Extra, extra(s), read all about it: State of D-backs after rigorous homestand

PHOENIX -- A homestand that opened with six solid innings of one-run ball from Brandon Pfaadt to secure a win ended in similar fashion. It was the days in between that got wild, historic and well, just plain extra.

Dating back to last Sunday, the D-backs played in four extra-inning contests, the second time that’s occurred in franchise history in a seven-day span (June 26-July 3, 1999). The result has been the taxation of a thin relief core that has recently been without key cog A.J. Puk (left elbow) and missing Kendall Graveman (back) and Kevin Ginkel (right shoulder) all season.

That led to Pfaadt being pushed deep into the seventh inning, hitting the century mark in pitches for just the fourth time in his big league career. He earned the victory in the club’s 6-4 win over the Braves at Chase Field on Sunday afternoon, marking his fifth of the season, giving him the National League lead.

It took a pair of veritable Houdini acts to get there. Atlanta put the first two runners of the game into scoring position, before Corbin Carroll recorded his third outfield assist of the year to spin a double play in the first; Shelby Miller delivered his 11th consecutive scoreless outing to open 2025, coming on in the seventh and escaping runners at the corners with none out to wiggle around the meat of the Braves’ order.

The path to victory was a thin margin, one which often eluded Arizona during the week after being two outs away on Thursday and watching history for Eugenio Suárez on Saturday, albeit in a losing effort. For a club that missed the 2024 postseason by a single game, the return to October is arduous; you never know which game will swing the pendulum.

“Nothing is bad luck for me in this game,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “Every once in a while you'll say, ‘Oh, that kind of sucked and that cheap hit got us’ or whatever, but I can live in that space one percent of the time. I believe when you go out there and you play the game with an identity -- and you do things aggressively, and you're prepared to do them well, and you do them right -- you're going to go out there and create your own successes.”

Mere hours after soaking in one of the most individually successful offensive games in Major League history, the D-backs stepped back between the white lines. The thing they say about momentum is that it’s only as good as your next day’s starting pitcher.

Pfaadt provided two distinctly polar-opposite outings vs. Atlanta in 2024:
April 6: 5 2/3 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 7 K
July 11: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 4 K

No longer merely the prospect with tantalizing promise to step into a stout big league rotation, Pfaadt has now emerged as a legitimate member. And with that comes the territory of being able to study how he’s attacked successful big leaguers vs. how the rest of MLB has.

“I watched film of both starts against them last year,” Pfaadt said, “I looked in depth at that and so I used that to my advantage.”

Add in a home run from Geraldo Perdomo, a pair of mesmerizingly fast triples from Carroll -- at 10.87 and 11.02 seconds home-to-third, they marked the two fastest such times in the Majors this season -- and a three-hit game from Josh Naylor, and it’s a flight full of smiles to New York.

All told, the D-backs wrapped up their homestand 2-4, having battled a pair of teams expected to contend for postseason berths as the year goes on.

“We're a good baseball team,” Lovullo said. “I feel like we could, instead of going 2-4, we could have gone 4-2 on this homestand very easily. That's my standard. That's what I'm frustrated about. In the areas where we needed to win innings and win moments, we did not. So we respect the Braves. We respect the Rays. Both very well-managed teams with a ton of talent, haven't quite got their footing early on in the season.

“But we're the Arizona Diamondbacks and we're a damn good baseball team.”