'That's not D-backs baseball': Costly mistakes spoil return from break

PHOENIX -- A little more than three hours before Friday night's game against the Cardinals, Torey Lovullo sat in front of the media at his daily briefing and talked about the importance of starting the second half of the season off on a good note.

The Diamondbacks manager had watched his team close the first half with four straight wins, including a three-game sweep of the Dodgers in Los Angeles, and he wanted to make sure there was no letdown after the four-day All-Star Break.

"I addressed it before the break," Lovullo said. "Said a little something about it after the break. [Bench coach Jeff Banister] said something before the break. So, these boys will be ready to go."

Ten minutes after the disappointing 5-4 loss to the Cardinals, Lovullo sat in the same spot, and the frustration with the way his team had played was obvious and in case it wasn't, he made it clear.

"I'm pretty pissed," Lovullo said.

The worries that Lovullo had about how a team can sometimes play sloppy coming off the break were realized.

There was a first-inning error by Ketel Marte that led to a pair of unearned runs.

There were some unproductive at-bats with runners in scoring position leading to an 0-for-9 tally in those situations.

There was a grounder back to the mound that Paul Sewald couldn't handle in the ninth that started the Cardinals' winning rally.

Most distressing was when pinch-runner Jorge Barrosa, the potential tying run, got picked off first base in the bottom of the ninth with nobody out.

Marte was then called out on strikes to end the game on a pitch that was above the zone and which he didn't challenge despite the Diamondbacks still having a pair of ABS challenges left.

"That's not D-backs baseball," Lovullo said. "So, especially coming off of the type of baseball that we were playing, and you guys sat here and asked me, 'Are we ready?' And I told you we were. I think we were, but we just lost a little bit of our focus at the most critical times, and that's not what I like. I like for us to execute at a high level.

"There are 15 other things that happened in this game that are still eating at me right now, and we will address them one by one as a coaching staff, and we will address them one by one with the players, so we get better and learn from it. That's what we do. We coach until they learn, and we execute on the level that I anticipate and what is our standard. We didn't get there today."

They'll need to get back to it quickly. Time is ticking down toward the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline and the Diamondbacks at 49-48 are 2 1/2 games out of the final NL Wild Card spot but will need to leapfrog three teams.

Last year, a tough stretch in which they lost nine of 10 heading into that Deadline forced GM Mike Hazen into being a seller, something he and the clubhouse desperately want to avoid this time around.

Friday felt like a missed opportunity, not just to make up ground against the Cardinals, one of the teams they'll need to pass, but also to continue to build off the Dodgers series.

"That's a frustrating one," starter Merrill Kelly said. "I think coming off the break, obviously we had a good week leading up to the break [and] wanted to carry that momentum through here."