Ray can't right ship, D-backs lose fourth straight
PHOENIX -- Brad Ziegler stood in front of his locker Friday afternoon and said the Diamondbacks haven't yet played to their potential and it was getting too late in the season for that to be the case. It's one game later and they didn't make any progress.
The Padres clubbed four home runs while the D-backs mustered just six hits -- half coming in the final two innings. The D-backs bullpen, restocked beforehand in hopes of keeping the team in games longer, imploded from the outset; the Padres didn't dip into their bullpen until the eighth.
Ziegler laid out the situation before the game but the closer didn't come close to appearing in the 10-3 loss. So it was up to a few others to speak to what happened in the D-backs' 29th defeat in 50 games.
"It was frustrating," Robbie Ray said in an otherwise nearly deserted clubhouse. "It's tough, especially when you're in the moment, to be able to control that frustration."
Ray immediately put his team in a hole and he failed to go five innings for the fourth time in 10 starts this season.
The D-backs have lost four in a row, are 7-18 at Chase Field and are just a half-game ahead of the last-place Padres in the NL West.
"It's one game, it's one lose," manager Chip Hale said. "It's not a good way to open a homestand but we have to get rid of it tonight and come back and be competitive tomorrow."
Dominic Leone and Josh Collmenter, both added to the roster before the game in a flurry of moves, combined to allow five runs on seven hits and two walks. Each pitched just a one-third of an inning.
The D-backs already were in a sizeable hole when Hale went to the bullpen. Ray was touched up for nine hits and five runs in 4 2/3 innings. He gave up a back-to-back home runs to Matt Kemp and Yangervis Solarte in the fifth.
"I felt good coming out of the bullpen. I felt strong with all my pitches," Ray said. "I was able to get out of some jams there but just left a few pitches up and they made me pay for it. It's just frustrating because I know I'm better than that."
Padres starter Christian Friedrich came into the game with a more-than-respectable 2.89 ERA, but he hadn't won a game in the Major Leagues in almost four years. He struck out five held the D-back to three hits in the seven innings.
"He pitched in for effect when he had to and stayed soft. It was a very cagey job by him," Hale, whose team was 5 for 5 with runners in scoring position, said of Friedrich. "He did a nice job of changing speeds. There was not a lot of hard contract. He did a good job of moving it up, down, in, out."
Brandon Drury hit a two-run homer off former D-backs reliever Keith Hessler in the eighth, and Jake Lamb connected for a pinch-hit solo blast in the ninth.