Win some, lose some has very much been the pattern for Arizona this month.
The Diamondbacks will try to do something fairly basic tonight, which they have not been able to do for some time. Win consecutive games. If it feels like they have been hovering just above Mt. 500 for a while… that’s because they have. They last had back-to-back victories on May 1, in the rubber game of the series against the Mets in New York. But despite that, they haven’t lost much ground either, because the last time they were beaten in consecutive games was May 3. Indeed, the D-backs are now on a 10-game streak of strictly alternating wins and losses, which is genuinely impressive. If you presume a 50/50 shot in each game, you’d have a one in 512 chance of running out such a streak.
It’s difficult to be sure when was the last time they did something like this, because there’s no easy statistical search. I basically have to stare at the schedule and try to spot the appropriate pattern. So I quite possibly might have missed such a streak. But the last ten-game spell where Arizona alternated wins and losses I found was August 19-28, 2016. Four of those games were decided on walk-offs. I almost want the D-backs to lose tonight, so they can extend the current streak to eleven games. The last time I found that happened, was back in August 2003, when they did it from the 16th through the 26th. It’s such a gloriously meaningless feat, I kinda want to witness it.
We’ll see if Brandon Pfaadt can end the streak, and follow up on Merrill Kelly’s stellar outing last night. Pfaadt rebounded from a disaster in Philadelphia with arguably his best start of the year against the Dodgers. He blanked them for 6.1 innings of four-hit ball, lowering his season ERA to 3.28. He’ll be pitching in front of the second coming of Jordan Lawlar, who gets the start at shortstop, with Tim Tawa prowling center-field behind them, making his MLB debut at the position (he has started 95 games there in the minors, so it is familiar territory). We also face Robbie Ray, who pitched for Arizona what seems like an age ago, but was only 2020. He is 5-0, so I am feeling like some regression is in order.