Kelly's command keeps D-backs thinking positive

PHOENIX -- The final score doesn’t look great and the 7-1 loss to the Brewers on Tuesday night didn’t feel great, but all and all, the D-backs will take six innings of no-hit ball from Merrill Kelly every time out and feel good about their chances of winning.

Tuesday was a day to simply tip their cap to an amazing start by Brewers right-hander Corbin Burnes and turn their attention to the series finale Wednesday afternoon.

“We just have to turn the page and spit it out. We’ve been playing good baseball,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “I think I expect this team to do that. They've been very resilient. They've been adaptable to any environment, and they're going to come out and give a great effort tomorrow. So that's the focus that I have right now. Sometimes you run into this type of buzzsaw, and there were some little things that we could have done a little better, but we don't have to get into those. I mean, I'm already cycled through this one and moving on.”

When he didn’t like his team’s performance in the home opener last Thursday night, Lovullo was not shy about sharing it publicly after the game.

There was very little to quibble about Tuesday, especially when it came to Kelly, who was dominant through the first six innings and carried a no-hitter into the seventh thanks to outstanding command.

The command was probably the biggest difference between Kelly in this game and the way he threw in his first two of the year. He pitched fine in those games, but it wasn’t to the standard that he has established the past few seasons.

“Tonight is definitely the best I felt in a while,” Kelly said. “I felt like I could execute pretty much everything when I needed it. Changeup was really good, curveball was landing when I needed it to. I gotta definitely hand a lot of it to [catcher Gabriel Moreno]. We were definitely working on a really good page.”

As the game wore on with Kelly completely dominating the Brewers' hitters, allowing just a pair of walks and a hit batter, Lovullo started looking at his starter's pitch count to determine just how far he was going to let him go.

Lovullo settled on about 105 as Kelly’s maximum number of pitches, and he entered the seventh sitting at 85.

It didn’t take long for the no-hitter, the shutout and the tie game to disappear, as Willy Adames led off the seventh with a homer off the batter’s eye in center.

“Middle-in, wasn't a terrible pitch,” Kelly said of the home run ball. “He put a really good swing on it and to hit it out in that part of this ballpark, I mean, it's a big boy home run. I don't know if he was sitting on it, or kind of thinking along with me, but it wasn't the best pitch, wasn't the worst pitch.”

Things unraveled a bit after that for Kelly as he walked the next two hitters before being lifted from the game. The Brewers went on to score five runs in the inning to take command of the contest.

The loss snapped the D-backs' four-game winning streak, but more importantly a key member of their rotation seems to have found his rhythm.

“I'll definitely take it,” Kelly said of his outing. “I would have liked to get through that seventh, obviously would have left a better taste in my mouth. But you know, we take the positives this early in the season and then just try to build on them. So I'm happy with how I felt and definitely take this one and then kind of build it into the next one.”