D-backs intend to 'grow from it' after clunker

Walker homers twice, but Bumgarner's woes continue in decisive loss to SD

September 17th, 2022

PHOENIX -- When you play 162 games, there are going to be some ugly nights when, for whatever reason, things go wrong. Very wrong.

In those cases there's only one thing you can really do.

"We just got to flush this one," D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. "Nothing was right about this game from the beginning until the end."

Lovullo is right. One night after shutting the Padres out, the D-backs could do little right in a 12-3 loss at Chase Field. The notable exception was Christian Walker, who homered twice.

"We were playing good baseball," Lovullo said. "We haven't had a clunker like this in a while. We just got to accept what happened, understand why it happened, grow from it and move on."

D-backs starter Madison Bumgarner suffered through another rough outing, allowing five runs on eight hits over five innings.

The veteran left-hander retired the first two batters of the game before allowing a single to Manny Machado and a two-run homer to Brandon Drury.

Then in the bottom of the first, Stone Garrett led off with a double and Emmanuel Rivera followed by reaching on an error. It seemed like the D-backs were in business at that point. But one out later, Garrett got picked off second and Blake Snell was then able to wiggle off the hook without allowing a run.

"The first inning, we identified a situation where we could potentially move and steal some bases," Lovullo said. "But we just executed poorly, executed in the wrong way. To me, that turned the tide. We gave him a couple [runs] in the top of the first, but we were banging away at it and I thought if we had done some damage there, we would have had a situation where the game could have turned out differently. However, we made that mistake and then nothing seemed to work from that point forward."

As for Bumgarner, the 33-year-old continues to try different things to recapture some of the success he had at one point this season, but the frustration just continued for him as he fell to 6-15 with a 5.01 ERA.

Those were not the numbers he or the D-backs were counting on for this year.

"Maybe I should stop," Bumgarner said, referring to all the changes he's tried to make. "I don’t know. It’s a very frustrating game sometimes. I’ve thrown much worse games this year and had far better results. It’s tough to understand sometimes."

One thing is clear: He's going to keep getting the baseball the rest of the way, so he'll have another two or three opportunities to find something that works.

"We're going to keep fighting with him," Lovullo said. "It hasn't been an easy year for him. But he accepts the responsibility of going out there every fifth day -- sixth day, in this case, with the extra starter -- and he's going to grind through it. And we're going to grind through it with him."

Bumgarner said he has had a lot of sleepless nights this year as a result of his struggles, rolling over in his mind what he needs to do to be better. And while he's had stretches of struggles at times in his career before, he knows it gets a little different when you get older.

"I’ve been here before, unfortunately," Bumgarner said. "I’ve definitely been here more than once. If you play the game long enough, you’ll have times like [these]. You’ll have all sorts of stuff happen. I’m definitely getting on the older side, so things are a little different now."