How many pitches?? Thomas makes history with well-earned homer

LOS ANGELES -- There’s battling with two strikes. And then there’s what D-backs center fielder Alek Thomas did in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night.

In the top of the seventh inning of the D-backs’ 11-2 rout of the Dodgers, Thomas fell behind right-hander Michael Grove, 1-2. That was only the beginning of one of the feistiest at-bats in postseason history.

Remarkably, Thomas would foul off the next 10 pitches. After he watched a curveball in the dirt for ball two, Thomas finally forced Grove into a mistake on the 14th pitch of the at-bat -- a belt-high 2-2 slider. Thomas turned on the offering, walloping a no-doubter into the right-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium, giving the D-backs a 10-0 lead and sending fans to the exits.

“Man, that was a really cool at-bat,” Thomas said afterward. “Probably the longest at-bat ever of my life. So it was pretty sweet to end it on a homer.”

In the process, he made a bit of postseason history. At 14 pitches, Thomas’ at-bat was the longest at-bat to end with a postseason home run since pitch counts have been tracked (beginning in 1988). Jayson Werth’s walk-off homer against then-Cardinal and current Dodger Lance Lynn in the 2012 NLDS came on the 13th pitch.

“It was a long at-bat,” Thomas said. “I don’t know, I just kept fouling them off. Probably about half of those pitches weren’t strikes. But it’s just part of the game. You’ve got to battle. Thankfully, the last pitch was the one that I could hit.”

And he hit it a long, long way, too. Thomas’ 427-foot blast was the longest of the D-backs’ four home runs against Dodgers pitching on Saturday night.