Diamondbacks rally to defeat Phillies, win improbable NL pennant; will face

PHILADELPHIA — Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo peered into the abyss on Aug. 11, 74 days before his team captured the National League pennant in an improbable, month-long ambush of their better-touted foes with a 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. The prospect appeared remote only two months ago, when the Diamondbacks lost for the ninth consecutive game. The club had lost its hold on the NL West. A chance at the postseason looked to be fading. “We’ve got to get this thing to turn around,” Lovullo said. “Somehow. Some way.”

The Diamondbacks did not make a miraculous recovery. The club won the next day to end the skid. They won again the day after that. They won more than they lost the rest of the month. They won enough in September to squeak into the postseason, the sixth and final seed. They were an 84-win team with a run differential that suggested they should be worse. But they possessed a ticket to the dance. That was all Lovullo’s team required. Not since the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, an 83-game winner, has a club with this little regular season success reached the World Series.

Yes. It is true. The Diamondbacks are going to the World Series. You can say it again, if the sentence sounds foreign on the tongue. You can read it again, if it looks strange on the page. You can ponder, as many across baseball have, just how Arizona got here.

Ask the Diamondbacks if they care. Ask the 45,397 fans at Citizens Bank Park if they can believe it, not after Philadelphia won the first two games of this series and returned home after Game 5 needing only one more victory. Ask anyone in the sport if they predicted this — that person is probably fibbing.

In completing the comeback, earning its first World Series berth since 2001, Arizona displayed all the grit and hustle that carried them to this stage. Corbin Carroll, their sensational rookie outfielder, recorded three hits, scored twice and supplied a crucial seventh-inning sacrifice fly. Fellow rookie Gabriel Moreno delivered two RBI singles. The relief corps was steely behind a third rookie, starter Brandon Pfaadt, who avoided the barrels of Phillies sluggers Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper for four innings. Arizona reliever Kevin Ginkel did the same with Trea Turner and Harper to defuse a seventh-inning jam.

Phillies manager Rob Thomson was well-served in his decision to stick with third baseman Alec Bohm in the cleanup spot. Bohm supplied a home run and scored another run. But little else went right for Philadelphia. The lineup failed to cash in on opportunities in the fourth and the fifth, before Arizona pulled ahead. They put up little fight against Joe Mantiply, Ryan Thompson, Andrew Saalfrank, Ginkel and Paul Sewald, a quintet of relievers who can spend the next few days studying the Texas Rangers. Game 1 of the World Series will take place on Friday evening at Globe Life Field.

To see the World…