CINCINNATI – It was Blake Dunn who made it official. When Zac Gallen fanned the Reds’ outfielder to end the second inning Sunday at Great American Ball Park, the Arizona right-hander moved past Brandon Webb into sole possession of second place on the Diamondbacks’ all-time strikeout list with 1,067 career punchouts. The crowd, mostly indifferent to the franchise-record ledger, barely noticed. Gallen almost certainly did.
But the game had more history to dispense. What followed over the next six innings – a lead that changed hands three times, a rain delay that stretched 72 minutes, and one decisive swing by Gabriel Moreno in the eighth – delivered Torey Lovullo his 700th victory as a major league manager, a 5-3 Diamondbacks win that ended a stretch in which Arizona had scored one run or fewer in three of its previous four games.
Lovullo, who is in his ninth season running the club, became the eighth active manager and the 106th in major league history to reach the mark. He needed this one. His team had been scratching for runs all week, its offense going largely quiet at a stretch of the schedule that offers little margin for error in a crowded NL West.
JJ Bleday opened the scoring with his 12th home run of the season in the first inning, a solo shot that put Cincinnati ahead 1-0 and gave the Reds early life. Gallen – methodical and unbothered – allowed three runs and six hits across six innings, a line that looked shakier than it felt. He retired Sal Stewart and Eugenio Suarez on strikes in the first to tie Webb at 1,066, then needed just one more batter to break it.
The Diamondbacks answered Bleday with Tommy Troy in the third, the young infielder sending his second homer of the season into the seats to knot things at one. Cincinnati reclaimed the lead moments later when Nathaniel Lowe singled and came around to score on Suarez’s double – a 2-1 edge that held until the sixth.
That was when Geraldo Perdomo took over. Following a fielding error by Lowe at first base, Perdomo drove an 0-2 pitch from Tejay Antone into the right-field seats – his fourth homer of the season and the kind of shot that comes at precisely the right moment. Arizona led 3-2. Noelvi Marte answered with his third home run in as many games in the bottom of the sixth, tying the score at three and ratcheting the afternoon’s tension a notch higher.
By the eighth, the game had the feel of something that could go either way. Kevin Ginkel struck out Marte with two on to keep Arizona from falling behind, and then the skies opened. A 72-minute rain delay threatened the whole thing – rhythm gone, momentum scattered, both bullpens forced to adapt.
When play resumed, Moreno was waiting. He took a 3-1 pitch from Zach Maxwell – who absorbed the loss at 0-1 – and lifted it out for his sixth home run of the season, giving Arizona a lead that would not be surrendered. Ketel Marte added an insurance run on an RBI single in the ninth. Juan Morillo worked a scoreless seventh to earn his second win of the season, and Paul Sewald pitched a hitless ninth for his 17th save, getting the final three outs with the clinical efficiency he has made routine.
Andrew Abbott threw well enough for the Reds to deserve better. The left-hander held Arizona to one run on four hits through five innings, walking three and striking out five, and the loss landed on bullpen decisions downstream – the kind of afternoon that tends to frustrate Cincinnati, whose rotation this season has carried the team further than its relievers have.
The win was Arizona’s first series victory since a sweep at the San Francisco Giants in late May, a result that matters not only for the standings but for the clubhouse’s sense of itself. Whether the offense has genuinely turned a corner or simply found a warm afternoon to break its silence is the question Lovullo will carry into a Monday series opener against the Los Angeles Angels. Ryne Nelson, 2-5 with a 5.19 ERA, is scheduled to start. Facing the Angels is one thing; replicating Sunday’s output is another.
For Gallen, the record is a footnote that will matter more when the season ends. Randy Johnson sits first on the franchise list with 2,077 strikeouts – an unreachable number in the near term, but a benchmark that gives Arizona’s ace something to mark the passing of time. He passed Brandon Webb on a Sunday afternoon in June, in a game the Diamondbacks needed, with a wet outfield and a rain delay that couldn’t wash any of it away.
What Lovullo said in the clubhouse afterward was not available at the time of publication.
