In the midst of a heated battle for the NL West division, Sunday’s game nearly ended up as the one that got away from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Diamondbacks went to extra innings on Sunday against the Milwaukee Brewers. With the two teams tied 8-8 in the tenth, Arizona got the first two outs of the inning. But with the ghost runner still stuck at second base, the Diamondbacks then inexplicably opted for a two-out intentional walk to Brewers infielder Brice Turang.
That brought up Milwaukee outfield phenom Jackson Chourio, one of the hottest hitters in baseball right now. Chourio immediately made them pay, jumping on the very first pitch and shooting it down the right-field line for a two-RBI triple.
The Diamondbacks just intentionally walked a batter to face Jackson Chourio in the clutch…
Bold choice. pic.twitter.com/A62A2T8vpQ
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 15, 2024
That was a head-scratcher on a lot of different levels for Arizona. With two outs, you just need to worry about the guy at the plate. Meanwhile, Turang is only hitting .255 this season and looked like the much easier out than the scorching-hot Chourio, who is batting .295 with a .926 OPS since August.
The Diamondbacks might claim that they were trying to set up the force at any base or that they wanted to avoid the lefty Turang and set up a righty-righty matchup between Chourio and Arizona pitcher Justin Martinez. But that seemed like a classic case of overthinking things instead of keeping it simple and just going right after the guy in front of you.
In the end, the blunder did not matter at all because the Diamondbacks answered back with three runs in the bottom of the tenth (off four singles and a hit-by-pitch) to win the game 11-10. But they were definitely dancing on the knife’s edge there with the latest odd intentional walk in MLB lately.
