Nelson completes checklist, leads D-backs to 4th straight 'W'

DETROIT -- Before the D-backs’ Saturday afternoon matchup against the Tigers, pitching coach Brent Strom ticked off a three-item checklist for starter Ryne Nelson: evening out his shoulders during his delivery, establishing his offspeed pitches early and having the confidence to throw any pitch in any situation.

Check, check, check.

Nelson went 5 2/3 scoreless innings in a 5-0 win over Detroit at Comerica Park, allowing four hits and two walks and picking up four strikeouts. It marked a welcome return to strength for Nelson, who had allowed eight earned runs over 9 2/3 innings pitched in his previous two starts, and it was his longest scoreless outing of the season.

Leaning on a balanced arsenal, 44 of Nelson's 90 pitches were four-seam fastballs, and he was unafraid to lean on his breaking balls at key moments. He ended the second inning by striking out Jake Rogers swinging on a sharp cutter (what some have termed a “cutter-ish slider”), went to a changeup to induce Kerry Carpenter to pop out to end the third and struck out Miguel Cabrera swinging on a slider leading off the bottom of the fifth.

“It’s been super important for me to keep guys off-balance and establish some offspeed stuff,” Nelson said. “There’s been some outings where guys just look for the fastball, and they know they’re going to get it at some point, so being able to keep them off-balance, show breaking stuff early was definitely key to getting some more outs today.”

With only 69 pitches under his belt heading into the 6th, Nelson seemed poised to pitch deep into the game, but with two outs, he ran into trouble, seeming to approach the end of his outing. After Carpenter doubled to deep left, Nelson issued back-to-back walks to Spencer Torkelson and Nick Maton, which brought manager Torey Lovullo out to the mound for a pitching change.

Austin Adams entered and escaped the bases-loaded jam, then pitched the seventh, picking up two strikeouts. Kyle Nelson and José Ruiz finished off the win. The victory extended Arizona’s winning streak to four, and each win has come by a margin of at least four runs. Nelson earned his third win of the season.

“He had a good mixture of pitches,” Lovullo said. “He wasn’t just relying on the fastball that we’ve seen at times. He still had it, but he was pitching today and he was around the zone with all of his pitches. And that’s why he pitched into the sixth inning.”

Lovullo emphasized the third point on Strom’s pregame checklist: having the confidence to not only mix pitches over the course of a game, but also to mix pitches in key situations, and throw any pitch in any scenario.

“We talk about, in Spring Training, not just execution,” he said. “It’s execution at the most critical point in the game. ‘How am I going to stand up there and do it and win this edge when my back is against the wall?’”

The D-backs got their runs on a pair of homers, a two-run shot from Nick Ahmed in the second and a three-run tater in the fifth from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Both were welcome sights for the D-backs; Ahmed’s was his first home run since April 23, and Gurriel’s came in his return to the lineup after missing four games with groin soreness.

Ahmed, who Lovullo called “one of our two starting shortstops,” went deep on a middle-in fastball in a 2-0 count, crushing a 404-foot blast to left-center field. Gurriel went deeper: his homer came off the bat at 106.7 mph, per Statcast, and traveled an estimated 418 feet.

“We’ve missed him,” Lovullo said. “We’ve missed his bat. He’s got a great presence in our lineup, not just because he drives balls out of the ballpark and hits three-run home runs, but he works counts, makes things difficult for the pitcher and hands it off to the next batter.”

Ahmed added, simply, “Any time you hit a home run, it feels good.”

The D-backs are 10-2 over their past 12 games. At 39-25, they lead the NL West by 2 1/2 games over the Dodgers, and are within a game of the Braves for the best record in the National League.

How?

“We do things right,” Lovullo said. “We practice the right way, we prepare the right way, we go out every single day with the expectation that good things are going to happen.”