The Arizona Diamondbacks’ offense has gone as dry as their desert home in recent games, and they look to turn things around Friday night when they host the New York Mets in the first game of a three-game series at Chase Field.
Arizona has dropped six of its last seven contests, scoring a total of just 12 runs in those losses while being shut out twice. Their most recent setback came Thursday, a 4-2 defeat to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the rubber match of a three-game series.
The Diamondbacks showed a brief offensive spark with a 9-0 win in the series opener Tuesday, only to be blanked 1-0 the following night.
“We’ve got to get back to our basics and some of the things we really, really believe in,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “But overall, I believe in this offense. I see them working every single day, and those results will come, but it doesn’t happen by just going up there and believing it’s going to happen. You have to make it happen.”
Right fielder Corbin Carroll collected two of Arizona’s five hits Thursday, including a solo home run that gave them a 2-1 lead in the third inning. After that, the Diamondbacks struggled to reach base, going down in order in the next three frames before logging a leadoff single in the seventh. They managed one more hit in the eighth.
“Once again, I think this was mostly an offensive issue that I’m going to talk about and target,” Lovullo said. “This game is hard, for sure. It’s hard to hit, hard to pitch, hard to catch, hard to do everything, but we’re making it way harder than it should be.”
Right-hander Ryne Nelson (1-3, 6.61 ERA) will start for Arizona on Friday. He is 1-3 with a 5.86 ERA in six career appearances (five starts) against the Mets. His lone win came on April 8, when he allowed one run on five hits with five strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings in a 7-2 victory.
The Mets, meanwhile, aim to rebound from a 6-2 loss to the Colorado Rockies on Thursday that snapped a three-game winning streak. New York led 2-0 after two innings, but Colorado’s Jake McCarthy tied the game in the sixth and hit a grand slam in the eighth to complete the comeback.
The home run was subject to review after the ball sailed over the right-field foul pole and was ruled fair, a call that stood after a crew-chief review.
“It was close,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Especially from our angle, I couldn’t tell… It just didn’t go our way there.”
Mendoza went to his bullpen in the fifth inning after starter Christian Scott threw 82 pitches, managing his workload following Tommy John surgery that sidelined him all of last season.
Right-hander Nolan McLean (1-2, 2.97 ERA) will take the mound for the Mets on Friday. He has faced Arizona once, allowing two runs on three hits in 6 1/3 innings in a 7-1 loss on April 9.
