No matter how you split it, it’s been a pretty fun couple of weeks to be a Diamondbacks’ fan. Since May 9th, the day after the D-Backs lost an extra-inning affair to the Mets, they’ve gone a major league best 14-4 including today’s win. They’ve pitched to a 2.69 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP between then and today while putting together a .271/.346/.423 slash line and scoring 5.3 runs per game. This stretch has obviously been keyed by an incredibly hot stretch at the plate by Ketel Marte and Corbin Carroll,
but it’s also been a stretch that has shown the depth this team has up and down the lineup as well as on the pitching staff. There are obvious qualifiers, namely that none of their opponents in that stretch have winning records, but good teams are supposed to beat bad teams, none of these teams are pushovers, and they’re all professionals.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the team-focused approach the players have brought to the stadium every day during this stretch where there are days the offense has to carry the pitching staff and the pitchers find ways to support a struggling offense. This afternoon featured more of the latter as the D-Backs’ dynamic offense managed just three runs on six hits and a pair of walks while striking out eight times. Instead, Michael Soroka continued to impress in his first season with the D-Backs, keeping his ERA down at 3.25 and firmly putting that rough outing against the Brewers in the rearview mirror. As has become D-Back pitcher tradition, Soroka was the victim of one bad inning, but was otherwise pretty efficient at keeping the struggling San Francisco offense off-kilter throughout the afternoon. His one bad inning came in the third when he allowed a leadoff single to Drew Gilbert and a one-out double to Will Adames before grooving a fastball to Luis Arraez that just eluded both Soroka and Geraldo Perdomo to sneak into centerfield and plate both Gilbert and Adames to give the Giants an early two-run lead. Outside of that rough patch, Soroka limited the traffic around him by leaning on his slurve and four-seamer to keep batters guessing even if he struggled to strikeout very many Giants.
Meanwhile, an Arizona offense that has been on an incredible heater lately struggled to find any kind of traction against Trevor McDonald making just his seventh career start. Through the first five innings, Arizona batters had been limited to just three total baserunners. Unsurprisingly, Marte shifted the dynamic in the sixth with a leadoff single before being erased on a would-be double play from Corbin Carroll that he just beat out to keep the pressure up. Carroll advanced to third on a Perdomo single and eventually scored on an Adrian Del Castillo single before Ildemaro Vargas collected his 35th RBI of the season on a sacrifice fly to deep right field that tied the game. The D-Backs manufactured their final run of the game in the next inning by loading the bases on a pair of one-out singles and an ugly error from newly-entered reliever Matt Gage before Perdomo scooped a Gage changeup to left field for another sacrifice fly to give the team the lead for good.
Poor play was yet again a theme for a Giants team that has mostly disappointed to this point in the season. There was the key fielding error by Gage that loaded the bases in the seventh and set up the go-ahead sacrifice fly, but there were also two baserunning blunders that kept the Giants from tying the game in the bottom of the eighth. Adames again doubled to put the tying run into scoring position and bewilderingly tried to score on a bloop single from Arraez that Jorge Barrosa couldn’t quite corral and a perfect relay play cut him down at home. Then Arraez, who had moved up to second on the play, wandered too far off the base and Kevin Ginkel executed an excellent pickoff move to catch Arraez and end the inning. But good teams are able to take advantage of poor play from their opponents and the D-Backs have been doing that in spades lately. They are now seven games over .500 and will take on a Mariners team that has failed to find any traction in a strangely weak AL West and junior circuit more generally. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
