Diamondbacks shortstop Geraldo Perdomo came off the field and made a beeline for his manager. His mistake had just led to three runs on Thursday night. He wanted to own it.
“He just said, ‘It’s my bad,’” Torey Lovullo said. “‘I made a mistake.’”
Perdomo fielded a ground ball in the fifth inning on Thursday, but instead of throwing across the diamond for the out, he tried to go the short way. It didn’t work.
After the speedy Pete Crow-Armstrong beat Perdomo’s feed to second to load the bases, the Chicago Cubs’ Miguel Amaya quickly unloaded them, lining a bases-clearing double off the glove of a diving Jake McCarthy in center field.
It was the biggest hit of the Diamondbacks’ 10-6 loss to the Cubs on Opening Day at Chase Field. And it came after the sort of mistake that might cost Lovullo sleep.
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“I think the theme of the night was we made too many mistakes and they turned into stressors,” Lovullo said. “Too many stressors on this team at one time — it’s a lot to overcome.”
The Cubs had runners on first and second when Matt Shaw hit a routine grounder to short. Perdomo stayed back on the ball, gloved it and flipped to Ketel Marte at second. Crow-Armstrong, running at full speed from first, popped up after his slide into second and pumped his arms in celebration.
Perdomo said he knew immediately what he did wrong.
“That was a play we were talking about in spring training,” Perdomo said. “I went right away to (Lovullo) and told him it was my fault. I should have thrown to the right base. We’ve got to know who’s running. ‘PCA’ is a really great runner. He has a lot of speed. Like I said, I should have thrown to the right base.”
It set the stage for Amaya, who blistered a hard liner into left-center. McCarthy appeared to get a good break on the ball before leaving his feet with his arm outstretched. The ball hit off his glove and fell to the ground.
It might not have been a catch that should have been made, but it could have been made. That said, on his list of plays that cost them the game, Lovullo said McCarthy not catching it was fairly low.
“That’s a tough play,” Lovullo said. “It was a 44 percent catch rate. … We make 44 percent catches on this team and I know Jake will bring that in next time.”
The Diamondbacks got an uneven performance from right-hander Zac Gallen, who gave up four runs in four innings. He struggled to find the strike for stretches, including missing with 11 consecutive pitches in the second inning.
Right-hander Ryne Nelson followed in relief and was charged with four runs in 1 2/3 innings, but his night could have gone differently had his defense made plays behind him.
Lovullo was fixated on the Perdomo play, but he also was bothered by what preceded it. Crow-Armstrong was taking aggressive secondary leads from first base. Lovullo was irked that the Diamondbacks did nothing to counter them.
“With that kid getting a huge lead off of first base, what does that mean?” Lovullo said. “It means you could throw some back-picks on there. That’s Diamondback baseball. You shorten them up.
“You don’t let a lot of their runners get free spins, get closer to the next base, without making them aware that we can throw them out from behind the plate with a very gifted catcher on a back-pick. Those are the things that I’m talking about, too, that really, really bug me.”
Lovullo also had some thoughts on the way the Cubs pitched Eugenio Suarez in the back half of the game. After Suarez blasted a solo homer in the second inning — a shot that amounted to him picking up where he left off with last year’s torrid second half — Cubs reliever Nate Pearson drilled Suarez with a 98 mph fastball in the sixth before another reliever, Porter Hodge, buzzed Suarez high and tight with two more upper-90s heaters.
“I don’t like it; I hate it,” Lovullo said. “If you’re going in there and you know where it’s going, go ahead and throw it. If you don’t know where it’s going, you better get it down, I don’t want to see anybody hit in the head.”
The Diamondbacks’ offense made some noise, but they couldn’t come up with the game-changing hit.
“My feeling was from the dugout was we just couldn’t catch our breath,” Lovullo said. “Every time we came back in the dugout we had just given up some points, some big numbers, and we couldn’t get that big hit.”
The loss was the Diamondbacks’ first at home on Opening Day since 2016, snapping a four-game win streak.
—Nick Piecoro
Cubs lead after 5 1/2 innings
Opening Night started out well for the Arizona Diamondbacks when leadoff hitter Ketel Marte doubled and Josh Naylor blooped a single to left field in the bottom of the first inning to drive in Marte. It was Naylor’s first hit and run batted in with the Diamondbacks, and it gave the team an early 1-0 lead.
But not much has gone right for the Diamondbacks since. They trailed 8-3 through 5 ½ innings.
Arizona starting pitcher Zac Gallen just didn’t seem to have good control with all of his pitches in what would be a four-inning outing for the veteran right-hander. The Cubs scored three runs in the top of the second as Gallen labored through a 29-pitch inning, at one point throwing 11 consecutive balls to Cubs hitters.
Eugenio Suarez hit a second-inning solo home run deep into the left field seats in his first at-bat of the season.
Gallen then gave up an Ian Happ home run in the fourth inning and finished allowing four earned runs on four hits with four strikeouts and four walks. Ryne Nelson, moved from starter to reliever during spring training, entered the game in the top of the fifth.
The Diamondbacks made it 4-3 on Gabriel Moreno’s single, Randal Grichuk’s ground-rule double and a Geraldo Perdomo infield single in the bottom of the fourth. Then Nelson couldn’t get the third out of the top of the fifth as Miguel Amaya’s bases-loaded double off Diamondbacks center fielder Jake McCarthy’s glove.
The Diamondbacks could have been out of the inning had they gotten an out on a ground ball to shortstop Perdomo, whose throw to second base for a force out was too late. Then came Amaya’s double.
McCarthy had to leave his feet to try to flag down the line drive, and the ball popped out of his glove.
The announced sellout crowd of 49,070 did have something to cheer before the game started, when head coach Kenny Dillingham and members of Arizona State’s football team threw out ceremonial first pitches.
—José M. Romero
Shelby Miller: ‘not the same person’
The faces in the clubhouse have changed, but most everything about the room, about Chase Field, looks about the same as Shelby Miller remembers it. The thing that might be most different from when he was here last is Miller himself.
“He’s not the same person,” Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen said. “I’m happy for him. I told him. I was like, ‘I don’t recognize the guy that was here.’”
Seven years ago, Miller arrived in Arizona as a high-profile trade acquisition expected to occupy a place near the top of the starting rotation. Things did not go well. He struggled in 2016. He battled injuries the next two years. It seemed like he might wash out of baseball.
Instead, he has reinvented himself as a reliever. This week, he officially made the Diamondbacks’ Opening Day roster. Signed to a minor league deal during spring training, he threw well in camp and won a spot in the bullpen.
His stuff is a little different. His mentality on the mound has changed, too. But what seems to stand out most for those who remember him from his first stint is how much he has changed as a person.
He seems more comfortable in his own skin. He has a better training and workout regimen. He is older, more mature. Hazen isn’t the only person around the team to describe him as almost unrecognizable.
Miller doesn’t disagree.
“I was single (then) and now I’m married with two kids,” he said. “Definitely older; I think maturity comes with that. And then just bouncing around the game and learning.
“I think everybody gets to that point where you make smarter decisions, whether it’s on the field or off the field, whatever it is. You just mature and you lock it in and know how valuable this game is. Second time around, good to be back. I’m definitely probably more mature now than I was back then as a 26-, 27-year-old.”
The only player remaining from Miller’s last go-round with the Diamondbacks is second baseman Ketel Marte.
Oddly enough, Miller’s first outing back with the Diamondbacks could come this week against the Chicago Cubs, a team whose starting shortstop is none other than Dansby Swanson. Swanson was the centerpiece of the trade with the Atlanta Braves that brought Miller to Arizona back in December 2015.
“Pretty full circle, for sure,” Miller said.
Miller still features a big fastball — he sat in the mid-90s during camp — and uses a pair of breaking balls and a splitter to go with it. Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said he has seen Miller grow in his understanding of how to deploy his stuff.
“He’s still throwing, he’s still aggressive with that stuff, but he’s also pitching at the same time,” Lovullo said.
That is far from the only area in which Lovullo has seen growth.
“There’s just a certain comfort that he has with conversation that maybe he couldn’t have had before,” Lovullo said. “He’s just very mature and just comfortable in his space. He’s going to hear me say that – it wasn’t terrible before. But today he’s a grown-up and I can see that every single day.”
Miller figures to open the year in a medium-to-low leverage role. He twice threw more than one inning in appearances during spring training, meaning Lovullo could use him as a length option, as well.
“I would say I’m a little bit different of a pitcher and player than I was then,” Miller said. “I’m definitely excited to be back in this uniform and be a part of this team.”
—Nick Piecoro
Injured list updates
Three Diamondbacks players opened the season on the injured list. Infielder Blaze Alexander (strained right oblique) is on the 10-day list, right-handed pitcher Kevin Ginkel (right shoulder inflammation) is on the 15-day list and right-handed pitcher Kendall Graveman (back strain) is also on the 15-day injured list.
Alexander, Lovullo said, will play in a game at Salt River Fields Friday as a designated hitter and start at shortstop on Saturday in another game. Ginkel will continue receiving treatment and has yet to start throwing, and Graveman will throw a bullpen session April 1. The hope is that Ginkel and Graveman will be ready to return not long after they begin throwing.
“I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that, because we need him,” Lovullo said of Graveman.
—José M. Romero
