Player of the gameMichael SorokaARI7.0ip 3h 1er 6k
Their homestand didn't necessarily go the way they wanted, but the Diamondbacks finished it on the right note. Behind another good outing from Michael Soroka, the Diamondbacks beat the Nationals, 5-1, on Sunday afternoon to avoid a sweep in the three-game series. They finished up their week at home with a 3-4 mark. "Probably an incomplete grade," manager Torey Lovullo said when asked to assess the homestand. "Nothing overly alarming, and nothing to get overly excited about. I want to come home and win baseball games." It's been a bit of an up-and-down stretch for the Diamondbacks. They dominated a run of 13 straight games against the NL's two worst teams, going a combined 11-2 against the Rockies and Giants. They got swept in Seattle before coming home to face the Dodgers for four games. Arizona held its own, splitting that series and believing it had some momentum after winning the final game. Then the Nationals came into Chase Field and thumped the Diamondbacks -- 14-1 on Friday night and 6-1 on Saturday afternoon. "We just ran into a little bit of a buzzsaw," Lovullo said of the first two games against the Nationals. "The Dodgers are a good team. Maybe we let our guard down a little bit and we got punched in the face the past couple days. I don't like when that happens. So we got to be ready, no matter who we're playing."
