For D-backs, ‘family atmosphere’ will be important down the stretch
May 23, 2017, 1:41 PM | Updated: May 24, 2017, 11:13 am
Arizona Diamondbacks' Daniel Descalso (3) celebrates his three-run home run against the Chicago White Sox with Chris Owings (16) and Paul Goldschmidt (44) during the fourth inning of a baseball game, Monday, May 22, 2017, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
On Monday night at Chase Field, the D-backs and White Sox were scoreless as starters Miguel Gonzalez and Zack Greinke traded zeroes through three innings.
Paul Goldschmidt got on in the fourth, but Gonzalez had two outs and had to retire Chris Owings to end the inning. Instead, Owings walked, and Daniel Descalso came up and capitalized on a mistake, cranking a three-run home run to open the scoring.
Descalso’s pride in that moment wasn’t for himself, but for his teammate, Owings.
“Chris Owings had a great at-bat, a great walk right before I got up there to extend the inning, really battled up there,” he told Bertrand Berry on Off the Edge with B-Train on 98.7 FM, Arizona’s Sports Station. “For me, with men in scoring position there, just tried to look for something up, out over the plate.”
The team-first mentality is one that Descalso said was instilled upon the group as soon as Torey Lovullo — currently in his first year as the manager of the D-backs — came aboard.
“This group is really close,” Descalso said. “It started in Spring Training with the new manager, Torey Lovullo, coming in day one saying, ‘This has to be a family, we have to have each others’ backs.’ We spend so much time together during the season that if there’s not that family atmosphere, you really aren’t going to have a chance to compete late into October.”
Descalso is new to the group, too.
The 30-year-old is in his eighth big league season after spending time with the St. Louis Cardinals — who drafted him — and the Colorado Rockies. He’s hitting just .194 with four home runs this year in mostly a utility bench role, though he says he believes the success of stars like Zack Greinke and Paul Goldschmidt have helped the rest of the team, “putting everyone at ease.”
It appears he’s right: Arizona’s .266 team average is the fifth-best in baseball, and the staff’s 3.60 ERA is fourth in MLB.
Continuing that success could pay dividends for the D-backs, who haven’t been to the playoffs since 2011.
“This is a talented group,” he said. “I think people didn’t really give us a chance coming out of Spring Training, but us in that clubhouse knew that if we got the good pitching we knew we had in our rotation and some guys stepped up in the bullpen and the offense we had, we knew were going to surprise some people.”
