What has to go well for the Diamondbacks to make the postseason?

PHOENIX — Arizona Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen was blunt in his expectations for the rest of this season: “I’m very confident we’re going to get into the playoffs.”

He correctly estimated weeks in advance that his club would buy at the deadline, but the standard is much higher to crack one of six postseason spots in the National League, particularly when there only appears to be one left to go get.

The Diamondbacks have shown grit and resilience to get this far while dealing with the following:

• Ryne Nelson, Corbin Burnes, Zac Gallen and Michael Soroka have made a combined three starts since the All-Star break.
• Star players Corbin Carroll, Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte have each regressed this season offensively.
• Marte left the team hanging before a series in Boston without saying anything and missed two weeks.
• The front office fell short of its goals to add pitching at the trade deadline.
• Gallen and Merrill Kelly re-signed over the offseason and have combined for a 5.60 ERA in 239.2 innings.
• Young outfielder and breakout candidate Jordan Lawlar has missed most of the year with injuries.
• Relievers A.J. Puk and Andrew Saalfrank will not pitch this year, and Justin Martinez did not return until August.

Some of these are self-inflicted.

Others are unfortunate adversities.

All teams deal with their own problems, but the D-backs have had a lot of them. FanGraphs’ Dan Szymborski projected on Aug. 18 which teams have lost the most wins above replacement to injuries this year. The Boston Red Sox were first. The Diamondbacks were second.

The goalposts don’t change because of this, as missing the playoffs would constitute as a failed season regardless. But the Diamondbacks have been adversity-tested this season and face a very similar situation as 2023 where a good enough September could push them across.

“This team has played without four of its starting pitchers at the beginning of the season,” Hazen told Arizona Sports’ Bickley & Marotta. “Every player on my Reno team is playing a role on our major league team. To have the team sitting in a playoff chase well over .500 … is a tremendous credit to the work the manager and coaches do to keep this group together. It’s a credit to our clubhouse and the leadership in our clubhouse that is able to process the things that you’ve referenced, which are distractions, which can hurt teams.”

But are they good enough?

The D-backs (74-67) are in a neck-and-neck race with the San Diego Padres for the third NL Wild Card spot, another team that has had an eventful season for the right and wrong reasons.

Diamondbacks players and leaders continue to say Arizona has not played its best baseball for extended stretches, and a group of pitching reinforcements is coming, headlined by Burnes.

“We still think we’ve got to play a little better,” Nolan Arenado said. “I don’t think we’ve hit our stride. I’ve said that all year, but I just feel like we haven’t played as good as we know we can, so hopefully we can turn it on this last month.”

What has to happen for this group to cross the finish line ahead?

What must go right for the Diamondbacks down the stretch?

(Felisa Cárdenas/Arizona Sports)

Arizona’s Big 3 has to get something going

wRC+ is a hitting stat that compares players on an even field with 100 as the league average. In 2025, Perdomo, Marte and Carroll each produced a wRC+ between 139-146, all within the top 12 of Major League Baseball. The D-backs scored the sixth-most runs in large part due to those three.

In 2026:

• Perdomo: 107
• Marte: 107
• Carroll: 119

Gabriel Moreno (132) has been Arizona’s most consistently awesome hitter this season — an important breakout campaign for the club and his career. But the fact that it hasn’t been particularly close is not ideal.

“The one thing we haven’t gotten, the top four guys in our lineup have not gotten going together hardly at all,” Hazen said.

Perdomo has been pretty good over the last 30 games with a .325 batting average and .812 OPS. He has not been the run producer he was last year when he cracked 20 home runs, but he has nearly reached base 40% of the time since Aug. 1.

Marte has only played two games since coming back from his hiatus, and he is a player who can carry the offense when in rhythm. The faster he gets his legs back underneath, the better and the fewer boos he will hear at Chase Field.

Carroll has been the blinking red light of late, hitting .083 over his last 10 games.

“I don’t really have much for you there, just working,” he said on Wednesday when asked how his swing is feeling.

Carroll is dealing with lower back discomfort, and manager Torey Lovullo said he has a list of ailments his star outfielder has played through.

Carroll might finish with the first 20-home run, 20-double, 20-triple, 20-stolen base season since 2007 and he made his third All-Star Game, but there have been high peaks and low valleys mixed in.

The pop-ups and strikeouts have been an issue lately for Carroll, whose success typically coincides with Arizona’s.

“It’s one of those situations where he carries a heavy load for us and maybe just breaking down his swing,” Lovullo said. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but just blocking balls off instead of staying behind it and back-spinning it. I know there’s a reason for it. I think he’s getting pitched a certain way, and he’s trying to counterpunch.”

Better situational hitting

To zoom out on the offense as a whole, the D-backs have scored two runs or fewer in seven of their last 10 games. They went 2-5 in those contests.

Beyond Carroll’s slump and Marte’s absence, this lineup is struggling to capitalize with runners on base. In a three-game series against the Phillies, Arizona recorded zero hits with runners in scoring position.

The D-backs are a bottom five team in terms of home runs, so they need to generate scoring opportunities and capitalize much more efficiently.

They lost a 2-1 game on Monday in the opener against Philadelphia, a game they should have won but finished 0-for-9 with RISP. They cannot afford to let many more opportunities like that slip.

Pitching reinforcements are additive

Burnes, Gallen, Soroka and Nelson could all be back in some capacity next week. Gallen and Soroka are more stretched out than Burnes, but the latter will be counted on to start even if he cannot get deep into games (50-60 pitches). Nelson is further behind on his build-up, so a bullpen role is most likely.

“We’ve missed Corbin Burns for 15 months. That hasn’t been easy,” Lovullo said. “We’ve missed Zac Gallen for two months. Nelson, same thing. But we know they’re coming. I feel like everybody that is watching and is a part of that, when they step onto the field, just having their presence is going to help us out.”

The Diamondbacks have been waiting all year for Burnes, who underwent elbow surgery in June 2025. He expected to return by the All-Star break, but a shoulder strain set him back. Even with pitch count restrictions — the D-backs need to be cautious with him — there is a confidence that a pitcher of his pedigree brings out of the team.

Soroka has had a great season when healthy (3.40 ERA), while Nelson has experience in relief and is adding to what has already been a strength of this team.

Gallen represents a large question mark here, as he had been suffering through the worst season of his career before his elbow injury with a 6.34 ERA. Many fans questioned whether he had threw his last pitch with Arizona, but it appears he will have a say in how this season ends.

The D-backs already have Eduardo Rodriguez, Brandon Pfaadt and Kelly in the rotation, so a team dealing with a starting pitching deficit for months will suddenly have to figure out how to layer these pieces in.

Keep finding ways to win gritty

Only the Dodgers, White Sox and Cardinals have played in more one-run games than the D-backs.

The Diamondbacks lead MLB in comeback wins with 41 and are fifth in walk-off wins with eight.

Arizona has been able to rely on its bullpen and defense to keep games close even with depth concerns in the rotation after Rodriguez and Pfaadt.

The D-backs do not have a juggernaut offense, which also contributes to playing tight games regularly, but their lineup is capable of getting on a run even when facing seemingly impossible deficits. They walked off the Cardinals after tailing 7-0 and overcame a 4-0 deficit against the Cubs to walk them off within the past month. Comebacks have kept the D-backs alive.

Stack series wins

The Diamondbacks are 5-5 over their last 10 games, 10-10 over their last 20 and 15-15 over their last 30. In that span, they have not won more than two games in a row nor lost more than three consecutively.

That has been good enough to hang around, but Arizona and San Diego have some favorable matchups coming up on the schedule and probably need to stop treading water.

The D-backs have four straight series coming up against teams with a worse record than them. There are competitive matchups in there against Houston and Miami, but the point stands, there is opportunity here.

The Padres have a tough series against the Yankees starting on Friday, and then they begin a four-series stretch against teams below them on the pecking order.

There is a growing belief that Arizona’s season will come down to its final series in San Diego.

If the D-backs go 10-10 over their next 20 games, they will enter the season finale with 84 wins. That would be good enough to clinch in 2023 and 2025, but the thinking for much of this season was that it would take an upper-80s win total. Can they go 13-8 to finish with 87 victories?

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