Goldschmidt, Greinke lead D’Backs past Mariners

Paul Goldschmidt and Zack Greinke are two of the players Arizona counts on most, and they came through when sorely needed on Sunday.

Goldschmidt hit his 30th homer, Greinke won for the first time in almost a month and the Diamondbacks avoided a three-game sweep at the hands of Seattle by beating the Mariners 5-2.

With the victory and Colorado’s 12-3 loss to St. Louis, the Diamondbacks were back alone in first place in the NL West, a game up on the Rockies and 21/2 ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Houston beat the Los Angeles Angels 3-1, so Seattle fell 61/2 behind the Astros in the AL West.

“This is an amazing game, and you can’t take anything for granted,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “We fumbled a couple of balls out there and that leads to a couple of runs, but when we had to, we made pitches and made plays and won a very tough game.

“When I tell you today was hard, that was probably an understatement after what we walked through last night.”

Goldschmidt’s three-run shot off Mike Leake (8-8) punctuated a five-run third inning for the Diamondbacks, who bounced back from blowing a two-run lead in the ninth Saturday night and losing in 10 innings.

Arizona flirted with losing this one in the ninth, too. Ben Gamel and Chris Herrmann opened the inning with singles off Yoshihisa Hirano and left fielder David Peralta dropped Dee Gordon’s line drive to allow a run to score.

Brad Boxberger, who blew the save Saturday night, came in and walked pinch-hitter Nelson Cruz to load the bases.

But Mitch Haniger lined out sharply to third and Robinson Cano bounced into a double-play to give Boxberger his 29th save in 35 tries. “We did put some pressure on them, had our chances there late,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said, “just not enough.”

Greinke (13-8) gave up an unearned run and five hits in 62/3 innings, striking out six and walking two. He had gone 0-3 in his previous four starts. Leake fell to 0-4 in his last 10 starts and hasn’t won since June 23 despite several strong outings.