Diamondbacks Top Rockies In Up-And-Down Wild Card Game

The Diamondbacks got out to an early 6-0 lead, watched it disappear, and proceeded to trade scoring opportunities with the Rockies through the final few innings of a wacky game that ended with Fernando Rodney making it through a shaky ninth to give Arizona an 11-8 victory in the NL wild card game.

Dingers were responsible for the Diamondbacks’s quick lead—a three-run shot from Paul Goldschmidt in the first, a two-run one from Daniel Descalco in the third—but triples provided the excitement, with switch hitter Ketel Marte becoming the first player in history to triple once from each side of the plate in a playoff game. The coolest triple of them all, though, came from reliever Archie Bradley: allowed to come to the plate with two men aboard in the seventh, a few innings after the Rockies had chased Diamondbacks starter Zack Greinke to make it a 6-5 game. Bradley extended the lead right back out, driving in both runners.

Things quickly went south for Bradley, though, as he took the mound for the top of the eighth—giving up one home run to Nolan Arenado, directly followed by another one from Trevor Story, and left hung out to dry to struggle through the rest of the inning. But his teammates backed him up soon enough at the plate, anchored by yet another triple—this one from A.J. Pollock, the Diamondbacks’s fourth of the game—that knocked in two runs.

Down four in the ninth, the Rockies didn’t go quietly. Rodney offered his usual maddening inconsistency, giving up one run on two hits, but managed to close it out without further damage.

The win leaves the Diamondbacks with some questions about how to structure their rotation for the divisional series, having used both Greinke (3.2 innings, 58 pitches) and fellow starter Robbie Ray (2.1 innings, 34 pitches) tonight. But figuring out how to arrange their starting pitching, of course, way beats starting on their winter plans.