Off night for Rodney costs D-backs

PHOENIX -- On the verge of winning their third straight game, grabbing first place in the National League West and running their home record to 11-2 this year, the D-backs blew a two-run lead in the ninth to lose, 8-5, to the Padres on Wednesday night at Chase Field.
"Definitely a frustrating ending to a pretty well-pitched night," D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. "You watch a couple of the guys execute on the mound and then unfortunately we made a couple of mistakes late in the game and they took advantage of it."
Zack Godley, who was called up from Triple-A Reno to make the start and then sent back following the game, managed to allow just two runs on four hits over five innings.
Archie Bradley dominated for three innings, striking out five, with the only blemish being a home run off the bat of Hunter Renfroe.
It all added up to a 5-3 lead for closer Fernando Rodney, who had converted all six of his save opportunities.
"Archie did an outstanding job for three innings and handed it off to our closer and unfortunately Fernando just didn't get the job done today," Lovullo said.
After getting the first out of the inning, Rodney allowed a bunt single and a line-drive single off the glove of third baseman Jake Lamb before Ryan Schimpf smoked a pitch down the right-field line for a three-run homer.
"I don't know," Rodney said when asked why he struggled. "Sometimes it's difficult to try to get three outs. I tried my best, I'll prepare myself to do well tomorrow."
The pitch that Schimpf was supposed to be inside, "but it stayed a little in the middle," Rodney said. "They got me tonight."
Padres manager Andy Green is plenty familiar with Rodney having managed him for the first half last year in San Diego.
"To me, watching him today, we got a lot more fastballs than we typically get against him," Green said. "There's a lot of changeups. You get to a fastball count and you get a changeup. You get to a changeup count and you get a fastball. He left some fastballs out over the plate for us to hit and we did a great job hitting them."
While the D-backs offense did produce five runs and gave the closer a lead, they did miss some opportunities to add on.
The D-backs were just 3-for-11 with runners in scoring position and shortstop Nick Ahmed had a costly pickoff/caught stealing in the eighth that cost them another run.
"I felt like offensively we did enough, I felt we could have done a little bit more to stretch the lead out, but that's just the beauty of the game," Lovullo said. "That's what makes it so heartbreaking and drives you even more and makes you ready to play the game. It's a challenge for us to overcome this game and be ready for tomorrow's ballgame."