Eugenio Suarez's homer caps latest comeback as DBacks complete three-game sweep of Red Sox

BOSTON — Torey Lovullo seemed a bit caught off guard by the question. His answer started with an “Ah, man” and meandered a bit from there. But after the Diamondbacks rolled past the Boston Red Sox , 7-5, on Sunday afternoon to complete a sweep at Fenway Park, it felt like just the sort of question everyone was thinking, whether Lovullo was ready for it or not.

His team — the one that won for the 36th time in 49 games, the one that has taken charge of the wild-card race in the National League, the one that is now within striking distance of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the division — has been looking for a while like one of the best teams in baseball.

Is it time, Lovullo was asked, for people to start calling the Diamondbacks that?

“Hopefully at the end of the year we can say that we are,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of confidence in that clubhouse. They know what they’re capable of doing every single day. It’s showing up.”

After finding his footing, that was the answer Lovullo gave. Whether it was how he really felt is a question for another day. But the fact that it feels like a reasonable debate speaks to just how far his team has come over the past two months.

Near the end of June, it was starting to feel like this might not be the Diamondbacks’ year. They were getting repeatedly drilled by injuries. They seemingly could not play well often enough to separate themselves from the .500 mark. The one thing that seemed to be in their favor was the mediocrity pervasive throughout the league.

Fast forward two months, and that version of the Diamondbacks is nowhere to be found. This team wins games with an offense that seemingly cannot be stopped, one that executes comebacks with a surgical and deliberate inevitability. They chip away at opposing pitchers, putting runners on base and passing the baton, and they eventually drive them home, whether by baseball fundamentals or brute force.

This weekend, the ringleader in the latter department was Eugenio Suarez, who had four hits on Sunday, including the go-ahead three-run homer. He drove in 10 runs in the series. A couple of months ago, his spot on the roster appeared in jeopardy. Today, it seems fair to wonder where they would be without him.

With the win, the Diamondbacks finished their road trip with a 6-3 record, winning six consecutive games after starting the trip with a three-game sweep at the hands of the Tampa Bay Rays. They are 11-1 in their past 12 series and 14-1-1 in their past 16.

After falling behind, 4-0, after four innings, the Diamondbacks scored three times in the fifth and three more in the sixth, the latter inning capped by Suarez’s blast. On Friday, he had a grand slam and five RBIs. On Saturday, he delivered a two-run double that scraped off the front of Fenway’s Green Monster in left field. His homer on Sunday allowed him to reach the 20-homer mark for the fourth consecutive season.

“For some reason, I always have good series here,” Suarez said. “I see the ball good. I don’t know what’s different.”

At 75-56, the Diamondbacks have just the fourth-best record in the league, but they own the best mark in baseball since June 29, and they have been doing it with a roster that is more complete than the club that slogged through the first two-plus months of the season. It is a team that better resembles the one that caught fire in the postseason and advanced to the World Series last October.

That said, the deeper the dive into the Diamondbacks’ recent success, the less sense it seems to make. Star second baseman and MVP candidate Ketel Marte is on the injured list. So are catcher Gabriel Moreno and first baseman Christian Walker. Several starting pitchers have been enduring rough stretches. The bullpen, at times, feels more white-knuckle than lockdown.

And yet, none of it seems to matter. The Diamondbacks keep winning. They plug in Josh Bell at first base and he delivers big hits and great defense. They call up Adrian Del Castillo to catch and he connects for dramatic homers. They sign Luis Guillorme off the street and he makes one of the best defensive plays of the year at second base over the weekend.

The Diamondbacks got it going on at the moment. And whether anyone thought it was time for them to be in the conversation for the best team in baseball, it did not take much parsing of comments—nor would it take much imagination—to figure out what they really think.

“I know everybody in this clubhouse feels a certain way about this team,” Diamondbacks right-hander Merrill Kelly said. “I know a lot of our guys, most of our guys, if not all of our guys feel that we’re a better team than we were last year going into the playoffs. Everybody’s opinion outside of this clubhouse, in my opinion, doesn’t really matter, but I know that we know that we have a really good team and have a chance to do something special.”

Coming up

Monday: Off.

Tuesday: At Chase Field, 6:40 p.m., Diamondbacks RHP Brandon Pfaadt (8-6, 4.08) vs. Mets LHP Sean Manaea (9-5, 3.48).

Wednesday: At Chase Field, 6:40 p.m., Diamondbacks LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (2-0, 3.94) vs. Mets RHP Luis Severino (9-6, 3.84).

Thursday: At Chase Field, 12:40 p.m., Diamondbacks RHP Ryne Nelson (9-6, 4.29) vs. Mets TBA.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Eugenio Suarez's homer caps latest comeback as DBacks complete three-game sweep of Red Sox