Brunch baseball, second helpings…
The Diamondbacks haven’t been swept in a series this season. But that could change this afternoon, after losing the first two games in St. Louis. Arizona has now lost four straight, tying a season worst, dropping back to .500. All is hopeless. Well, you’d be forgiven for thinking so, going by certain outposts on social media, anyway. Oh, make no mistake. The D-backs can play better. But worth noting that the four defeats were by a total margin of just five runs. A bloop here, a seeing-eye single there, and they’d have split them. I know some are averse to these, but Deserve to Win gave Arizona odds of 78% or better in three of the four losses.
Over the course of a season, this kind of thing should even out. It would be nice if that started happening sooner rather than later. But it’s also worth noting the rest of the NL West have had their struggles too. Everyone in the division lost yesterday – and unlike the D-backs, the Dodgers, Padres and Giants all lost to opponents with worse records. This has been a trend of late. Remember when the division had the three best records in the majors, and nobody in the NL outside the division had a better record than the fourth-place D-backs? No longer the case. The Dodgers (3rd) are the only NL West team in the major league top six now.
Just last week, the Dodgers lost four in a row too, and the Padres dropped six straight. Since May 7, every team in the division has a losing record. Over that time, Arizona has dropped precisely no ground on any divisional rival, and indeed, have gained on San Francisco and San Diego. It currently feels like the wild-card contest could involve the Central and East much more than it looked in the early going. So winning this finale would certainly be helpful. But we are still not even one-third of the way through the season. The current three-game deficit from a wild-card spot can be wiped out with a good week. Here’s to this afternoon being the start of that week.