D-backs a step away from greatest comeback

Check out a photo gallery from the D-backs' 10-6 win over the Brewers in Game 4 on Wednesday.

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PHOENIX — Jubilant Ryan Roberts ripped off his jersey at the plate the last time he hit a grand slam.

It remains to be seen if his second slam in eight days took any starch out of the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Diamondbacks recorded their major league-high 49th comeback victory of the season in a 10-6 win over the Brewers in Game 4 of the National League Division Series at Chase Field on Wednesday.

Roberts’ first-inning grand slam and Chris Young’s ensuing bases-empty homer off Randy Wolf gave the D-backs a 5-1 lead, and the staggered-but-resilient Brewers did not get within two runs thereafter.

With their second straight victory, the D-backs are within one game of becoming the first National League team to overcome a 2-0 deficit in a League Division Series since that playoff tier was added in 1995.

The home team has won all four games.

“Nothing new there. We did it all year. We did it today. We have to keep doing it,” said D-backs catcher Miguel Montero, who dropped a “snake” on the Brewers after his eighth-inning single — a gesture he came up with to counter the Brewers' "beast mode" pose.

“We have to die hard, man. We have to get one more bite. That’s all it takes sometimes. The little ones bite just like the big ones sometimes.”

Like the Brewers in Milwaukee, the D-backs flexed their muscle at home, outscoring the Brewers 18-7 in Games 3 and 4, hitting five home runs, two of them grand slams. They have hit a grand slam in each of their last four home games.

The D-backs set a franchise postseason record Wednesday with four home runs — two by Young, one by Roberts and one by Aaron Hill — and got six innings out of their bullpen when Joe Saunders bobbed and weaved through the first three. Micah Owings, who manager Kirk Gibson called a good-luck charm earlier in the season, got the victory with two innings of shutout relief. It was his first postseason win after going 8-0 in the regular season.

Roberts’ slam was his second in nine days. His walk-off slam capped a six-run, 10th inning in a 7-6 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sept. 27, a victory that forced the Brewers to win the final game of the regular season to assure home-field advantage in the first round of the playoffs.

The D-backs will have a final chance to take it away Friday, when Ian Kennedy and Yovani Gallardo match up for the second time in the series. Gallardo and the Brewers won Game 1, 4-1.

Ryan Braun, 7-for-15 with three doubles and a homer in the series, doubled in a run off Saunders in the first, but the D-backs got it right back — and then some.

“It was big. When they score in the first inning, the fans especially want to see us come back and do something big. To jump out early and put the heat on them early was huge for us,” said Roberts, who said doffing his jersey after his walk-off slam against Los Angeles was a one-time thing.

Gibson, who used 108 batting orders in the regular season, tweaked his lineup slightly from the previous two games to move Roberts up a spot to sixth and drop Young one spot to seventh. Gibson said he had his reasons, and at least some of it must have had to do with matchups. Roberts was 6 for 13 with a homer in his career off Wolf entering the game, and he needed only four pitches to get to .500, although Roberts said that historical stats are not particularly helpful.

“I don’t even look at that stuff (stats) anymore. I used to look at that all the time, but you think too much into things or you ride too high,” Roberts said. “With our lineup, you could put anybody anywhere. As long as you are in there, anything could happen.”

Young’s second homer of the game, a two-run shot in the seventh inning, gave the D-backs a 10-4 lead and minimized the damage of a Carlos Gomez two-run damage in the eighth.

Young has three homers in the series and has a franchise postseason record of five homers, one more than Luis Gonzalez. Young hit two homers in the D-backs’ three-game sweep of Chicago in the 2007 NLDS. He hit fifth in the first game of this series and took hitting seventh in stride.

“I told him before the game he’s one of my picks to click,” Gibson said.

“He doesn’t pull you in the office and tells you why he changed it. He just does it,” Young said.

“I showed up and saw I was batting seventh. Honestly, it didn’t matter to me. You don’t get too selfish at this point in the season. You just try to do your part and be ready when your at-bat comes up. Sometimes you’ll come up in big situations no matter where you are hitting.”

Like rookies Paul Goldschmidt and Josh Collmenter in Game 3, rookies Collin Cowgill and Bryan Shaw came up big in Game 4. Cowgill delivered a two-out, two-run single pinch-hitting for the ineffective Saunders, and Shaw pitched 1-2/3 innings of hitless relief.

“Everybody has been doing a little something. ‘Gibby’ (Gibson) told us earlier in the year, he wanted to get us out a game with a headache and I have one right now,” Montero said. “It’s great.”