By playing a solid nine innings of baseball Wednesday night, the Arizona Diamondbacks helped keep the race to win the National League West an interesting one. In their 4-3 win against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Chase Field, Dan Haren was excellent, the defense was airtight, and strikeout king Mark Reynolds showed amazing patience at the plate in the game's defining at-bat. The results: The D-Backs ended a six-game losing streak and cut the Dodgers' lead over the Colorado Rockies to 2.5 games in the suddenly tight NL West.
The D-Backs could've put the game away in the bottom of the eighth, when they had runners on first and second with no outs. But Chris Young, who'd hit his 12th homer earlier in the game, failed on a sacrifice bunt attempt, Eric Byrnes popped out to left, and Rusty Ryal grounded into a fielder's choice. It was an inning like many in this lost season, when the D-Backs simply didn't execute when given the opportunity to score.