D-backs end '18 with odd walk-off loss in 10th

SAN DIEGO -- It seems only fitting that the D-backs' 2018 season ended with a walk-off loss against the Padres on Sunday at Petco Park.
Manuel Margot scored from third with the game-winning run after Francisco Mejía struck out and the ball got away from catcher John Ryan Murphy in the 10th inning for a 4-3 defeat.
The D-backs got the out at first on Mejia, but in the process, Margot beat the relay throw.
"It's kind of head-shaking, beyond frustration," manager Torey Lovullo said of the team's spate of late-inning losses in the final month of the season. "We have to learn from these things. We've got to keep pounding on and telling ourselves that something good is going to come out of this, somehow, some way. I'll focus on the positives, as I always do, but I'm going to be realistic about all the things that went wrong, and we're going to address them."

With the win, the D-backs finished the regular season with an 82-80 mark, putting together back-to-back seasons above .500 for the first time since 2007-08.
The D-backs seemingly had the game locked up when Socrates Brito's sacrifice fly in the top of the ninth scored Ketel Marte to put Arizona up, 3-2.

Right-hander Archie Bradley came on for the save opportunity, and after retiring the first hitter of the inning, allowed three straight singles as the Padres tied the game and forced extra innings.
On Friday night, Bradley also had a chance to close things out in the 12th inning, but allowed a homer to pinch-hitter Hunter Renfroe.
"Kind of the last two times out there I thought, 'Get a win, close out the game,' and it didn't happen," Bradley said. "Singles, homers, whatever. I just didn't do the job. To miss the playoffs and finish on this note just sucks. To look back on the year and not to perform in the second half, and to just kind of a kick-yourself-in-the-[butt] finish, it's not cool."

In the 10th, reliever Jake Barrett retired Jose Pirela to start the inning before Margot laced a triple to right-center. Barrett then struck out Mejia, but the ball was in the dirt and bounced away from Murphy, who threw to first for the out.
Daniel Descalso, who replaced Paul Goldschmidt at first base in the seventh, double-pumped before throwing back to Barrett covering the plate, and Margot was safe.
"It was kind of a weird play," Descalso said. "I should have just thrown it. I should've just thrown it. I was thinking the whole time, 'Get it back to Murph,' and then realized Barrett was there and double-clutched and it was too late."

TIME FOR EVALUATION
Lovullo has been holding one-on-one exit meetings with players over the last week and has already begun to think of areas that need to improve in 2019.
"I know there were several games this year [in which] we did not do the things that we practiced, talked about or trained ourselves to do, from top to bottom, me included," Lovullo said. "I know we're going to have an offseason, we're going to spend some time reevaluating things, and hopefully, there's a lot of self-evaluation, because we need improvement in a lot of areas."
• Five questions loom for the D-backs this offseason
SOUND SMART
• Sunday marked the first time the D-backs had played extra innings in their final regular-season game.
• Steven Souza Jr.'s pinch-hit homer was the first of his career.

HE SAID IT
"Disappointing is a good word. Obviously we knew going into this series we weren't going to be playing after this, and we'd like to win this last series of the year, and we weren't able to." -- Descalso, on losing two of three to the Padres