MLB

PHOENIX – (Staff and Wire Service Report) – The Texas Rangers look to grab a commanding 3-1 advantage tonight when they face the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 4 of the World Series at Chase Field.

 

Texas took Game 3 Monday night 3-1 on the strength of its pitching and a two-run home run from Corey Seager, the one-time World Series MVP’s second two-run home run of this series.

Pitchers Max Scherzer, Jon Gray, Josh Sborz, Aroldis Chapman and Jose Leclerc held the Diamondbacks to a run on six hits. Arizona had scored a combined 14 runs in the first two games of the series.

Game 4 looks like a bullpen game for both teams. Left-hander Andrew Heaney (0-0) is set to make his third start and fifth appearance for the Rangers this postseason, with six innings pitched and four runs allowed on seven hits thus far.

Heaney has a 6.00 earned run average and opponents are batting .292 against him this postseason. Heaney went 10-6 with a 4.15 ERA in the regular season and made 28 starts, with nine wins as a starter.

The Diamondbacks counter with lefty Joe Mantiply, an All-Star in 2022 who made his first career World Series appearance in Game 1. He pitched a scoreless inning.

Mantiply is 2-0 with a 4.26 ERA over eight career postseason appearances (all this season). He did not allow an earned run over his last six games of the regular season (8 1/3 innings) and had a 1.38 ERA over 10 games in September.

The Rangers have opened the postseason with nine consecutive road wins, tying a Major League Baseball record.

“We’re just showing up to play every day. We’re trying to win that day. No matter where you are, we’re trying to play good baseball every day,” Seager said. “I don’t know how to credit it to anything other than that, really.”

The Rangers hope to have a healthy Adolis Garcia back in the lineup on Tuesday after he left Monday’s game with left side tightness. Garcia hit a walk-off home run in Game 1, giving the slugger eight in the postseason, and he has also driven in 22 runs.

“We’re being optimistic there but we’ll know more tomorrow,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said of Garcia after Game 3.

The Diamondbacks come off their first World Series game at their home ballpark in 22 years. They won the World Series in 2001, the franchise’s only championship.

Arizona is 16-10 at home in the postseason all time.

Second baseman Ketel Marte has hit safely in each of his first 19 postseason games, the longest streak in MLB postseason history. He has 22 hits.

“At the end of the day we do have to be better. I think our offense is very capable against any type of pitching, whether it’s a reliever or starter. We just got beat. We got beat. We got maybe out-executed. And we’ve got to figure that out,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said after Game 3.

The Diamondbacks used Kyle Nelson, Miguel Castro, Luis Frias and Andrew Saalfrank out of their bullpen in Game 3. That should leave them with their top relievers rested and available for Game 4 after Mantiply departs.

Ryne Nelson, Ryan Thompson, Kevin Ginkel and closer Paul Sewald are in line to pitch in Game 4, especially in a close game.

–Jose M. Romero, Field Level Media

DALLAS – Corey Seager belted a game-tying, two-run homer in the ninth inning and Adolis Garcia went deep in the 11th to give the Texas Rangers a 6-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday in Arlington, Texas.

Arizona’s Paul Sewald converted all six of his previous save opportunities in the postseason before starting the ninth inning by issuing a walk to Leody Taveras. Seager stepped up two batters later and deposited a first-pitch fastball over the wall in right field to forge a 5-5 tie.

The homer was Seager’s fourth of this postseason and the fourth of his career during the World Series.

Jose Leclerc (1-1) retired the side in order in both the 10th and 11th innings to set the stage for the Rangers.

Miguel Castro (0-1) replaced Kyle Nelson with one out in the 11th and saw Garcia take his 3-1 sinker over the wall in right field. Garcia’s eighth homer of the postseason pushed his RBI total to 22, eclipsing David Freese (2011) for the most in one postseason in major league history.

Texas’ Evan Carter smacked an RBI double and scored on Garcia’s RBI single in the first inning.

Garcia had three hits, Carter and Josh Jung each had two for the Rangers, who snapped a three-game home losing skid. They will look to continue their momentum at home on Saturday in Game 2.

Arizona’s Corbin Carroll ripped a two-run triple in the third inning and scored on Ketel Marte’s fielder’s-choice grounder. Marte wasn’t done, as he smashed an RBI double in the fifth to extend his career postseason hitting streak to 17 games — matching the major league record shared by Hank Bauer (1956-58), Derek Jeter (1998-99) and Manny Ramirez (2003-04).

Tommy Pham homered to lead off the fourth inning and Alek Thomas had two hits for the Diamondbacks, who lost for just the second time in their past six games.

Carroll, who had a National League-best 10 triples this season, ripped a tied the game 2-2 with his triple in the third. The speedy Carroll then beat the throw home from first baseman Nathaniel Lowe on Marte’s grounder.

Mitch Garver worked a bases-loaded walk to tie the game at 3-3 in the bottom of the third before Pham deposited a 1-0 fastball from Nathan Eovaldi over the wall in left field to start the fourth. Pham’s homer was his third of the postseason and second in three games.

–Field Level Media

PHILADELPHIA — The Arizona Diamondbacks won nine games during a six-week span from early July through mid-August. On Tuesday night, the Diamondbacks won their ninth game of the 2023 postseason — and became one of the most unlikely World Series participants of all-time.

Az’s rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll snapped out of his slump by collecting three hits and two RBIs as the Diamondbacks advanced to the World Series by beating the Philadelphia Phillies 4-2 in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.

The Diamondbacks, who overcame two-games-to-none and three-games-to-two deficits in the NLCS, will visit the American League champion Texas Rangers in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday night. Arizona is seeking its second championship while Texas is looking to win it all for the first time.

“We just have a tremendous group of players that work really hard,” Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen said on TBS following the win. “We’ve got some more work left to do. We’re going to go down to Texas and see what we can do there, too.”

Ketel Marte earned NLCS MVP honors after hitting .387 (12-for-31) and extending his postseason hitting streak to 16 games, tied for the fourth-longest streak in playoff history.

The Phillies, with five players on $100 million deals on their roster, fell one win shy of their second straight NL pennant. Philadelphia reached the World Series as the sixth seed in the Senior Circuit last year — just as Arizona this year.

“It is disappointing,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “It’s tough to get back to this position two years in a row. It is. But (our players) fought like hell to get here and we came up short. That’s baseball sometimes.”

Arizona, two years removed from going 52-110 and coming off a 74-88 performance in 2022, reached the World Series after going 84-78 in the regular season. That’s the third-worst record for a Fall Classic participant in a full season behind only the 1973 New York Mets (82-79) and the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (83-78).

“Trust me when I say there were some real hardships — there were some very dark days in my career,” seventh-year Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “So for me to sit here and tell you that I wouldn’t trade that in — if you told me that I would be coming out the other side of it like this, I would understand why I was having to go through that.”

The Diamondbacks went 9-25 from July 2 through Aug. 13, the worst 34-game stretch ever for a team that made the playoffs. Arizona was 59-60 and 3 1/2 games out of the final NL wild-card spot on Aug. 14 but went 25-18 thereafter to leapfrog the San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs and clinch a playoff berth on Sept. 30 — the penultimate day of the season.

“Some long nights for all of us, players and coaches,” Carroll said on TBS following the win. “Just wanted to find a way to get the job done. But we came out of it better, we really did.”

The Diamondbacks opened the playoffs with five straight wins over the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers before being outscored 15-3 by the Phillies in the first two games of the NLCS. But Arizona mounted comeback wins in Games 3 and 4 and bounced back from a 6-1 loss in Game 5 by trailing for just one half-inning in the final two games in Philadelphia.

Carroll, the lone Arizona player on a nine-figure deal and the likely NL Rookie of the Year, entered Tuesday hitting .130 (3-for-23) in the NLCS but scored in the first inning of Game 7. He singled with one out, took third on Gabriel Moreno’s single and came home when Christian Walker beat out a potential double-play grounder.

“Six games ago you would have said that I was the hottest hitter on the planet, right?” said Carroll, who batted .412 (7-for-17) with two homers in the sweeps of the Brewers and Dodgers. “I think it’s easy to get caught up in the day and get caught up in just the minute — but just realizing that that’s all it is. It’s just a little hitch of things not going your way. That was kind of my mindset.

“In the end, I think everything evens out eventually.”

Philadelphia’s Alec Bohm homered off Brandon Pfaadt — a rookie who posted a 5.72 ERA in the regular season — leading off the second for the Phillies, who took the lead when Bohm walked with one out in the fourth and scored on Bryson Stott’s double.

But Philadelphia left the bases loaded in the inning, symbolizing a robust offense gone cold at the most inopportune time. The Phillies scored 15 runs in the final five games.

“That’s the ebbs and flows of offense,” Thomson said, “People aren’t going to hit every single day of the season. It’s just not going to happen.”

The Diamondbacks immediately retook the lead in the fifth, when Emmanuel Rivera led off with a single against Ranger Suarez (1-1), moved to second on Geraldo Perdomo’s bunt and scored on Carroll’s two-out single. Carroll stole second base on the first pitch Jeff Hoffman threw and scored when Moreno singled two pitches later.

Kyle Schwarber greeted Joe Mantiply in the bottom half with a double — the only hit the Phillies recorded in five innings against five Diamondbacks relievers — but he was stranded on second. Ryan Thompson (1-0) retired all four batters he faced.

Arizona added an insurance run in the seventh, when Perdomo singled off reliever Jose Alvarado, raced to third on Marte’s double and scored on Carroll’s sacrifice fly.

Diamondbacks reliever Kevin Ginkel inherited a two-on, one-out jam in the bottom of the seventh and retired all five batters he faced. He struck out the side in the eighth before Paul Sewald notched the save with a 1-2-3 ninth.

Sewald got pinch hitter Jake Cave to fly out to Carroll in right and set off a raucous on-field celebration at otherwise silent Citizens Bank Park. It was Sewald’s fifth save of the postseason.

“Better squeeze it,” Carroll said of his thoughts as the ball landed in his glove. “To be able to finally put it away and run towards that dog pile — man, just a hell of a feeling.”

–Field Level Media