PHOENIX -- As the 2026 season got going, the Diamondbacks knew they were missing their ace pitcher in Corbin Burnes and co-closers A.J. Puk and Justin Martinez due to Tommy John surgery. The mission was simple: stay near the .500 mark as long as possible until they were back at full strength.
Puk was scheduled to return in late May, Burnes around the All-Star Break and Martinez sometime after that.
After all, the Diamondbacks won a Wild Card (and went to the World Series) with 84 regular-season wins in 2023, and they narrowly missed a Wild Card berth last year with 80 wins, as the Reds captured the final spot with 83 victories.
That might not be the case this year.
"What you anticipate happening during the course of a season is never really what you get," Arizona general manager Mike Hazen said Monday before watching his team beat the Giants, 12-2. "In the National League, [staying afloat] is not good enough."
Not with the Braves steamrolling teams, the Dodgers being the Dodgers, the Cubs taking another step forward, the Brewers winning as usual and the Padres finding ways to win games despite some offensive woes. Even the Phillies, who struggled mightily early, have jumped back ahead of the Diamondbacks in the Wild Card standings since firing Rob Thomson and promoting Don Mattingly.
With a shrinking margin for error, the Diamondbacks need to take advantage of this current stretch of 13 games in which they play a pair of struggling NL West opponents in the Rockies and Giants.
The stretch opened with three games in Colorado over the weekend, in which the Diamondbacks took two of three. They have this three-game set at home with the Giants, then four at home with the Rockies before going on the road for three in San Francisco.
"The environment in the National League is going to be challenging," Hazen said. "Even my description of staying afloat in it has to be readjusted. We've done a good job of doing that, but the game has shifted on us now, so we can't do anything differently. We have to go out there and just play good baseball and attack, just build wins."
The Diamondbacks have gotten good pitching this year, but the offense, which had been the club's strength the last few seasons, has struggled to gain traction thus far. They started to show some signs of starting to put it together on the trip to Colorado.
"I think it's the same things we've kind of talked about, like improving our chase [rate] and improving our walk percentage," Hazen said. "That's something that needs to continue to push forward. But you're not going to go out there and get 10 hits every day. We need to be able to score runs at times when the environment isn't great for us to score runs.
“I think we saw some positive signs on this last road trip, which is good to see, but we want to see this now maintained over a period of time. I think we have the players to do that. I don't think we've gotten everybody kind of hitting together. I know that doesn't happen a ton during the course of a season, but it seems like we've gone through a period where none of them are hitting."
Monday, though, everyone was on, as each member of the starting lineup collected at least one hit.
They battered an excellent pitcher in Robbie Ray, taking a 4-0 lead just four batters into the bottom of the first on a grand slam from Nolan Arenado.
"It was great today," Arenado said of the offense. "It was a huge win. I would say it's one of our better wins of the year, to be honest with you. It was really a great win for us to set the tone early. Obviously, we're not going to do that every night because pitching is really good, but we have that type of talent where we can do things like that, where it can get really out of hand for the other team. It looks like some guys are starting to get going, which is huge, and you know, hopefully we can just continue it."