Collision in outfield costs D-backs in extras

PHOENIX -- The ball went up in the air and second baseman Geraldo Perdomo, who was playing near the bag at second, immediately broke toward the outfield.

Right fielder Jake McCarthy broke a bit to his left before beginning to race in.

Both players were calling for the ball, but with the game tied in the 10th inning and a runner on second base with one out, the crowd was loud. And while McCarthy did hear Perdomo calling for the ball, the outfielder has priority in that situation.

Perdomo, though, didn’t hear McCarthy and the two players collided, the ball bouncing off McCarthy’s glove for a two-base error. Instead of two outs and a runner on second, there were now runners on second and third and one out.

Nick Castellanos then delivered a sac fly to center and the Phillies would hold on to win, 4-3, on Wednesday night at Chase Field.

“It just goes to show you that you can't take anything for granted,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “You’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to bear down on your basic fundamentals. You know, I’ve watched us do things at a very high level all season long. We practice them over and over and over again in Spring Training. And that's just the beauty of this game, every once a while it jumps up at you and beats you, because you let your guard down a little bit.”

Popup-priority drills are a staple of every camp, but particularly Arizona’s camp. That’s because the D-backs have Dave McKay, who is widely regarded as one of the best outfield coaches in the game.

McKay is a stickler for the fundamentals, and they are drilled over and over again in the spring.

“It dropped,” McCarthy said. “Both of us called for it at the same time. It’s loud in the corner over there. Just a miscommunication. ... Just two guys trying to go after the ball in a situation where the ball needs to be caught. Again, I just have to be louder, and I take responsibility for it.”

Lovullo said that in situations where players can’t hear each other over the crowd noise, they need to rely on nonverbal communication, either through hand signals or sightlines.

If McKay hasn’t already, he will certainly make sure to re-emphasize all of that with the outfielders and infielders.

“We spend a lot of time in Spring Training working on this very play,” Lovullo said. “So I'm not making excuses. We’ve got to be better, but we're gonna learn from this.”

The loss put a damper on another D-backs late-inning comeback.

The offense could do little with Ranger Suárez, who shut out Arizona on four hits through seven innings.

But in the eighth, the D-backs put two runners on base against Phillies reliever Seranthony Domínguez and Christian Walker then hit a hanging slider for a three-run homer to tie the game.

On the pitch before the homer, Domínguez had spiked a slider in the dirt, so Walker figured he might come back with a fastball. But he didn’t want to be too eager, so he took a breath and reminded himself that he could be ready for a fastball but also leave room to adjust for a breaking ball.

“I'm a better hitter when I'm working off the fastball, but I didn't want to get to the heater in an overcommitted, like a cheating, guessing kind of way,” Walker said. “So I got on the fastball but with the calmness that I had earlier. So I just tried to trust that and made a good reaction on the slider.”