Breaking Down the D-backs Schedule: Strike Early

Gone is the offseason, and gone is last weekend’s series in Australia. In their first game back on Wednesday, the D-backs lit up the Cubs like a pinball machine with a ridiculous 20 hits. Yesterday, the team didn’t look so hot, but we’ll let that slide. It’s time for a couple of tune ups at Chase, a day off, and the regular season. So what’s on the docket?

First off: losing two games in Australia was not fun, but getting those two games out of the way has two other effects, one negative, one positive. The negative: teams generally do a bit better at home (last year, the D-backs went 45-36 at home, 36-45 away), and the D-backs have just 79 home games remaining, instead of the customary 81. Hey, I said negative, not major.

The positive thing: fit within the same 182 day season as that shared by the other clubs, the D-backs (and Dodgers) will have two extra off days. That’s not a small thing, really. When I looked at Paul Goldschmidt’s performance last season depending on how recently he’d had an off day, I found some pretty strong evidence of a Day One Boost (better performance just after a day off), which is definitely helpful, and we’ll get that two extra times this season. A bigger deal, though: there was also good evidence of a Wear Down Effect after Goldy had played 7 or more games in a row. An extra off day (breaking up some pretty long game streaks) could wipe away that effect for a week’s worth of games. Pretty cool, right? I’m not sure it’s worth taking two losses, but it’s not nothing.

As for the schedule itself, I logged the 2013 records of every opponent this season, as well as entering projected winning percentages from FanGraphs. Here’s a spreadsheet with the strength of schedule results, which you can access all season, if you want. Judging from the 2013 records of their opponents, the D-backs have a relatively easy early schedule. Using projections from FanGraphs… not so much. Here’s a graph, since we like graphs, and since I just learned how to make them in Excel:

Projections like the middle, so it’s no huge surprise to see the red line on the graph hugging the .500 mark all season. But that very low blue dot on the left? That’s what the average 2013 record of the D-backs’ March/April opponents. That’s also what opportunity looks like.

It’s not quite so rosy as all that. Right off the bat, 7 of the D-backs’ next 10 games will be against the Giants, who are projected (.526) to do quite a bit better than they did in 2013 (.469). No sweat, says me. I had occasion to examine the Giants in some detail for my team preview at Beyond the Box Score this month, and there are tons of question marks there. And taking a granular view, yes the D-backs will face off against Madison Bumgarner on Monday — but then they will face pitchers 2-4 and 3-5 in the rotation. Yes, that means facing Tim Lincecum twice in the first two weeks of the season. Yes, 8% of Paul Goldschmidt’s career home runs have come off Lincecum. That might work out OK.

The only other serious trouble the D-backs may face in April are the Dodgers, against whom the D-backs will play six games. Other than that, it’s Mets (nice), Cubs for four games (double nice), and the Phillies (no problem). Oh, and the Rockies for six games — but as our Jeff Wiser himself wrote over at Beyond the Box Score, the Rockies also have more questions than answers.

Per the graph, April isn’t the D-backs’ only good opportunity — June is also looking pretty delicious, again with only the Dodgers (3 games) in the way of stiff opposition, and four game sets against the Brewers and Astros (the Houston games are a weird 2-and-2 home and away split). But April is pretty important. The D-backs are already 0-2. If the team has a rough April — a month in which we’d expect them to do fairly well — we’ll probably learn something about this team.

Given the nature of baseball, we’ll have to see how things play out. Until then, your series-by-series moment of Zen: