Diamondbacks’ Odyssey: Club starts 4-city road trip that could determine trade deadline

PHOENIX — The Arizona Diamondbacks will play four teams in four cities across the next 11 days, and this road trip could determine what the rest of their season looks like.

With a makeup game against the St. Louis Cardinals, three contests against the Washington Nationals and three more versus the Pittsburgh Pirates, Arizona’s next seven games are playoff-like.

Those three teams are battling with the D-backs for the third National League Wild Card spot, and although there are 60 games left, this road trip will lead right into the trade deadline on Aug. 3.

“It’s going to be gritty,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “It’s something that we knew when we left St. Louis a couple weeks ago that we were going to have to turn around and come right back, and it was going to be a four-city road trip. We’ve been talking about it. It shouldn’t catch us by surprise, and we’ve got to go and play good baseball.”

The D-backs cap their road trip with three games in Cleveland before returning home to host the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Diamondbacks in thick of playoff race with 60 games to play

FanGraphs, Baseball Reference and Baseball Prospectus agreed that the D-backs had a 30-36% chance to make the playoffs this season, via their odds after Wednesday’s 15-5 win over the Athletics. Their strength of schedule (.498) is 17th toughest, and they have many games left against teams in direct competition for the third NL Wild card spot.

The D-backs entered Thursday in the final playoff slot at 53-49. The Cardinals and Pirates were a half-game back, the Marlins and Nationals 1.5 games back and the Padres three back. The D-backs have 17 more games out of their 60 overall against those five teams.

The race is wide open, and “will they buy, sell or stand pat?” is a question for each of these organizations to figure out soon.

The front office and Lovullo have been clear about wanting to buy, and shortstop Geraldo Perdomo said, “We gotta buy,” when mic’d up on the field over the weekend. It has been on the Diamondbacks to play their way onto that path, and so far over these past couple of weeks, they have.

“You try not to take one game and actually think of that as being more amplified than the other, but at this time of year, it is pretty tough,” Diamondbacks assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye told Arizona Sports’ Wolf & Luke.

“We’re clumped in the standings with five teams fighting for, I like to say, one-and-a-half wild cards. So you want to win series. It’s really hard to do what the Red Sox are doing (15 straight wins). But if you keep winning series, it makes the decision a lot easier. And we believe in this team. We feel like we haven’t played the most consistent baseball and our best baseball, and we’re still where we are right now.”

Most important road trip

The Diamondbacks have struggled to find an identity this season, in part due to injuries (especially to pitchers) but also the inconsistent play from the club’s star players.

From June 5 through July 21, the D-backs hovered within three games of .500.

After Wednesday’s win, Arizona improved to four games over .500 for the first time since June 4.

Several veterans in the clubhouse described this road trip as the most important stretch of the season, as they want to pressure the front office to buy at the deadline.

But they also preached not getting too far ahead of themselves.

– “It’s no secret, these are the most important games of the season up to this point,” catcher James McCann said. “But at the same time, I think one thing we’ve done really well here in the last little bit is just focusing on what the day is. If you look too far ahead, you find yourself getting in trouble.”

– “I think it’s probably the biggest road trip we’re gonna have all year,” third baseman Nolan Arenado told Arizona Sports. “These next few weeks are gonna be big for us. Hopefully we can win some ballgames and put some pressure on the front office to go get some help.”

– “Definitely a road trip that we need to handle business on,” pitcher Merrill Kelly said. “Hopefully come out on the winning end of the road trip … leading up to the deadline. It definitely has some big implications on it. Hopefully we can take the momentum of the baseball we’ve been playing at home and take it on the road.”

The Diamondbacks have played some of their best baseball of the season of late, winning eight of their last 10 games.

There have been some bumps mixed into that stretch, certainly, but this is their most consistent run of winning since the 13-game run against the lowly Giants and Rockies in May (11-2).

The bottom half of the order has provided depth recently that had not been evident for much of the season. Hitters 4-9 are batting .312 since July 9, the best in MLB.

Gabriel Moreno has reached base in 19 straight games.

Ketel Marte and Corbin Carroll both knocked multiple hits on Wednesday in a game the club can hope will get its star hitters rolling.

The starting pitching has been thrown into the wringer, but rookies Mitch Bratt and Kohl Drake gave the D-backs chances to win this week, and Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Pfaadt will continue to be counted on to provide stability.

The bullpen and defense have been strengths all year.

Kelly said this stretch has looked more like what Lovullo calls “D-backs baseball.”

These next 10 games given their importance will present the Diamondbacks an opportunity to show whether they can elevate beyond their .500-caliber status and enter a different conversation.

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