Did the D-Backs do enough in a soft stretch?
After this afternoon’s solid 5-2 win over the Nationals, the Diamondbacks have gone through most of the softest part of their schedule in June when they squared off almost exclusively against sub .500 teams. In fact, the only teams they will face this month that are above .500 are the Phillies and the Twins. If you want to extend the window, you could also include the two and a half series that ended the month of May when they faced off against the Marlins, Rangers, and the first half of the four-game set against the Mets. In June, they’ve undoubtedly been playing better as they are now 12-6 on the month and put themselves in a strong position to have their first winning month of the season. But that extended stretch only yielded a 13-12 record. With an NLCS rematch looming this weekend, it begs the question: did the D-Backs do well enough in this soft stretch to put themselves back into playoff position?
In one sense, they absolutely have. At the end of play today, the D-Backs are clinging to the third and final Wild Card spot in the National League with a whopping three other teams within a half game. The rest of the league (sans Rockies and Marlins) are all within a game and a half. It looks like the NL Wild Card race will truly be undecided until the final parts of the season. Today’s win gave them their third consecutive series win and showcased the reasons the team has been better as of late: an excellent, effective starter combined with timely hitting. It’s a potent combination, especially since it often leads to an early score that the Arizona pitching can then hold rather than trying to work from behind which this team seems incapable of doing.
They’ve made this run by playing better fundamental baseball – especially on the offensive side with an impressive .287/.360/.472 slash line for the month of June. Conversely, the topline numbers for the starters and relievers isn’t particularly noteworthy with a 5.15 ERA and 1.475 WHIP out of the rotation combined with a 4.79 and 1.486 from the bullpen. Amazingly, those performances are actually quite a bit better than the rest of the league based on sOPS+ – an all-around split statistic that compares a player to the rest of the league. The rotation has posted a 131 sOPS+ so far in June while the bullpen has managed a 123 sOPS+ for the month. In all fairness though, this may say more about the poor performances of other pitching staffs than it does as teams continue to lean more and more on depth pieces after a seemingly never-ending slew of injuries. The D-Backs themselves are a case in point as the starters they’ve utilized in June (Brandon Pfaadt, Slade Cecconi, Ryne Nelson, Jordan Montgomery, Scott McGough, and Blake Walston) would charitably be considered openers or backend rotation pieces this year.
More encouragingly, a number of individual contributors have also started to take meaningful strides forward both at the plate and on the mound. None more importantly than Corbin Carroll who owns a .290/.397/.436 slash line for the month and recently extended his on-base streak to 19 games with this double that he turned into a triple with his trademark speed. I want to reiterate that a team’s success is not defined by a single player’s performance or lack thereof, but it’s hard to overstate the downstream effects a healthy, effective Carroll has on the lineup. I don’t think it’s any surprise that his turnaround at the plate has dovetailed so well with the team’s offensive turnaround this month. Towit, there are a number of other contributors that have had excellent months like Ketel Marte (.345/.437/.638) and Lourdes Gurriel Jr (.317/.339/.500). It truly has been a team effort with the lumber and the team needs every bit of offense while they wait for pitching reinforcements to arrive.
For the hurlers, Ryne Nelson has been one of the few bright spots alongside closer-in-waiting Justin Martinez. Nelson owns a 3.75 ERA and 1.08 WHIP through four starts, which would amazingly mark his best full month in the rotation to this point. Those numbers get even better if you remove the disaster he suffered at the hands of the Padres back on June 8 when he coughed up 5 ER in just 3.1 IP. Meanwhile, Martinez has continued to dominate batters with an absolute wipeout, unhittable slider that has a miniscule .056 BAA. If you pair that with a sinker and four-seamer that average 100 MPH, you have the recipe for a devastating combination. He’s almost certainly over his skis as there’s a sizable margin of difference between his FIP (2.48) and absurd ERA (0.67), but this bullpen will absolutely take it for now.
I never want to bemoan winning series. If you win the series against the bad teams and split them with the good ones, you’ll probably find yourself at the very least in the mix for a playoff spot. But when you dig yourself as deep a hole as this version of the Snakes dug, simply winning series doesn’t feel like enough. It’s especially galling when there were eminently winnable games during this stretch that they couldn’t pull off – like the 1-3 loss against these same Nats on Wednesday. If the D-Backs were somehow able to sustain this June performance for the rest of the season, which would be nigh on impossible, they would find themselves with an eye-popping 95 wins. That kind of win total would virtually guarantee to put them into one of the Wild Card spots – especially with the mediocre morass that the NL appears to be this season. But we return to our guiding question: did the Snakes do enough to get themselves back into contention? Unfortunately, the answer is much like this team as a whole: a collective shrug. They’ve been playing better, with more joy, and with an identity for the first time. But we’ll have to wait and see if it will be enough when they return to the more difficult parts of their schedule