As the baseball season entered its fifth week on Friday, the Diamondbacks began play with an offense that ranked first in the National League in batting average and slugging and was squarely in the Top 5 in most major categories.
They are a team that lost Paul Goldschmidt, A.J. Pollock and Daniel Descalso in the offseason, and the two players most often mentioned in the winter as being able to replace that missing offense – Steven Souza Jr. and Jake Lamb – also are gone, languishing on the injured list.
The offense’s performance belongs among the most surprising developments in baseball to start the season.