Pfaadt's no-K quality start just one oddity for D-backs

WASHINGTON -- Immediately following a game, D-backs manager Torey Lovullo will do a quick breakdown of it with his coaches and the front office. After watching his team drop a 3-1 decision to the Nationals on Wednesday afternoon at Nationals Park, it’s going to take a little longer for all involved to figure out exactly what happened.

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“This one has me shaking my head a little bit,” Lovullo said. “You know, I'm here talking about it with a couple of coaches thinking, ‘What happened? How did we not win this game?’

“That’s kind of the mindset we’re in. But that’s the beauty of sports.”

It was a strange day for the D-backs, both on the mound and at the plate. Let’s break each of them down:

On the mound
D-backs right-hander Brandon Pfaadt was cruising early in the game, if you look simply at the scoreboard.

The Nationals put together a couple of hits against him in the second inning, but those were the only hits they got as he held them scoreless through five innings.

But while the D-backs led on the scoreboard, 1-0, there was trouble brewing because Pfaadt was having trouble getting a feel for his slider, which is the pitch he relies on the most. The Nats were aggressive early in counts, which helped Pfaadt. But regardless of what he tried, he couldn’t get the slider going.

The Nats’ aggressiveness, combined with the lack of his slider, meant Pfaadt had zero strikeouts for the game. The 6 1/3 innings without a strikeout marked the longest outing by an MLB pitcher this year without striking out a batter.

“They came out swinging,” Pfaadt said. “For five innings, we used that to our advantage and got some early outs and were able to limit the pitch count quite a bit. From the beginning, the slider wasn't really there. That's definitely a pitch that I need. That's my best pitch. And when it's not there, it's tough to get through.

“Luckily we were able to get through five pretty quick. But without the slider, that probably correlates to no strikeouts, for sure.”

In place of the slider, Pfaadt went to his changeup and that helped, right up until he missed his spot with one to Jesse Winker in the sixth inning and Winker hit it into the bleachers in center field to give Washington a 2-1 lead.

“It was just a mistake changeup that he stayed on and was able to put a good swing on it,” Pfaadt said.

Pfaadt threw 77 pitches, and the Nationals swung at 31 of them. They did not swing and miss once against him.

At the plate
The Nationals started former Arizona left-hander Patrick Corbin, and the D-backs remember when Corbin was a dominant force in the league. That hasn’t been the case recently, though, as evidenced by the 5.84 ERA he brought into the game.

The D-backs felt good about the strategy they had going into the game against Corbin, but they couldn’t seem to execute it, as he allowed just one run over five innings.

“I think there was a lot of swinging and missing over that over his slider-cutter,” Lovullo said. “And we know Patrick; I've seen him do it for the Diamondbacks for a long time. It's his playbook, and I think we were just a little too anxious in the crucial situations.”

The D-backs’ best chance to blow the game open came in the fourth inning, when they loaded the bases with no outs. But a line drive to short by Eugenio Suárez was knocked down by shortstop Nasim Nuñez, who somehow recovered in time to throw a strike home to get Lourdes Gurriel Jr. at the plate.

Corbin issued a walk to force in a run, but the next two hitters made outs to end the threat.

In all, the D-backs swung at 17 pitches out of the strike zone against Corbin.

“His slider did a couple of different things,” third baseman Blaze Alexander said. “You know one would drop, one would kind of sweep. He was just playing with speeds and stuff, and again just tip your cap. He was just on today.”