On Saturday, The D-Backs turned to their ace, Zac Gallen, to get them out of the mud and moving again. Gallen gave the team a more than respectable six innings, allowed four hits, a walk, and struck out eight batters, on his way to his twelfth win of the season.

The D-Backs capped off the homestand with a narrow win over the Padres, 5-4, scoring in both the seventh and eighth innings to complete the victory, snatching the series win. A combination of contributions from a new acquisition and consistent presences led the way. Tommy Pham shot an RBI double the other way to easily knock in Corbin Carroll and get the D-Backs off to a great start in the first inning on Saturday. Home runs from Christian Walker and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. also helped the cause for the D-Backs to break out of their near double-digit losing streak. 

This weekend, in the midst of the series, they made a series of moves. A move that was in the cards was sending Ryne Nelson, one of the rookie starters, back down to Triple-A for work. He was wildly inconsistent; sometimes displays flashes of brilliance one start and then the next start is the exact opposite. For example, Nelson’s start on July 1st against the Angels was superb: seven and a third innings pitched, gave up three hits and a single earned run. His next start, July 6th against the Mets was an absolute nightmare: three innings, allowing nine hits, and seven earned runs. 

Also, the organization failed to address their roster hole of starting pitching. At one point during the year, they were dependent on three young, inexperienced arms in the rotation (Ryne Nelson, Tommy Henry, and Brandon Pfaadt) to complement their two solid, dependable arms Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen. Though the young arms have showed promise at times, it’s clear the heavier mix of young arms wouldn’t hold up over the course of the season.

The most surprising move was the one to designate veteran catcher Carson Kelly for assignment. Kelly has been the D-Backs starting catcher for the last several years. Due to the fact Kelly was on the injured list for the first two months of the season, Gabriel Moreno and Jose Herrera received playing time and the opportunity to prove themselves. Moreno has seized the opportunity and solidified his spot as the starting catcher on both sides of the ball and it seems the D-Backs front office sees more value in keeping Herrera over Kelly, though they’ve appeared positionally in roughly the same amount of games this season. The greater value they likely see in Herrera is that he’s younger than Kelly (Herrera is 26 and Kelly is 29) as well as the fact his (Herrera’s) defensive metrics are slightly better (like his 74th percentile Pop Time to Second Base in comparison to Kelly’s 56th percentile Pop Time to Second Base). At the time Kelly was designated for assignment, he was hitting .226, with one homer and six runs batted in.