken held their expansion draft as the NHL’s newest team. Geekie was left off Carolina’s protected list. At the time, it wasn’t expected that former Hurricanes GM Ron Francis would select him for the Kraken, with options like defenseman Jake Bean and forward Nino Niederreiter available from Carolina. But Geekie was the choice, a player whom Francis had drafted while with the Canes.
Geekie had 22 points in 73 games in his first season in Seattle, skating 12:36 per game with just seven goals. His second campaign saw him jump to 28 points in 69 games, but with even less ice time (10:27).
He was a restricted free agent after the 2022-23 season. Francis attempted to re-sign him before the deadline for submitting qualifying offers, but Geekie and his representatives declined it. The two sides couldn’t find common ground. Rather than go to arbitration, where the Kraken weren’t keen on Geekie potentially setting the terms of his next deal, they chose not to qualify him, making him an unrestricted free agent.
“With Morgan, we did make what I felt was a pretty fair offer,” Francis said at the time, via Sound of Hockey. “It didn’t work out, and he has the right once we don’t qualify him to go elsewhere.”
And so he went to Boston, signing a two-year deal worth $4 million in total.
While he wasn’t seeing much time with the Kraken, Geekie felt he was improving as a player. He said a “integral part” of that development was thanks to Jonathan Sigalet, a skills coach who improved all facets of his game.
“When I first started working with him, he was adamant that he wasn’t going to try and make me play like I’m on the first line,” Geekie recalled. “He said, ‘We both know that trying to do things that you do on the first line on the fourth line is going to get you in the press box.'”
He said working with Siglet slowed the game down for him. He started to see the game differently. He began to see “little tendencies” that all of the NHL’s good players share. Geekie also appreciated having a “third party” assessment for his play, apart from that of his coaches and his own.
Geekie was immediately given an opportunity to thrive in Boston in 2023-24, playing 15:21 in his first game with the Bruins. He ended up averaging 15:25 per game, with 17 goals and 22 assists in 76 games. He earned time with Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha on the Bruins’ top line.
His follow-up season didn’t start well. Geekie scored one goal in his first 17 games and was a healthy scratch early in the season. Some trade whispers started about him as a pending restricted free agent. He had eight goals by the end of the 2024 calendar year.
How did he end up with 33 of them? With one of the greatest goal-scoring heaters this side of Alex Ovechkin: Geekie scored 14 goals in his last 20 games of the season. His chemistry with Pastrnak was undeniable — the Bruins scoring ace assisted on 21 of Geekie’s 33 goals last season.
Geekie expressed a desire to stay with the Bruins. The feeling was mutual, as GM Don Sweeney in June handed him a six-year, $33 million contract for a team-friendly $5.5 million annual cap hit.
WHEN GEEKIE SIGNED his new contract, he decided he wanted to join in the tradition of NHL players celebrating a windfall with their teammates. It’s usually a dinner or something of that nature.
But Geekie wanted to do something different.
“Everybody’s eating at the same restaurants in every city. And I’m sure they’d remember it for a little while, but I think it would be just one of those things like, ‘Hey, thanks for dinner.’ So I wanted to do something a little more nostalgic,” he said.
Geekie is a huge baseball fan who played competitively until his late teens. He was in the process of designing a personalized baseball glove for himself through a company called 44 Pro Custom Gloves when his wife, Emma, suggested that he design ones for all of his teammates as a gift.
Geekie started the process in July, sketching out what he wanted on the gloves for 30 teammates — including players that were on the bubble for the Bruins’ roster this season. He had the biographical information for them, from their birth cities and countries to their schools to where they played junior hockey.
“Honestly, for probably three weeks, I just sat in front of my TV watching baseball and I would just draft gloves up. I thought it was so fun,” Geekie said. “My wife got sick of me for a little while.”
He would FaceTime his brother Noah, a coach at Okotoks Dawgs Academy in Alberta, to bounce the designs off him and get input. He was cognizant of having the designs as unique as possible, despite some of the school colors being similar for his teammates.
Before a practice in October, Geekie delivered the gloves to the locker room stalls of his teammates. It went over well.
“Baseball is not that big in Sweden, but it’s obviously cool to have,” center Elias Lindholm told the Bruins website, having received a glove with a Swedish flag on it. “Hopefully, when my kids get a little bit older, we can play a little game or something. For now, it is just going to be at home, resting.”
0:17
Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins
Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins
While the gloves were a chance to celebrate with his teammates, there weren’t many celebrations anticipated for Boston this season. The Bruins were trading players away at last season’s trade deadline, sending mainstays like captain Brad Marchand (Florida), center Charlie Coyle (Colorado) and defenseman Brandon Carlo (Toronto) elsewhere. They had an incoming first-year coach in Marco Sturm. At best, it was supposed to be a transition year for the Bruins.
But through 34 games, Boston is second in the Atlantic Division with a 20-14-0 record, within a point of division-leading Detroit in the crowded Eastern Conference.
Many around the NHL were surprised. Geekie wasn’t.
“We underperformed. Last season was like the perfect storm of bad events with our kind of discombobulated training camp and then having a coaching change and just kind of everything that could have went wrong went wrong,” Geekie said. “The core group we have is just too good to be written off. But I understand why people had doubts about us.”
But defying doubts is what Morgan Geekie’s all about, whether it’s his team’s predicted finish in the standings or his own predicted regression as a scorer.
“He has everything to score 50 in this league,” Pastrnak said. “He has a heck of a shot. He has the goal-scoring instincts. He is going to get it one day.”
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