PHOENIX -- June. It’s too early to tell if it’ll be a swoon or boon for the D-backs, but it will prove pivotal in providing a glimpse as to who this club is and will be in 2026.
Things kicked off with a 4-1 victory Monday night over the Dodgers in front of a raucous crowd at Chase Field. If the win showed anything, it was that the current iteration of the club is one that will rely on its veterans, upstart youngsters and stars equally to go blow-for-blow with baseball’s top clubs.
Eduardo Rodriguez, in his 11th MLB campaign, tossed six innings of one-run ball to stymie a scorching-hot Dodgers offense, but he was backed by third-year outfielder Jorge Barrosa, who made a pair of running grabs that saw him lay out on the center-field turf. Homers from the 24-year-old Tommy Troy (the first career blast from Arizona's No. 4 prospect), the 35-year-old Nolan Arenado and the 32-year-old Ketel Marte first tied the game, then gave the D-backs the lead and then iced it, respectively.
“You want to come out and set a tone and win the first game of the series,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “We’ve got them for four days and I couldn't be more proud of this group.”
The outing from Rodriguez marked the club’s 18th quality start since May 5, the most in the Majors. As a group, the D-backs have allowed fewer than two earned runs in 17 of their past 26 contests and rank in the top five across MLB in ERA, BB/9 and WHIP over that span. At the head of that five-headed hydra has been Rodriguez, who threw his five fastest pitches of the season (all 95-plus mph) and averaged 93.6 on his fastball, up more than 1.5 mph on his yearly average.
“That's the best I ever [possibly] felt with my fastball,” Rodriguez said, citing his World Baseball Classic start from March 11 against the Dominican Republic as a rival for that honor.
Through his first 12 starts of the year, Rodriguez has posted a 2.24 ERA, the best for any D-backs starter in the same span since Patrick Corbin in 2013. It also marks his second-lowest ERA over any 12-outing span in his career, bested only by the 2.20 mark he had from April 12-July 19, 2023.
Rodriguez, as something of a pitch-to-contact artist, relies upon the defense behind him at an elevated rate. Which made Barrosa’s pair of grabs in the fourth and fifth innings so pivotal.
“Those two plays were amazing,” Rodriguez said of Barrosa. “That gives you more confidence to keep attacking the hitters.”
The infusion of life and energy from some of the D-backs’ younger players has provided an undisputed spark for a club that has won nine of its last 10 home games.
“These guys just play hard, they play fearless and we need that [brand] of baseball,” Arenado said. “That young energy is great to have in the clubhouse. … If you watch them in the cage before the game, the way they prepare and all that, they get themselves ready to go, so they deserve a lot of credit for that.”
“I make a very conscious effort to put them into a situation where … they're comfortable in their surroundings and their own skin,” Lovullo said. “I know how hard it is for a young player to walk into the clubhouse and feel like they're on Mars. This is their clubhouse.”
That confidence is nearly oozing out of Troy, Barrosa, Ryan Waldschmidt (Arizona’s No. 1 prospect) and others who have long planned for what it would be like to contribute to a Major League club making a push toward the postseason. Even in the thrilling haze of slugging his first big league homer in the sixth, Troy dropped down a perfect bunt his next time to the dish, flipping the order to get Marte up once more, resulting in a pair of key insurance runs.
“That's high baseball IQ,” Lovullo said. “It's things we believe in here, it's things we talk about here and when it shows up, it helps you win games.”
Arenado was asked pregame about the secret sauce that it takes to beat the Dodgers, who swept the D-backs to begin the 2026 campaign and entered having won 14 of their past 17 games by a combined 70 runs.
“Good pitching, good hitting and good defense,” he said.
Check, check and check.