Arizona Diamondbacks – among league leaders, hitting remains strong

The offense for the Arizona Diamondbacks continues to be potent

What many conclude as a difficult season at best for the Arizona Diamondbacks, hitting is not a principal reason for the club’s fall from grace.

The essential decline of the team lay in the pitching. Both the starters and relievers share equal blame for the deterioration of expectation, and for the trouble which enveloped the season. While the offense has not tampered from the strong numbers of last season, the real disappointment lays with the fact that the pitching failed to catch up with the offense.

In sweeping the Colorado Rockies this week in Chase Field, that accomplishment was the first time the Arizona Diamondbacks swept a series this season at home. If there was any consolation, the hitting turned Chase Field into a band-box, and remained observers of the smaller stadiums which populated major league baseball in the formative years of the 20^th century.

“It took long enough,” manager Chip Hale told MLB.com after completion of the sweep. “We’d have liked to have done it earlier, but the guys are playing hard. We talk to them a lot about keep playing nine innings, keep playing hard, and they’ve never stopped. Even during the tough times, the losing streaks, they’ve never stopped playing hard.”

During the Rockies series, the Arizona Diamondbacks scored 34 runs, and that is a franchise record for a three-game set. They banged out 50 hits and tied the mark for most hits in a three-game series. The 22 extra-base hits in the set also tied a franchise record, set against Seattle from June 18-20, 2012.

In concert with the Rockies, the two teams combined for 265 runs in their season series, and that’s the highest combined total since the start of divisional play in 1969.