First things first. A huge collective up-arrow for the team, who defied pre-series predictions that they were the worst team in the post-season, to come within a sacrifice-fly of defeating the Brewers in a decisive Game 5. They showed immense heart and determination in coming back to win consecutive elimination games, and only five major-league teams played deeper into October. Not bad for a team almost universally picked by the pundits to finish dead last in their division.

After the jump, we'll look at who got us to extra innings in Game 5.

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So close we can practically taste it. And I trust I need not spell out what "it" is. A mixed bag of results for Arizona, who had to salvage the series finale in San Diego, but did then come home and take two of three from Pittsburgh. That's a 3-3 record, fractionally outscoring the opposition, 18-16. With a team ERA of 2.60,.but a collective OPS of .695, seems that, as a whole, the pitchers were up and the hitters down this week. But let's break it down further, and see which players enjoyed riding the roller-coaster of small sample-size, in our final weekly trends. For next time, it'll be a little different...

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Seven series victories in a row for Arizona, four of them coming on the road. This would be why we are going to the playoffs. 5-2 over the past week, outscoring the opposition 33-24, and it has now been more than three weeks since we've lost consecutive games. Five of the games since last time were decided by one run, including both losses, so plenty of excitement, even as the magic number continued to shrink. An off-day today, before the team starts up again in San Diego. How has each player performed this week?

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September under way: the rosters expand, and the Diamondbacks navigated a potentially-tricky road-trip very nicely, taking the series both in San Francisco and Colorado, bringing them ever closer to the NL West title [98.8% according to coolstandings.com]. A 4-2 record is good, and we outscored the opposition 31-27: as you can tell, the offense were a little more impressive than the pitching this week. Though, as ever, there were some wide variations in the performance spectrum...

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Moving this back to Thursdays the rest of the season - there seemed to be less going on, SnakePit-wise than on Friday, and with today being an off-day, it doesn't actually make any difference to this week's stats, so seemed an ideal opportunity. Obviously, a pretty good week for Arizona: we swept the home-stand, enjoying our best run in more than eight years, and outscored the opposition 32-9. Fortunately, a rush shipment of green arrows arrived at SnakePit Towers yesterday, so we're well stocked for this week's report. Though with a team ERA of 1.33, the standards among pitchers might be a little tough this week...

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Truly a week of two halves. We got swept by the Braves, and lost the first game in Washington, before coming back to take the last three against the Nationals. That left our record at 3-4, and we were outscored 18-20. However, the offense got back on track, scoring two, four and eight since Tuesday - so I am confidently predicting that we'll score 16 tonight against the San Diego Padres. We should be unstoppable thereafter. Breaking it down to an individual level, how did the Diamondbacks do over the past seven days?

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A 4-2 week for Arizona, sweeping the Mets, and avoiding a sweep on the road in Philadelphia. The result was our lead expanding to 2.5 games, with 38 left on the schedule. Baseball Prospectus still thinks the Giants are 70% favorites to win the division. Reading the comments on McC [part of my morning ritual, after I've read the other funny pages], they appear to be the only ones. But which of the men in Sedona Red had a good week, and which will be looking to improve? That's what I am here to tell you. A clue: it wasn't the offense.

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Due to pressures of time, Sprankton is stepping away from the trending column for a bit, so I'm taking over in the interim. There's no easy way to pull up statistics for the precise period covered since the last report a couple of weeks back, so all numbers are for the period from July 30th to August 11th inclusive. That's a 12-game span, over which the Diamondbacks went 8-4 and roared from four games back in the NL West, to a game in front  Not a bad spell. But how the did individuals involved in this rush for glory shape up?

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