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Diamondbacks find way to keep shocking everyone but themselves

PHOENIX — Who said the overheated, underrated Arizona crowd at Chase Field couldn’t rival the crazed Citizens Bank Park fans for noise? The fans here endeavored to set an indoor decibel record while booing their own Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo for removing brilliant rookie Brandon Pfaadt way too soon (at least in their estimation).

The crowd also confounded critics laughing about the beaten-down $9 “get in” ticket prices on the internet by selling out for Game 3 of the NLCS. For a 2 p.m. game (local time), no less. With 103-degree heat outside. (But yes, it’s a dry heat!)

These D’backs certainly can surprise you.

The 84-win, feisty-as-hell Diamondbacks interrupted heavily favored Philly’s sweep intentions with a 2-1 walk-off victory to lower their deficit to 2-1 in games and give themselves at least a snowball’s chance in Phoenix (maybe a little bit more).

“This is our house,” Ketel Marte blared over the loudspeaker after delivering the game-winning single with one out in the ninth inning off vaunted Phillies closer Craig Kimbrel.

Ketel Marte hit the game-winning single in the Diamondbacks’ Game 3 victory.USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con
Ketel Marte and the Diamondbacks trimmed their NLCS deficit to 2-1 following their victory Thursday.USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con

This certainly was their day. They outplayed the Phillies start to finish but wasted chances and needed that late rally to give themselves yet another October highlight. Everyone assumes this a red October the way the Phillies have been dismantling folks, and especially after their 10-0 whitewashing in Game 2 sent ticket prices down 90 percent, but the Diamondbacks are still hoping to turn it a different shade of red.

If the fans showed a hint of a letdown following the first two games of this series, the D-backs never did. They may be too young to think about the fact they are facing a lineup of All-Stars. Or maybe they are recalling their shellacking of all-time great Clayton Kershaw and the 100-win Dodgers only a week ago.

“That’s exactly who we are,” Diamondbacks cleanup hitter Christian Walker, a Philly product, said. “Backs against the wall. Somebody different does it every day.”

It’s true they produce a lot of surprise stars, but lately it’s been a lot of Marte, who has six hits in the series, only five fewer than the rest of the team combined. They’ve scored a total of three runs against the Phillies’ vaunted top pitching trio, including Game 3 starter Ranger Suarez, who battled with Pfaadt (pronounced like fought) and nearly matched him.

It’s not going to be easy to string three more wins. But as the Diamondbacks’ Alek Thomas pointed out, hopefully, “Things seem to fall our way.”

It’s not luck, though. This team is better than its regular season, between its opportunistic everyday players, its shutdown bullpen of unknowns and its kid starter, the fresh-faced Pfaadt who just turned 25 Sunday.

Brandon Pfaadt, a 25-year-old, struck out nine Phillies before getting pulled.USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con

Don’t even look at that 5.72 regular-season ERA, the kid’s got an arm to overwhelm the hottest team in baseball, to stop the seemingly unstoppable. Pfaadt whiffed nine Phillies and was scarcely touched when Lovullo removed him with two outs in the sixth.

“We just felt like once we got to a certain point in the game, he could hand it off to a bullpen that was able to match up and give us what I feel is a really good advantage against some really good hitters,” Lovullo explained. “So the conversations are typical. Am I an idiot if I take him out of the game with nine strikeouts at 5 ²/₃ [innings]?”

The crowd did not disappoint, expressing its viewpoint. But while the Phillies pushed across a run when Bryce Harper slid headfirst into home on a wild pitch by side-arming reliever Ryan Thompson, the bullpen ultimately did its job against the best lineup going.

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo was booed for his decision to pull Brandon Pfaadt on Thursday.USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con

“I know it’s a very unpopular decision,” Lovullo said. “But we have great information … and a roadmap that when there’s limited emotion and limited stimulus, what’s the best decision to move this forward and control a very, very potent offense.”

The way the Phillies are going, outhomering opponents 19-4 this postseason and outscoring them by 32, it wasn’t known whether anyone could keep them down, much less a newcomer and three members of the Diamondbacks’ mostly anonymous relief corps.

Arizona still has a Camelback mountain to climb to knock out the team that has to be World Series favorites now. They will feature a bullpen game Friday as they try to even a series most figured was over before it started. The Phillies, fairly, have the pitching advantage in every game to go with their lineup of stars. If the Diamondbacks pull this off it won’t be the biggest upset in postseason history, but it will be pretty close.

Bryce Harper and the Phillies didn’t hit a homer against the Diamondbacks on Thursday.USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con

It surely isn’t every day the Phillies are held homerless, six of the nine hitters in their lineup are held hitless and Nick Castellanos — maybe the best No. 7 hitter ever — strikes out all three times up.

“You can tell Philly wasn’t on its game. There’s a whole different energy in the desert,” Thomas said. “It’s not to give up, to play to the end.”

Most folks figured the end was near. But the Diamondbacks shocked us just by getting to this point. So who knows what they can do next?



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