'Good stuff' deserts Montgomery in first home loss

PHOENIX -- When he was warming up in the bullpen for his scheduled start against the Dodgers on Tuesday night, D-backs lefty Jordan Montgomery felt so locked in that he stopped the session early.

He was ready to go.

But a swarm of bees had other ideas, and their presence on the protective netting behind home plate necessitated a 1 hour, 55-minute delay while a local beekeeper was summoned to deal with the growing hive.

With Montgomery not having a Spring Training like other pitchers -- his free agency dragged on until the D-backs signed him just after Opening Day -- Arizona manager Torey Lovullo wasn’t willing to risk possible injury by having Montgomery warm up, sit for that long and then warm up again.

Instead, Lovullo opted for a bullpen game, and it paid off in a win for his club.

Montgomery’s start was pushed to Wednesday, and it didn’t go well, as he struggled to find any kind of rhythm or groove on the mound while continually falling behind hitters.

That’s a recipe for disaster against a team like the Dodgers, who jumped on Montgomery early and cruised to an 8-0 victory and a series win at Chase Field.

“A little bit of everything,” Montgomery said of what went wrong. “Fastball command was horrible, I was cutting changeups and never really found the shape of the curveball, so I kind of went out there and just had to battle with nothing.”

It was the first time Montgomery had struggled since debuting with the D-backs on April 19. In his first outing, he threw six innings of one-run ball against the Giants, following that up with three runs over seven innings against the Cardinals on April 24.

In those two starts, he walked a total of one batter. Against the Dodgers on Wednesday he walked three, all of which came in a five-run second inning for Los Angeles.

That naturally raises the question of whether the decision to push him back a day was the right one.

“Of course I'm gonna ask myself the same question every baseball fan that roots for the Arizona Diamondbacks is asking,” Lovullo said. “Was it a bit of a grind to go off/on from last night to tonight? I don't know that answer. But he said he was ready and I trusted him, and I still think he will tell you that he was ready to go.”

Indeed, Montgomery said that it didn’t play a role in his struggles.

“I’m not going to make any excuses,” he said. “Today was my day to take the ball. Yesterday was [too], but it didn't work out so I was excited to get out there today. Just didn't really have good stuff.”

Just like we’ll never know if the fact that Montgomery felt great in the bullpen on Tuesday night meant he would have pitched well, how his warmups went Wednesday is not a reliable indicator of how he pitched.

“A bullpen is a bullpen,” Montgomery said. “You've just got to make the adjustment in the game, and I didn't do that.”

But what about how good he felt warming up Tuesday night?

“I must have wasted all the good ones yesterday,” he said with a smile.

Despite his off night, Montgomery did understand the reasoning behind the decision to push him back a day.

“It's early [in the season],” Montgomery said. “It's not worth having to stay loose for ... I mean, they were thinking it was gonna be two hours, and risking anything. I hated putting the bullpen in the position they were in yesterday and did it again today. So I've just gotta focus on what I can focus on and try to be better next time.”

Left-hander Blake Walston did bail out some of the Arizona bullpen after Montgomery's early exit, notching his first five Major League strikeouts across 3 2/3 innings in his big league debut.

D-backs ace Zac Gallen had been scheduled to start Wednesday. The right-hander had to leave his last start last Friday night in Seattle early due to tightness in his right hamstring, and once Lovullo made the decision to push Montgomery back, it opened up other options with Gallen.

Because the D-backs have Thursday and Monday off, they can give Gallen some extra rest and not start him until Tuesday night in Cincinnati.

Lovullo insisted that Gallen’s hamstring is fine, noting that the opportunity to give him more rest was just too enticing.

“I just want to be as safe as I can with one of the best pitchers in the National League,” Lovullo said.