Arizona Diamondbacks at San Francisco Giants

Before he left his office to head to the dugout for Friday night's game, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo looked at GM Mike Hazen and told him something. “I'm going to go full-throttle tonight with the bullpen,” was essentially the message. Yes, Lovullo was aware that a day-night doubleheader loomed on the calendar for Saturday, but in his mind, Friday was almost a must-win game. Lovullo was true to his word, aggressively deploying his top relievers in what turned out to be a 10-6 win over the Giants at Oracle Park. The win, combined with the Padres’ loss to the Rays, pulled the Diamondbacks to within half a game of San Diego for the final NL Wild Card spot. The standings were one of the reasons that Lovullo considered this game so important, but it also had to do with where the Diamondbacks had come from earlier in the week, and what transpired Thursday night. Arizona dropped the first game of its series with the Cubs on Monday, and then improbably rallied to win the second game and shut Chicago out in the series finale Wednesday. It was a big series win against a team that is all but certainly headed to the postseason. But then the Diamondbacks laid an egg Thursday night, falling 6-1 to a woefully depleted Giants team that entered the series 25 games under .500. "The way that we came out of the Chicago series, and last night we got beat, and to say that we're going to come in here and win four games in a row would be a very tough task," Lovullo said. "We knew that, but splitting \[the series\