GM Hazen: D-Backs inconsistent but in position to strike.
SAN DIEGO – Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen did not so much dispute questions about his club’s middling performance in recent weeks as he did try to reframe them.
“It’s in front of us and I think that’s the best way to talk about it,” Hazen said. “You’d sign up for this right here – to have it within your grasp. … We’re in a pennant chase. I’ve been in August before where we’re not, so this is a good feeling.”
Sitting in the visitors’ dugout at Petco Park on Thursday afternoon, Hazen fielded questions that didn’t seem to fit with those of a first-place club. But the Diamondbacks have more backed into first – or have had it delivered to them – then they have claimed it.
Over their past 40 games – a stretch that’s roughly a quarter of the season – they are two games under .500. They entered Thursday having played five games on this road trip, all against last-place teams, and had won just two of them. And yet they managed to simultaneously gain a game in the National League West.
Making for an even more muddled picture, the Diamondbacks are the worst first-place team in baseball and yet are only four games back of the Chicago Cubs for the best record in the National League.
“You want to see us take hold of that situation, but it’s baseball and you’ve got to go through the entire season,” Hazen said. “You’re going to have your ups and downs and you’re going to have periods where you kind of tread water a little bit. That’s been like every season I’ve ever been a part of.”
To that end, he pointed to the general steadiness of his pitching staff. The Diamondbacks have a 3.60 ERA, secondbest in the NL and fourth in the majors. Their pitching has been, by and large, relatively dependable from month to month, posting monthly ERAs of 2.96, 3.87, 3.48, 4.38 and 3.19 from April through August, respectively.
Hazen acknowledged his offense hasn’t delivered in the same way. As currently constructed, the Diamondbacks’ group of position players is probably as strong as it has been at any point in the year. It is healthy and deep and filled with talent. And yet it seems to oscillate between dangerous and feeble on a nightly basis – sometimes even an inning-to-inning basis.
With 41 games remaining entering Thursday, Hazen drew a parallel to last season, when, in mid-August, the Diamondbacks were stumbling toward the finish, their status as wild-card leaders looking to be in jeopardy, when they suddenly ripped off a 13-game winning streak.
“I think, as much as anything, during the course of a long season, (it’s about) staying healthy and staying together and then having the ability to put that run together,” Hazen said.
“You never know when it’s going to happen.”
The state of the NL allows for multiple versions of reality. One is that the Diamondbacks are fortunate, and that if the league were stronger, like the AL is, they’d be on the outside of the pennant race looking in. Unlike the AL, which has what most would consider the top three clubs – at least – in baseball, the NL’s best have mostly disappointed, with the Nationals, Cubs and Dodgers all disappointing to some degree.
Hazen, though, sees it another way. He sees a deeper league, with more clubs trying to contend and thus “no easy games,” he said.
“Everybody plays each other tough,” Hazen said. “You see the games that we play within our division, we’re all pretty much roughly .500, plus or minus, against each other and I think that’s indicative of the strength overall of the (league).”
Whether he’s right about that, there’s no disputing his main point: The Diamondbacks, like the rest of the contenders in the league, have the chance to control their destiny the rest of the way. Of those 41 remaining games, 32 will come against teams that entered Thursday with .500 or better records and includes seven against the Los Angeles Dodgers and Colorado Rockies, their principal rivals in the division.