The Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll looked around on the team bus recently and came to a realization: Despite having fewer than three years’ service time, he was, all of a sudden, one of the more veteran position players on the team.

“It wasn’t long ago that I was one of the least experienced,” he said. “It’s fun to have that new energy up here.”

In outslugging the Boston Red Sox, 10-5, on Friday night, Sept. 5, the Diamondbacks again received big contributions from up and down their youthful roster. And, in winning for the seventh time in their past nine games, it continued to feel entirely possible that the young players’ natural insouciance might have something to do with the untroubled manner with which the Diamondbacks have been playing.

Take the series opener against the Red Sox, in which they watched a five-run lead turn into a one-run game in the top of the eighth only to respond with four runs of their own in the bottom of the inning.

“With the young players, they don’t have expectations or things to compare to,” Carroll said. “They’re very in the moment and they’re trying to win every game for what it is. It feels a little similar to 2023 that way.”

Carroll blasted his 30th homer, becoming just the third player in club history to do so at such a young age. Blaze Alexander showed off his throwing arm, cutting down a runner at the plate with a throw clocked at 95.4 mph. Eduardo Rodriguez turned in six strong innings, and the bullpen survived a late-game meltdown to help the Diamondbacks get back to the .500 mark for the first time since July 20.

Geraldo Perdomo hit a first-inning homer and finished 4-for-5 on the night, and Ildemaro Vargas cracked a three-run homer to push the Diamondbacks’ lead to 5-1 in the third.

Whether any of the recent success ends up mattering remains to be seen. The Diamondbacks, at 71-71, remain 5 1/2 games out of a wild card, with the New York Mets and San Diego Padres tied at 76-65 and occupying the final two spots.

No one embodies the team’s youthfulness more than Alexander. He bounds around the clubhouse with a smile on his face almost at all times — and who can blame him with the way he has been playing? Getting his first extended run of at-bats at the major league level, he has made the most of the opportunity, excelling on both sides of the ball and playing his way into consideration for a significant role on next year’s team.

Playing the outfield for just the third time in his career, his cannon for an arm seemed to translate seamlessly from the infield. The Red Sox had runners on first and second in the third when Romy Gonzalez hit a single to center, where Alexander gloved it and then delivered a rocket of a throw home to cut down Carlos Narvaez to end the inning.

“His comment to (first-base coach Dave McKay) was, ‘I’ve got more than that, too, by the way. Just in case you want more, I’ve got more,’” manager Torey Lovullo said.

Alexander’s eyes lit up when asked to confirm the anecdote.

“Oh, for sure,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know what I got clocked at, but — and I’m not tooting my own horn here — I’ll throw a couple here at 100 (mph) pretty soon.”

Carroll’s homer capped the Diamondbacks’ four-run response in the bottom of the eighth and made him just the third player in club history to reach the 30-homer mark before their age-25 season, joining Chris Young (2007) and Justin Upton (2011), both of whom did it in their age-23 season.

“I think around baseball, 30 home runs is seen as an accomplishment,” Carroll said. “I’m happy with hitting that accomplishment and excited for the rest of the season and seeing if we can add some more.”

Alexander said he looked around the diamond during the game and realized how many guys on the field he had played with in the minors — and how many young players there were contributing to the win.

“Honestly, I was in center field and was like, ‘Whoa, dude, we’re all here,’” Alexander said. “It was a cool moment. (Jorge) Barrosa a couple of hits today, (Tyler) Locklear hit, (Jordan) Lawlar hit a big sac fly.

“It’s cool, man. I remember how I was coming in that situation, maybe a little nervous and trying to prove yourself. Once you get past that, the sky’s the limit.”

Even with the win, the Diamondbacks face long odds of making up enough ground to get back to the playoffs. With 20 games remaining, FanGraphs puts their postseason chances at 2.1 percent.

But first things first: Having finally reached .500 again, they have a chance to get back above .500 for the first time since July 1.

“We’ve got to keep our head down, keep working,” Lovullo said. “We can get back into this thing by playing games like that.”

—Nick Piecoro

Lovullo talks defensive focus

For the past five weeks, the Diamondbacks have been winning games at a better clip than at any point in the season. It is likely no coincidence they are also playing perhaps their best defense of the year.

The difference between the type of defense they have displayed lately and the sloppy play they exhibited early in the year has been a sore spot for manager Torey Lovullo, to the point that he already is thinking about how he wants things to change come next spring.

Lovullo said on Friday, Sept. 5, that he wants to see more high-intensity drills, among other things, at camp next year — and that he does not want the newness of a season to be used as a crutch to explain away fundamental mistakes.

“The bottom line is, I want us to go as long as we can next April without making an error and without making a baserunning mistake,” Lovullo said. “It seems like, ‘Oh, this is brand new. It’s OK, I can make these mistakes.’ No, it’s not OK.

“I want us to go into mid-May without getting thrown out. I want us to go into mid-May without making an infield error. That’s my mindset. I want to put that on everybody.”

For the second year in a row, the club started slowly out of the gates. Both years, the defense was not up to the standards the Diamondbacks set during their late-season run in 2023, the year they leaned hard on their fundamental style to make a run to the World Series.

This year, the Diamondbacks went into the All-Star break with negative-28 defensive runs saved, ranking 27th among the 30 major league teams. The best in the league at that point were the Atlanta Braves at plus-56.

“The defense has been very bothersome this year,” Lovullo said. “It’s been inconsistent. It’s been slow. It’s lacked initiative and creativity. It was the middle of August, maybe the beginning of August, where it started to take off.

“That’s several months of baseball that I feel like we let get away from us.”

The Diamondbacks entered their weekend series against the Boston Red Sox at negative-13 on the season, having moved up to 22nd in the majors.

Some of the improvement, certainly, is due to a change in personnel. Blaze Alexander has been an obvious upgrade at third base, accumulating eight runs saved compared with the minus-4 that Eugenio Suarez compiled before being traded to Seattle.

Still, Lovullo admitted there might have been an assumption that the club’s veteran position players knew how to prepare themselves for the season when, in fact, they would have benefited from more of a push.

“That’s a very good lesson we all learned,” he said. “ … At the end of the day, we know what we have and we’re not going to take it for granted. Whether you’re a vet or not, it’s on. We’re going to train hard. I’m going to make that demand.”

Lovullo talked about possibly doing more work on machines that spit out high-velocity ground balls at defenders, a training method the team used a few years ago. He also talked about creating reminders about how important defense is, including by having a loop of defensive highlights playing regularly on televisions in the clubhouse.

The Diamondbacks had the fourth-best defense, per defensive runs saved, in 2023. They were 17th in 2024.

—Nick Piecoro

Injury updates on Gurriel, DeSclafani

As expected, Diamondbacks outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. will have surgery for a torn ACL on a date to be determined, Lovullo said before Friday’s game.

Gurriel, injured earlier in the week going for a fly ball, had his scans reviewed by two of the top sports medicine specialists in the industry, which confirmed the severity of the knee injury.

Asked about a potential return date, Lovullo said he plans for 10 to 11 months until Gurriel can get back on the field and playing full speed.

“If it’s before that, it’ll be a great surprise,” Lovullo said.

Right-handed pitcher Anthony DeSclafani, who’d been in the starting rotation before he suffered an injury, threw a 30-pitch bullpen session on Friday, and his next outing has yet to be determined. But Lovullo indicated DeSclafani is close to a return from right thumb inflammation, which landed him on the 15-day injured list on Aug. 13.

Right-handed pitcher Cristian Mena is throwing out to 120 feet. He’s been on the 60-day injured list with a strained right shoulder since June 10. It’s not yet clear if Mena can pitch in a game before the season ends.

—José M. Romero

Coming up

Sept. 6: At Chase Field, 5:10 p.m., Diamondbacks RHP Brandon Pfaadt (12-8, 5.33) vs. Red Sox RHP Lucas Giolito (10-2, 3.38).

Sept. 7: At Chase Field, 1:10 p.m., Diamondbacks RHP Ryne Nelson (7-3, 3.57) vs. Red Sox RHP Brayan Bello (11-6, 3.07).

Sept. 8: At San Francisco, 6:45 p.m., Diamondbacks RHP Nabil Crismatt (2-0, 2.14) vs. Giants TBA.

(This story has been updated to add new information.)