Scottsdale Notre Dame first baseman Nick Affronti has accepted the fact that his college recruitment isn’t going as well as he’d like. Fresh off winning a Division II state title and batting .462 for the season, the 6-foot-2, 217-pound senior knows he’s good enough to be playing major college baseball.
He just doesn’t know why no one else seems to agree. Coaches give him positive reviews, but don’t follow up with offers.

Scottsdale Desert Mountain senior David Greer was restless all day Tuesday leading up to his team’s showdown against defending state champ Scottsdale Chaparral in the Division I baseball state title game. Several times, he simply had to pace around instead of focus on schoolwork.
“I was getting so antsy,” Greer said. “I told my teachers, ‘I’m really sorry for this, but I can’t sit down.’ ”

Diamondbacks outfielder A.J. Pollock has finally found some consistency in life.
After being sent up and down several times from the majors to minors in 2012, Pollock has been with the big club since Opening Day this season.

Tucson Sahuaro pitcher Alex Verdugo struck out 18 batters over the course of six innings. His team still needed a walk-off single in the seventh to beat Nogales.
Senior Owen Sanchez, batting ninth, obliged. Sanchez poked an 0-2 curveball up the middle into center field to score Winston Welch from second, handing Sahuaro a 4-3 win Tuesday at Camelback Ranch, ending Nogales’ season and putting Sahuaro two wins away from playing for the state title.

Both No. 22 Phoenix Desert Vista and No. 14 Phoenix Mountain Pointe had to scrape and claw their way through the first two rounds of the Division I baseball tournament in order to face each other in the Final Eight, double-elimination portion of the bracket Thursday at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
It was part baseball game, part staring contest between the Ahwatukee rivals. Desert Vista blinked first, and Mountain Pointe held on for a 5-3 win.

To say that the wind was blowing Scottsdale Notre Dame’s way in Tuesday’s second-round state playoff game against visiting No. 14 Peoria Liberty would be only half right.
The wind was impartial, blowing out to right no matter who was at the plate. But it was third-ranked Notre Dame that took advantage, as junior Hunter Bross sent two balls over the right field fence to lead his team to a 6-1 victory and a spot in the double-elimination round of eight.

There were at least two more TV crews than usual in the Diamondbacks clubhouse Monday after NBA player Jason Collins became, in conjunction with an article to run in Sports Illustrated, the first active, openly gay professional athlete in major U.S. sports.
Now, whether they were ready to consider such an issue, the Diamondbacks were confronted for their opinions on the idea of having a gay teammate, and if baseball was prepared for such a player.

PHOENIX — As of Saturday, Diamondbacks outfielder Jason Kubel was on track to play a couple rehab games for Triple-A Reno. Kubel may want to play immediately after being out two weeks with a quad strain, Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson said at the time, but batting in extended-spring-training games and in the big leagues aren’t quite the same thing.
Boy, do things change quickly. A day later, Kubel was activated from the 15-day disabled list and in the lineup in left field for Arizona’s series finale against the Rockies at Chase Field on Sunday.

Scottsdale Chaparral and Chandler Basha entered the Division I state tournament on different trajectories.
No. 10 Chaparral, the defending state champion, played a bit under expectations, and dropped its season finale, losing a first-round bye in the process. Basha scored a win to wrap up its regular season and snuck into the playoff field as the 23 seed, its first postseason berth since 2009.

Jeff Pentland doesn’t consider himself retired.
Sure, he may show the telltale signs of retirement. His best friends are his golfing buddies at Mesa Country Club. He’s not working in baseball for the first time since his brief playing career ended in 1971.

Mesa Desert Ridge baseball coach Patrick Herrera knows what playoff experience can do to a team.
Herrera’s team made a run to the 2008 semifinals of the Class 5A-Division II state tournament with a team loaded with eight juniors and six sophomores. The next season was all about winning a state title.

In the first year for a new format for the Division I state baseball tournament, there weren’t many upsets in 2012.
The top eight teams that received first-round byes all won the only single-elimination game they played, advancing to the double-elimination portion of the tournament.

Each week, azcentral sports talks to a Diamondbacks player or coach for Diamondbacks Extra. Today’s guest is OF Cody Ross.
Question: How are you liking Arizona? What was the transition like?

PHOENIX — The Diamondbacks returned two players to the field in Sunday’s 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers, but only one finished the game.
Aaron Hill started at second after missing two games and being confined to pinch-hitting Saturday due to a bone bruise in his left hand, but he left the game in the fourth with soreness in his left wrist. Cody Ross started in right field and played his first full major-league game of the season after starting on the 15-day disabled list with a calf injury.

Suns point guard Goran Dragic doesn’t like to sit out games, no matter how much good it might do him.
Resting the 26-year-old Slovenian for a back-to-back set at Utah and Sacramento in late March might not have been wholly about keeping Dragic fresh — gift-wrapping the Jazz a win would only help the Suns’ draft stock by hurting the Los Angeles Lakers — but it accomplished that goal anyway.

Whenever Phoenix Pinnacle would allow a baserunner it shouldn’t have – like on a walk, or an error or a hit-by-pitch, a Scottsdale Chaparral coach in the visiting dugout would implore his team to “make it hurt.”
Chaparral proved toothless, but Pinnacle senior M.J. Hubbs wasn’t, put a hurting of his own on the defending state champs by going 3 of 4 with a grand slam and 6 RBIs in a 12-2, five-inning Pinnacle win.

Even though Diamondbacks pitcher Daniel Hudson’s day-to-day routine hasn’t changed that much as he works back from Tommy John surgery, he’s at least happy the regular season has started.
“Spring training is a little rough,” Hudson said. “For everybody, spring is seven weeks long. Up at the park every morning at 6 o’clock. It’s nice to get out and not be in spring training and come out here and get regular-season games that really count and watch those.”

Initially, Patrick Murphy tried to just rehab his sore right elbow in the hope that things would get better with time.
But time doesn’t really heal all wounds.

Arizona State senior wide receiver Kevin Ozier has heard a familiar refrain from coaches this spring.
“You better show me what you got right now, because replacements are coming in for fall camp,” Ozier is told. “As soon as camp comes, replacements are coming.”

When Seattle Mariners first baseman Justin Smoak was sent down to Triple-A Tacoma in late July of last year, he sensed something had to give.
Smoak, drafted 11th overall by the Texas Rangers in 2008 and traded to the Mariners midway through the 2010 season, knew he was running out of chances to prove he belonged in the majors.

Goran Dragic insists nothing has changed on his end since the All-Star break. The Suns point guard said he has the same preparation before every game, whether it was in November or March.
It’s just everything else has changed around him.

It would be easy to assume that Colorado Rockies utility man Eric Young Jr. has had trouble escaping his father’s shadow.
Growing up, he’d spend the summers traveling with his dad while Eric Young Sr. hopped between seven teams over the course of 15 seasons in Major League Baseball. The 27-year-old Young began his major- league career in the Rockies organization, and debuted in the majors with Colorado in 2009, the same club of which his father is an original member and the only team with which Young Sr. earned an All-Star selection and a Silver Slugger award.

Dodgers outfielder Carl Crawford wants to get back on the field so bad it hurts.
It hurts because the 31-year-old outfielder wants to wash away the two forgettable seasons he spent with the Boston Red Sox after signing a seven-year, $142 million contract two years ago. It hurts because there’s a strong possibility he’ll start the season on the disabled list while continuing to rehab the elbow he had surgically repaired back in August.

Todd Helton doesn’t know if 2013 will be his final season in baseball, and if he did he wouldn’t tell you.
He doesn’t want to answer the questions about whether he’ll return for another go-around. He doesn’t want a hero’s sendoff, either. The 39-year-old Helton, who is in the final year of his contract, just wants to play baseball.

Phoenix Suns center Hamed Haddadi doesn’t know what “clicked” means.
Some of that is because the English idiom is not familiar to the Iranian-born 7-footer. Some of it is because he’s a grinder, and on-court epiphanies aren’t really his style.