- The Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants are unexpectedly in the wild-card race despite underperforming earlier in the season.
- Both teams traded away key players at the deadline, seemingly giving up on their postseason chances.
- A collapse by the New York Mets has opened the door for teams like the Diamondbacks and Giants to contend for a playoff spot.
PHOENIX — The Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants looked across the field from one another Monday night and couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
They were looking at a mirror, seeing a reflection of themselves.
Just six weeks ago, they were two of the most underachieving teams in all of baseball, and on the road to nowhere.
Now, here they were at Chase Field, two mediocre teams hovering around .500, and somehow finding themselves in the middle of an authentic wild-card race.
Thanks to a New York Mets’ collapse – 32-49 since June 13 – that has allowed them to dream of a miracle after they gave up hope themselves.
The Diamondbacks – even after offering $15 tickets and shouting out to anyone who’d listen that they really are in a pennant race – hardly drew the raucous crowd they hoped for with 21,251 tickets sold, but moved closer to the Mets with an 8-1 laugher over the Giants at Chase Field.
The D-backs (76-75) vaulted past the Giants (75-75) and moved to within just 1½ games of the Mets, while the Giants and Cincinnati Reds (75-75) are now two games back.
Pretty sweet position to be in for a team that waved the white flag at the trade deadline. They dumped their All-Star third baseman and premier power hitter (Eugenio Suarez), their starting first baseman (Josh Naylor), their best pitcher (Merrill Kelly), their best reliever (Shelby Miller) and their DH (Randal Grichuk).
They received little but fringe prospects in return, but saved $17 million for next year, gearing for the future.
The players say they still believed in themselves, knowing they still had two months to play, but now can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the front office hadn’t gutted their roster.
‘In a perfect world, you would have loved for the front office to go, ‘We’re going to stand pat, we think this team is good,’’ Zac Gallen, who dominated the Giants by yielding just two hits and one run in six innings, told USA TODAY Sports. ‘I just think we kind of put them in that spot where they felt like that was the best thing for the organization. I understand that when you’re in that job, you can’t necessarily look at one year, you’ve got to look at the future and things like that. So I understand that they were looking for the future in some of those things.
‘But I would argue to say, and no disrespect to the guys who left, we got some guys in here who got opportunities, and they’re relishing in those opportunities. I think that’s why we’re playing so well now.’
Indeed, this is a team that was 10 games out of a wild-card berth on Aug. 1, but has since gone 25-17, the third-best record in the National League behind only the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers in that span.
The Giants have pulled out the same kind of magic. Even after acquiring DH/first baseman Rafael Devers and the $255 million remaining on his contract, they decided to give up, too. They traded away their two best relievers in Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers, and outfielder Mike Yastrzemski. They received seven prospects, and also major-league reliever Jose Butto and reserve outfielder Drew Gilbert in return.
Did the Giants’ players agree with the front office’s assessment and think they were done, too?
‘Yes,’ three-time Cy Young winner Justin Verlander told USA TODAY Sports. ‘Especially the way we started playing.’
The Giants lost 12 of 14 entering the trade deadline, were six games behind the Mets for the final wild-card berth, but somehow are now just 1½ games behind New York.
They have gone a National League-best 14-7 since Aug. 23, despite losing three of their last four games, and are the closest they have been to a playoff berth this late in the season since MLB expanded the postseason to three wild-card spots.
‘Lo and behold, baseball,’ Verlander said. ‘The best-laid plans. It’s just fun man, It’s been a fun ride.’
The Diamondbacks were seven games below .500 (51-58) when they dumped the heart of their team. Then, they started winning. Suddenly, they dreaming like it’s 2023 all over again when they shocked the baseball world by reaching the World Series after winning just 84 regular-season games.
‘We saw it happen in ’23, so I don’t think that’s lost on anybody in the clubhouse here,’ Gallen said. ‘A lot of guys who were on that team are here today. So for us we kind of tested ourselves with the mentality, ‘Let’s go down swinging.’ ‘
It’s a testament to Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo, who kept a positive atmosphere, and reminded them they still were good enough to compete, and, hey, crazy things can happen.
You know, like a certain New York team completely falling apart.
‘I don’t want us to keep talking about ’23 because that was a totally different year,’ Lovullo said. ‘But I want us to be able to say we have done this before and we know what it feels like into this clubhouse, and just be present, and be yourself.’
Besides, as much of a hit the Diamondbacks took at the trade deadline, they still hung onto their core of Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo and Gabriel Moreno, along with starters Gallen, Ryne Nelson, Brandon Pfaadt and Eduardo Rodriguez.
‘From my standpoint, I thought we could still win games,’ said D-backs center fielder Alek Thomas, ‘and you know we’re doing that. So just because some guys left, and some guys that meant a lot to the team this year, it happens. That’s baseball. But you just got to keep on going.
‘Playing meaningful baseball this late in the year, probably not too many people expected us to be in this position after the trade deadline. So it’s fun. It’s cool.’
The key, it turns out, was not trading the one guy they shopped everywhere.
The guy making this run even possible is Gallen.
Gallen finished in the top five in Cy Young voting in two of the last three years, but struggled so badly in the first half – 7-10 with a 5.40 ERA – that the D-backs couldn’t trade him. They tried, but never came close to receiving an offer to tempt them.
Well, Gallen has since become one of the National League’s best pitchers once again, going 5-2 with a 2.68 ERA in his last nine starts, and showing why he’ll be one of the most coveted starting pitchers in free agency this winter.
‘I took it pretty personally because I felt like I was one of the opposites of a bright spot in the first half,’ Gallen said, ‘I went out there and just didn’t give us a chance to win.
‘For me to kind of understand what was at stake for us as a team, I needed to buckle down. Just give these guys the best chance I can to help us win baseball games. … I look back and there were a lot of winnable gams that for whatever reason, I hung the bullpen out to dry, I hung the offense out to dry.
‘So, I can go to sleep at night and shoulder a lot of that blame, but at the same time, it’s a hard game. You show up the next day, the next time you pitch, you just try to keep improving. So that’s what I’m trying to do.’
Despite climbing back into contention, the D-backs realize they still face a steep hill. They have the toughest schedule among all contenders (.552 winning percentage) with their final 11 games against the Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. They also happen to have the 29th-worst bullpen in baseball, already blowing 29 saves.
Still, they have renewed life, with their starting rotation going 10-1 with an MLB-best 2.60 ERA in its last 18 starts while scoring an average of 5.25 runs a game this month. They have 11 games remaining to pull off the miracle finish.
‘It means the world to me that they had a chance to choose one road or the other, and they stayed on the only road they know,’ Lovullo said. ‘And that’s go out and play the game of baseball, have fun, and expect to win baseball games.
‘So we are at a good spot. But we’re not at our final destination.’