PHOENIX -- The Pirates got an earlier look at the National League All-Star team than they’d have liked.
D-backs starter Zac Gallen allowed just one run and no walks in seven innings for his NL-leading 11th win, and his All-Star teammates Corbin Carroll and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. did their thing as Arizona bested the Pirates, 7-3, on Friday night.
“They've got a good club and that’s why they’re leading the National League West,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said after his club lost its third straight game and sixth in its last seven outings. “They put a ton of pressure on you and we saw it tonight.”
The D-backs collected 12 hits and stole five bases on the night. Their top three batters in the lineup -- Ketel Marte, Carroll and Gurriel -- went a combined 7-for-14 with five runs scored, a home run, two doubles and five RBIs.
Compare that with the Bucs’ top three in the order going just 1-of-10 on a night Gallen was in top form, and it was a tall order indeed for the visitors. The Pirates managed to get a run in the fifth on an RBI single from Tucupita Marcano and two more in the eighth when Carlos Santana knocked a two-out, two-run single off Arizona’s bullpen, but that was it on the offensive side of things.
Lefty Rich Hill started on the mound and struggled with command of his curveball, allowing five runs on seven hits and four walks in four innings and falling to 7-9 on the season.
“I didn’t throw the ball well and it’s been really frustrating for me putting us in these positions,” Hill said afterward. “The ball didn’t come out of my hand the way that I wanted it to. No excuses. Walks are unacceptable. I didn’t throw the ball well, and I let the guys down in here.”
It was also a quiet 0-for-4 night for red-hot rookie second baseman Nick Gonzales, who opened a homecoming weekend for himself in the Valley of the Sun.
The 24-year-old was born and raised in Tucson, about 100 miles south of Phoenix, where he starred at Cienega High School. His trip back home Friday greeted him with an outside temperature of 111 degrees and an excessive heat warning issued for the weekend.
“It’s what I remember,” he said of the typically roasting Arizona heat.
"I don't want to say it's a dream come true because I've been saying that a lot, you know, but it's definitely a dream come true," said Gonzales in an interview that aired during the broadcast. "I grew up coming to this game, to this field, and playing against the D-backs is really cool."
Before Friday night’s series opener in the desert, Gonzales had played in Chase Field -- which, as the National League’s fourth-oldest stadium, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year -- a few times before. He was on the Surprise Saguaros roster last year with the Arizona Fall League, but he never got in the action at the ballpark.
Before that, as a high school junior, his club team played an exhibition game at the stadium for a fundraiser.
“I might have had a double down the left-field line, but that’s all I remember,” Gonzales recalled Friday. “I remember being out there for the first time. I think I was taking pictures with my phone as soon as I got out there and was playing catch.”
His cheering section among the Friday night crowd at Chase Field included his parents, his grandparents, his fiancée and her parents, and friends.
They’ve all had a chance to see Gonzales blossom since making his Major League debut June 23. The seventh overall selection in the 2020 MLB Draft out of New Mexico State entered Friday’s game with 14 hits, including four doubles, a triple, two homers, 11 RBIs and a .412 average in his past 10 games.
“Just trusting my plan and trusting the process that we do with the coaches and with BP and everything we’ve been working on since Spring Training,” Gonzales said Friday, two weeks to the day since making his debut. “Just trusting it, trying to go up there and get a good pitch to hit.”