Diamondbacks 4, White Sox 3: Baby Steps

Record: 14-25

This is how the game started:

Oh, crap. Through three innings, Wade Miley is perfect and has thrown 33 pitches. That's EXACTLY what Brandon McCarthy did last night...

— AZ SnakePit (@AZSnakepit) May 10, 2014

The only difference as the game went along was the fact that Miley didn't give up seven runs in one inning. Yes, Miley was far better than McCarthy was a night ago, allowing just two runs on four hits with six strikeouts over seven innings. Take away the mistake thrown to Paul Konerko, and Miley was brilliant. His performance secured a winning road trip for the D-backs.

Also, the Diamondbacks’ offense is quietly starting to come around, as they’ve scored three or more runs in their last seven games. As long as the pitching gets on track, this season might not be a complete failure. Or I could just be grasping for something that's just not there.

We didn’t look completely clueless at the plate against Quintana for the first four innings, but we also weren’t making that much noise. That is until the fifth inning when the D-backs strung together four hits and a sacrifice fly to plate three in the top half to take the lead. Cody Ross got things started with one of his three hits on the night– he’s seems to be swinging the bat a lot better with eight hits so far on the road trip. Gerardo Parra then hit into a fielders choice to take Ross’ place at first base and Alfredo Marte, oblivious to Jim’s precursor to this game, doubled down the left field line to score him from first.

Two batters later, A.J. Pollock dropped a single into no-mans-land to score both Marte and Chris Owings.

The White Sox answered the bell in their half of the fifth when Paul Konerko ruined Wade Miley’s shutout aspirations with a two-run bomb to pull Chicago within one.

In the top of the seventh, Owings drove a liner off the wall in left center to start off the inning with what should’ve been a double. Instead, he committed one of the worst sins in baseball and made the first out at third to keep the bases empty. But A.J. Pollock then walked, Martin Prado blooped a single, and Paul Goldschmidt walked to load the bases for Miguel Montero. Fortunately for Arizona, Sierra lost Miggy’s liner to right in the lights, booting it to allow Pollock to score from third. Even so, the inning came to an abrupt halt when Aaron Hill rolled into a double play. Putnam was lucky to escape with just one run allowed.

Wade Miley finished his night on a high note with a 1-2-3 seventh. Brad Ziegler followed that up with a relatively painless inning in the eighth, handing it over to Addison Reed for the ninth. Chicago rallied in the ninth against their former closer, because what would be a D-backs win without drama? But Reed was able to coerce Konerko to ground out to second to end the game after the Sox pulled within one.

Source: FanGraphs

There have been some bad times on this most recent road trip for the Diamondbacks -- namely yesterday's seven run inning -- but when looking at the big picture after the win tonight, we are slowly starting to turn it around. Behind arguably his best start of the year, Wade Miley has the D-backs in position to win their third straight series to close the road trip out. Even if we don't win tomorrow, a winning road trip under our belts feels pretty nice.

Rookie Chase Anderson will make his major league debut against Hector Noesi in the rubber match tomorrow afternoon.