PHOENIX — Baseball is amazing because a 22nd-round pick from the New Jersey Institute of Technology can stand 60 feet, 6 inches from one of the best hitters on the planet and need just one pitch to compete a night he would never forget. Mark Leiter Jr. threw Paul Goldschmidt a cutter in the sixth inning of Friday’s 6-1 Phillies win. Goldschmidt smacked it toward the right-field line.
The Diamondbacks, one of the best offenses in baseball, tallied 26 runs in the previous two days. No team hits better at home than Arizona. Leiter, the son of a big-league pitcher, had never started a game in the majors.