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The Diamondbacks' playoff hopes are dashed, crowning a historic collapse

Posted on by Vanessa
The Diamondbacks' playoff hopes are dashed, crowning a historic collapse

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(This story has been updated to add new information.)

An extra locker room at Chase Field was covered in plastic from floor to ceiling on Monday, prepared for a celebration that never happened. The Arizona Diamondbacks, whose 89 wins were one short, were instead back in their own clubhouse, exchanging hugs and saying goodbye.

The Diamondbacks finished the game with five more wins than last year, despite injuries and underperformance of several key players. They played meaningful baseball until the end. Objectively speaking, it was a good year.

But it won't be remembered as such, not after the Atlanta Braves split their doubleheader with a Game 2 win over the New York Mets and knocked the Diamondbacks off the postseason roster.

Instead, this team will be remembered as the author of the worst season-ending collapse in franchise history.

Previous Diamondbacks teams had been slowed by poor second halves and poor September seasons. But they had never been ruined by a miserable last week, not like this one. Eight days ago, the Diamondbacks' playoff chances were at 93 percent, according to FanGraphs models. And then they were eliminated, losing five times in their last seven games.

“I think frustrated,” starting pitcher Merrill Kelly said when asked to describe his feelings. “I think we controlled our own destiny there for a while and then let it slip away. We had a pretty big lead towards the end of the season and there were a couple of key plays that (slipped away).”

The Diamondbacks spent more than $175 million this season, the highest in payroll in franchise history. They made their magical run to the World Series last year. They attracted the most fans to Chase Field since 2008.

And on paper, by almost all accounts, they had a better team than last year. A deeper setup. A rotation that should have featured five legitimate starters — even six. And a bullpen that was strengthened at the trade deadline and should have given manager Torey Lovullo up to six solid options late in games.

“This is the best team I’ve ever played on,” Diamondbacks right-hander Zac Gallen said. “I think that's what makes it disappointing because we had the talent here to win 89 games and, to be honest, probably more. It’s a little unfortunate.”

The offense did its part, scoring the most runs in the majors – even more than the Shohei Ohtani-led Los Angeles Dodgers.

The pitching didn’t. Crop rotation was poor most of the year, but even when healthy, it fell short of expectations. And while the bullpen looked impressive after the acquisition of left-hander AJ Puk, it never reached the levels of last September and October, not after Paul Sewald's collapse seemingly left the group in disarray.

The Diamondbacks finished with a 4.62 ERA as a team. Adjusted for league average and standard factors, the ERA+ was 91, meaning it was 9 percent worse than average. Never had a team made the postseason with such poor pitching.

Maybe the group simply overperformed last year. Or perhaps the strong postseason run combined with the shorter offseason has wreaked havoc on pitchers' arms in terms of health, performance and consistency. Whatever the reason, it finally caught up with her.

The Diamondbacks, Mets and Braves finished with 89 wins each. The Diamondbacks lost the season series to both teams, meaning they lost the tiebreaker. It came down to Monday, the day after the typical end of the regular season, as the Braves and Mets still had to make up the two games wiped out by Hurricane Helene earlier in the week.

The Diamondbacks didn't complain about the situation or the Mets' effort. By and large, they didn't seem to think their play last week earned them that right.

Gallen said it would be “tone deaf” for him to complain about the double whammy given the devastation caused by the hurricane. Instead, he turned against his own team.

“We didn't execute it,” he said, later adding, “If we had, maybe it would be a slightly different story. Maybe we sat here and waited to go where we were going and didn't go at all.”

A year ago, the Diamondbacks clinched a wild-card spot in Game No. 161. In Game #162, they rested five of their everyday players and played a bullpen game. So the Diamondbacks didn't call on the Mets for any of their decisions on Monday after punching their own postseason ticket in Game 1.

“I think every team in this position is going to do the same thing,” Kelly said. “They are looking forward to tomorrow. They know they're there. They know they won't play against their leads, and they know they won't try to get hurt.

“They'll probably tell you their effort was there, but I think if they couldn't look in the mirror and say they didn't try as hard as they could today, I think they'd be lying . And I think that's natural, right? Any team in this position would do the same. It’s just unfortunate that this game decided our fate.”

Looking back on the collapse, Kelly said he lamented two losses to the Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants in the last two weeks. But mostly he kept coming back to Sept. 22 in Milwaukee, when the Diamondbacks lost 10-9 in a game they led 8-0. That afternoon, he said, flashed through his mind as he watched the doubleheader.

“It's hard not to experience that again,” he said, “just sitting here watching a game that's out of your control when we had a game that's in your control and making it through that Fingers glided.”

Although the Diamondbacks might not have gotten close to 89 wins without second baseman Ketel Marte, he was the focus of last week. In one of the losses to the Giants, he asked out of the lineup to rest his ankle, and in Friday's loss to the Padres he made a crucial miscue.

The Diamondbacks also lost a spectacular hit on Saturday, when Puk belted two straight homers against the Padres after the offense failed to score against drafted right-hander Randy Vasquez, and earlier in the week against the Giants when they knocked out Brandon Pfaadt.

It will go down in history as the last time the Diamondbacks failed to reach the postseason for the second straight year, something they haven't done since 2001 and 2002, the fourth and fifth seasons in franchise history is.

“This will definitely be more disappointing than the years we weren’t there at all,” Gallen said, “because of the talent we had in this room.”

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