Diamondbacks’ slump is hurting their postseason chances

The Arizona Diamondbacks’ offense has been a tough watch lately, and Friday’s 3-1 loss to the Houston Astros piled on to a week’s worth of lousy performances.

The D-backs have scored one run in each of their last four games, going 1-3.

There are several concerning trends plaguing this lineup, and a main culprit continues to be the lack of success with runners in scoring position.

The Diamondbacks do not have a hit with RISP during this four-game stretch, as their lone run on Friday came on a Gabriel Moreno solo home run. Their most recent hit with RISP was in last Saturday’s doubleheader nightcap against the San Francisco Giants, a 1-for-6 team effort.

The lineup went 0-for-4 in such situations on Friday, with the defining moment of this loss coming in the form of a bases-loaded, inning-ending double play from Nolan Arenado in the sixth. Any momentum built was swiftly wiped away.

There were too many unproductive outs, including 13 strikeouts. It was not a case of having no pitches to hit, but too often in this game D-backs hitters failed to punish pitches over the heart of the plate.

The D-backs walked seven times and drove none of those runners home.

Corbin Carroll went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts and two pop-ups. He stranded two runners with an inning-ending pop-up in the seventh. Whether his back is hurting him more than he is letting on, his swing adjustments have resulted in unintended vulnerabilities or he is simply not seeing the ball well at the moment, Carroll has sunk into a costly 3-for-40 slump. That is an .075 batting average over 11 games.

Additionally, the D-backs cannot seem to shake their deficiencies against right-handed pitching. Astros starter Christian Javier threw five innings of one-run ball on Friday with one hit, and he entered the game with a 6.45 ERA.

The D-backs entered Friday with a .230 batting average and .682 OPS against righties, both bottom three in MLB. It is major a flaw of this roster that gets particularly exposed when Carroll and Kete Marte struggle. Carroll has a .731 OPS against righties for the season, and Marte’s is .699.

The only D-backs hitters with an OPS above .800 against right-handers this season are Moreno, backup catcher James McCann and Tyler Locklear, who is in Triple-A.

The D-backs have tried shuffling the lineup many times and cannot seem to land on an order that sticks.

“I have moved that group around so much, that one-two-three-four-five-six group around so much that I don’t know what the answer is,” manager Torey Lovullo told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo before first pitch.

“Overall, they just got to be the best version of themselves and when they link up together and one person doesn’t feel like they’re carrying the entire workload, that’s when we get really strong and powerful. We have yet to play our best offensive baseball all season long. It’s had spurts of showing that consistency over the past x amount of games that’s shown a lot more support of us scoring more runs but we haven’t.”

Arizona’s pitching staff has allowed 12 runs over these last four games, generally good enough for a winning record.

Merrill Kelly delivered a quality start on Friday (six innings, three earned runs) and the bullpen continued its excellence from Wednesday’s 1-0 win with a pair of shutout frames. Justin Martinez struck out two hitters in his inning.

Kelly allowed three runs in the third inning and nothing after that to keep the game close to no avail.

Arizona is locked in a neck-and-neck race with the San Diego Padres. Every game that the Diamondbacks fall behind or fail to expand their lead will make life more difficult in the waning days of the regular season.

With 20 games left, this lineup needs to lock in and execute.

The Diamondbacks will look to rebound on Saturday with Brandon Pfaadt on the mound against Astros right-hander Ethan Pecko.

The game starts at 4:15 p.m. MST on FOX, 98.7 and the Arizona Sports app. 

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