Opening Day and Bold Predictions

On April 3, 2016 By

It’s that time, sports fans: Opening Day for the Diamondbacks and 19 other teams. If you follow the D-backs, you’ve survived a slow death to the season in 2013, a 2014 that was derailed before it got going, and a 2015 season that included some long-lasting experiments that were at least as frustrating to watch as they were smart to …

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Double Plus: Chris Herrmann over Tuffy Gosewisch Betrays a D-backs Blind Spot

On April 1, 2016 By

I’ve used this metaphor before, but I can’t think of a better one. Say 30 people are in a room for a meeting, and in comes a giant plate of sandwiches. Maybe more sandwiches than are needed (35?), but not so many that people aren’t eyeing the buffet to see if they need to make a bold move to get …

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Double Plus: Setting the Middle Infield Without Brandon Drury

On April 1, 2016 By

After a spring full of loud performances, Chip Hale has some tough decisions on his plate. The collective group of Jean Segura, Nick Ahmed, Chris Owings, Phil Gosselin and Brandon Drury all hit somewhere on the spectrum between .359 and .517 in Cactus League play. They combined for 25 doubles (10 of which belonged to Mr. Drury), …

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Patrick Corbin and Fewer Sliders

On March 31, 2016 By

Go to Chase Field this April, and you may notice some sliders missing. In addition to that glaring omission from the stadium menus, Patrick Corbin may be throwing his best pitch less often — and “throwing his best pitch less often” doesn’t exactly sound good. Corbin has had a lot of his success by limiting his fourseam usage in favor …

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Marcus Wilson, Jamie Westbrook and Others Turn Heads in Spring Camp

On March 30, 2016 By

The Diamondbacks’ minor league system is down as a whole given the departures of guys like Touki Toussaint, Dansby Swanson and Aaron Blair. Not helping things, Archie Bradley has kind of stalled and if it weren’t for a strong close to the 2015 season from Braden Shipley, things might look really bad. All of that said, there …

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3 Simple Rules for Starting Our Shelby Miller

On March 29, 2016 By

Shelby Miller is an unusual pitcher. Remaking himself partway through 2014, even the batted ball exit velocity data shows him to have been a contact manager last year — and you have no farther to look than the quality of the contact against him to see that his 3.02 ERA last year wasn’t as much about luck as you might …

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Yasmany Tomas Still Looks Like Yasmany Tomas

On March 28, 2016 By

Look, Yasmany Tomas is still a very young player with very limited professional experience in Major League Baseball. Calling him a “finished product” is irresponsible and inaccurate. Odds are, he changes his game in some facet, at some point in time. This spring, the club has gone to great lengths to remind the public that Tomas has technically hit well. …

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Double Plus: D-backs Calibrating Their Reliance on Sinkers

On March 25, 2016 By

Not long ago, we worked through some research that betrayed a general principle: the more horizontal the movement on a pitch, the more susceptible to large platoon splits it was likely to be. The converse — that when the movement of a pitch was more or mostly horizontal, the bigger the platoon splits — clashed with the D-backs’ sinker …

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Double Plus: Peter O’Brien Goes Beyond Yard in Historic Fashion

On March 25, 2016 By

By now you’ve heard of the “Shot Heard ‘Round the Desert.” Of course I’m referring to the massive home run hit by OF/1B Peter O’Brien earlier this week. It was massive. In fact, it was more than massive. According to Thesaurus.com, I could have used words like colossal, gargantuan, gigantic, mammoth, towering or even elephantine. I should use elephantine more …

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Alex Young, Anthony Banda and Others Impress on the Mound

On March 24, 2016 By

Having just returned to real life from six days in Arizona, I was faced with a harsh reality: getting up in the morning to go to real work is far less exciting than getting up to go to minor league camp. I mean, think about it. Arriving at real work requires braving Los Angeles traffic and trying not to spill …

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Then and Now: a Diamondbacks Retrospective

On March 22, 2016 By

The #DbacksEvolution is here. We’ve seen it. I’m not talking about the uniforms – the team itself has undergone a pretty major renovation. While rosters change at a snail’s pace for the most part, when you stop and look back, you might ask your questions such as “why did Alfredo Marte get 44 games in 2014?” How easily we forget, …

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When Batting the Pitcher Eighth Will Make Sense

On March 21, 2016 By

If you needed a reminder that D-backs have their baseball operations helmed by Tony La Russa, you’ve gotten it most games this spring in the lineup card. After Zack Greinke was signed, there was immediate speculation about the D-backs experimenting with the pitcher’s spot in the order again, just as they had on a more limited basis last year. We’ve …

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From Spring Training: Will the D-backs Outperform Projections?

On March 21, 2016 By

Projection systems do not seem bullish on the D-backs in 2016, including PECOTA, which has projected 78 wins. There are few guarantees in baseball, but are there reasons to think that projections are more dubious of the D-backs’s prospects this season than they should be?

The guys talked through some of the angles from Salt River Fields at Talking Stick …

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Let’s Make Archie Bradley a Bullpen Ace (For Now)

On March 17, 2016 By

Look, there’s plenty of competition for the fifth starter race, but at the end of the day, that spot’s going to Robbie Ray. Competition is fine and all, but if everyone remains healthy, the job is his. He earned last year and he’s pitched very well this spring. It’s a pretty easy call as far as I can …

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Is the Fifth Starter Race Really a Race?

On March 15, 2016 By

It doesn’t seem like it was long ago that we discussed Rubby De La Rosa being the fifth starer. If you’re tallying up “the best five,” Rubby seemed like the right guy to be about fifth on that list. Zack Greinke, Shelby Miller and Patrick Corbin are all clearly better. Robbie Ray is probably better, too, and he …

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Refocusing the Race for Second Bullpen Lefty

On March 14, 2016 By

If “spring training” means “roster battles,” then “roster battles” means “second lefty reliever competition” almost as much. You may not end up having too many conversations about it this year, but there is news, and new analysis to be done — and how things have shaped up so far sheds some light on other, bigger ticket questions this spring. Today, …

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