MLB playoffs 2023: The ‘resilient’ Diamondbacks learned to beat the Phillies — now NLCS Game 7 poses the ultimate test

PHILADELPHIA — The Arizona Diamondbacks who tied up the NLCS to force a winner-take-all Game 7, the Diamondbacks who grabbed Game 6 by the throat and never let it go, are the same Diamondbacks who got pummeled in Philly in Games 1 and 2. You could understand, though, if the stunned Philadelphia Phillies fans who arrived Monday ready for a coronation didn’t believe it.

Even as his team clawed its way back into the series in Arizona, manager Torey Lovullo said he didn’t feel like his club had played fully realized Diamondbacks baseball. But after Monday? When Merrill Kelly flummoxed the Phillies’ lineup for five innings and the bullpen pitched four scoreless? When all nine Diamondbacks starters reached base at least once? When they finally tapped into their speed again, stealing four bases?

“It was a much cleaner game,” Lovullo said. “It was very close to a Diamondback-type of a baseball game.”

Close. The Diamondbacks are close, perhaps to their ideal selves and definitely to a World Series berth. This youthful club — which starts four position players 24 years old or younger and will send a rookie pitcher to the bump for Game 7 on Tuesday — is not just joyriding through the playoffs but also tackling challenges, learning, figuring out how to win the games in front of them.

In that way, maybe they aren’t the same team that flew to Arizona down 0-2 to the defending NL pennant winners. Bolstered by the experience of sinking and righting the ship this season, the D-backs adjusted to the Phillies, assessed their own performances and kept working toward the winning brand of baseball they have unlocked often enough to now be preparing for NLCS Game 7.

“We didn't come cross-country to get our asses kicked,” Lovullo said before Game 6. “We came here to play our best baseball game.”

You’ve undoubtedly heard that Arizona was an 84-win team in the regular season, but it’s worth noting how they got there. They played at a 96-win pace through June. In July and August, they cratered, playing at a 64-win pace. They found their way again in September, giving themselves an opportunity by playing at a 90-win pace.

So perhaps it’s appropriate that Arizona’s Game 6 stars had faced obvious and recent adversity and stayed the course back to success. Kelly gave up two early bombs to the Phillies in a blowout Game 2 loss but masterfully avoided hard contact in Game 6 — mixing his pitches so that he threw five different offerings at least 10 times but nothing more than 22 times.

“The game plan wasn't to change, necessarily,” he said afterward. “I went back and looked at my game. It was more about executing. I think, especially the early homers that you talk about, purely just weren't executed pitches.”

Tommy Pham, the veteran trade-deadline acquisition who gave the Diamondbacks a spark, went 1-for-13 with six strikeouts in the first four games of this series and was left out of the lineup for Game 5. Then he ripped a solo homer to open the scoring in Game 6.

“We're a very resilient group,” he said. “You can say when our backs are against the wall, it brings the best out of us. Guys tend to turn up the focus. It gives us a little edge. So maybe that's what we needed.”

The Diamondbacks returned to Citizens Bank Park for Game 6 with counter-attacks for the Phillies who bested them earlier in the series, including Nola. Game 4 hero Alek Thomas, who singled, stole a base and scored Monday, said the coaching staff “really stepped up and vocalized certain plans, and I think it's worked.”

“I think today was a big, big day,” Thomas said. “You know, our back was against the wall, and our plan today seemed to work out.”

Closer Paul Sewald said that certain Phillies hitters caught the Arizona pitching staff by surprise with their playoff approaches. After the initial ambush, the Diamondbacks’ staff stopped and took stock of how the Phillies’ playoff tendencies diverged from the broader pool of regular-season data.

“After Game 2, before Game 3, when we had our workout, we kind of had a discussion, like, ‘Hey, we might have missed something in our scouting report’ and tried to make a couple of adjustments,” Sewald said. “I think we've pitched a lot better since then.”

Just as managers fret over the times-through-the-order penalty for pitchers facing hitters repeatedly in a game, everyone involved in a long playoff series has to consider what they have revealed about themselves and what they might need to do the same or differently the next time around. And ever since the early beatdowns in Philadelphia, the Diamondbacks have appeared to be gaining ground.

“In a seven-game series, you've got to try and make adjustments from game to game and inning to inning and at-bat to at-bat,” Sewald said, “but I think we nailed it as quickly as we possibly could.”

The learning, however, cuts both ways.

With six straight games against each other in the books — double the familiarity of a typical summer series — the Diamondbacks and Phillies are entering the final stage of baseball’s ultimate cat-and-mouse game: Game 7.

The first assignment: Score on the starting pitcher. Diamondbacks starter Brandon Pfaadt and Phillies starter Ranger Suárez each pitched into the sixth without allowing a run in Game 3. Whichever team does more to solve their opposing puzzle on Tuesday will have the upper hand as the two pitchers face off in Game 7.

“We've all gotten a little bit of a look at their bullpen now, faced most of their guys and maybe just have a little better idea how they're gonna attack you,” said Corbin Carroll, the Diamondbacks’ star rookie, explaining how they work to refresh their information on each pitcher. “We'll do the same thing with Suárez tomorrow, see how he attacked us last time.”

In Game 7, staff aces Zac Gallen and Zack Wheeler — starters in Games 1and 5, both won by Wheeler and the Phillies — could be available out of the bullpen. Arizona will hope to keep Ketel Marte, who laced two more hits in Game 6, on a roll. Philadelphia will be aiming to reignite the bats of hitters who had been scorching hot. Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Trea Turner, all boasting OPS marks over 1.000 for the series, were held hitless in Game 6, though Schwarber and Harper did combine for three walks.

The tables can turn quickly. Just ask Kelly and Nola, or Pham and Turner. As of Monday night, the Phillies and Diamondbacks have all the data available — quantitative, qualitative, whatever.

What will they learn from it? We will all find out together on Tuesday.