Column: The Diamondbacks are making their pitch to be a playoff contender

Arizona manager Torey Lovullo fully understood why most preseason predictions scorned the Diamondbacks and slotted them in fourth or fifth place in the National League West, well out of playoff contention.

“I think it’s easy to say that was going to happen based on the 69 wins that we had last year,” he said, with the hint of a smile. “We have a very strong core group of guys that believed differently.”

Under the guidance of Lovullo, the former UCLA All-America infielder who replaced Chip Hale as manager after last season, and new general manager Mike Hazen, who had worked with Lovullo at previous stops in Cleveland and Boston, the Diamondbacks have turned their belief into victories and have been one of baseball’s biggest surprises in the first half of the season.

Heading into Saturday’s games, Arizona stood 5 1/2 games behind the division-leading Dodgers and was three games ahead of the Colorado Rockies for the first NL wild card spot.

The Diamondbacks had a chance to gain ground last week but were swept by the Dodgers in a three-game series, losing each game by one run and squandering a 4-1 lead in the finale when Fernando Rodney blew a save for the second straight outing and the fifth time this season. But starters Zack Godley and Robbie Ray each held the hot-hitting Dodgers to a single run in the last two games, and Arizona’s 52-34 record after that series was its best after 86 games in franchise history.

The Diamondbacks also lead the major leagues in one-run wins, with 18, and rank in the top five in the NL in batting average, runs, hits, doubles, triples, runs batted in, slugging percentage and OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage).

Despite the three-game losing streak — which matched their longest of this season — the Diamondbacks’ team earned-run average remained the second best in the major leagues at 3.39, a dramatic improvement over the staff’s major-league-worst 5.09 team ERA last season. Before Rodney’s last two blown saves, he hadn’t allowed an earned run in 18 2/3 innings in May and June.

“You look pretty much every year, and the teams that pitch, they’re going to be in the playoffs and they’re going to win the division. The Dodgers are a perfect example,” said first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, who will join starting pitchers Ray and Zack Greinke and third baseman Jake Lamb at the All-Star game this week in Miami.

“The Dodgers have had the best ERA in the game the last five years or something like that, and they’ve got four division titles. That’s definitely been our No. 1 key, starting pitchers coming out and doing a great job for us and the bullpen holding it down. They’ve done a great job. They’ve carried us. There’s been a lot of times we haven’t scored many runs, and they’ve picked us up.”

There’s no shame in losing to the Dodgers. There’s a lot of that going around: Their sweep of Arizona was their ninth series sweep this season. The Dodgers have become the standard against which teams are measuring themselves, and everyone is falling short.

Still, the Diamondbacks have reason to be proud of what they’ve done.

Derrick Hall, a former Dodgers executive who is Arizona’s president and chief executive, acknowledged the Dodgers were “the class of the division,” but said he was happy the Diamondbacks have “the position we do in the wild card and in the division.”

The Diamondbacks haven’t made the playoffs since 2011, when they lost to Milwaukee in the NL Division Series, and they’ve won only one playoff series, in 2007, after their stunning 2001 World Series victory. They’ve since gone through a slew of managers and general managers, building up to what they thought would be a contending team last season only to fall victim to an array of injuries.

The most costly loss occurred when Gold Glove center fielder A.J. Pollock, who batted .315 in 2015 with 20 home runs and 76 runs batted in, suffered a fractured elbow just before the start of the 2016 season and played only 12 games. Greinke missed more than two months because of oblique muscle strain, and outfielder David Peralta, utility player Chris Owings and reliever Andrew Chafin also missed considerable amounts of time.

When Pollock suffered a groin strain in May of this season and didn’t return until July 4, the Diamondbacks were better equipped to compensate for his absence.

“When A.J. went on the DL last year, that was a big blow and all the wind came out of our sails because it happened right before opening day, in our final exhibition game,” Hall said. “This year, we created enough depth and had a good enough record and momentum where we could overcome it, and I think that’s the sign of a pretty good team, when you can overcome injuries and still get by.”

The Diamondbacks’ attendance hasn’t caught up to their on-field improvement. Despite a 6-1 start, they drew a franchise-record-low crowd of 12,215 to Chase Field on April 26, though attendance has ticked upward lately.

“In our market, it’s really been, ‘Perform and we show up.’ Until you’re playing well, they just don’t show up,” Hall said, adding that he was encouraged by a turnout of more than 121,000 for a recent four-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies. “It’s showing that they are coming, and now our TV ratings are up over 35%. We’re seeing a big surge both in attendance and in ratings. It’s a team that’s catching the attention of our fans.”

The best way to remain the focus of attention would be to continue winning. “We knew at the start of the year the team that we had. We knew we’d had a tough year with injuries and guys underperforming last year,” Lamb said. “We came in this year with confidence and we knew that we had the right group, it was just a matter of performing on the field, and to this point, we’ve done that pretty well.”

Lovullo, asked to identify the single element that has gone well for his team, paused before answering. “Oh, man. I would say our ability to stay in the moment and the resiliency of this team has showed up night after night,” he said. “No matter what set of difficult circumstances we’re faced with, we seem to move off of it as quickly as possible and get ready for the next day. This is a team that plays together. There’s a very strong bond between these guys, and they do everything together.”

How they respond after being swept by the Dodgers will be a crucial test of the strength of that resilience and bond.

helene.elliott@latimes.com

Follow Helene Elliott on Twitter @helenenothelen