When the D-backs reported for spring training a year ago (yes, it really is February!), the roster had been partially blown up. For the rotation, there were at least twelve candidates — and only Josh Collmenter and Jeremy Hellickson had slots essentially locked up. They don’t have rotation slots locked up this year.
What a difference a year makes, right? …
Continue Reading →Saturday’s news of the trade that sent Aaron Hill, Chase Anderson, Isan Diaz and cash from the D-backs to the Brewers for Jean Segura and Tyler Wagner was shocking without a doubt. The team had tried hard to upgrade second base – the price was too steep for Howie Kendrick (apparently) and Brandon Phillips vetoed a trade (thankfully) …
Continue Reading →After signing Zack Greinke and trading for Shelby Miller (albeit with Aaron Blair), the D-backs had more major league starters than they were likely to need; it made sense to move some of that depth for other kinds of talent more likely to help the team in the immediate future. With Nick Ahmed a staple of the ground ball …
Continue Reading →If you follow the D-backs and saw the news earlier this week that MLB is considering raising the bottom of the strike zone, you probably had the same initial thought that I did: that could hurt the D-backs more than any other team. If you’re a FanGraphs reader, you worked through the excellent August Fagerstrom’s excellent post identifying the pitchers …
Continue Reading →A little more than a week ago I told you that Welington Castillo is a bad pitch framer. He’s more or less average at the other, more traditional parts of catching – namely blocking and throwing. People have talked about him being good with the pitchers and that they like working with him and I can’t really speak to …
Continue Reading →Baseball season is approaching, but that approach is taking an excruciating amount of time. It’s now less than three weeks until pitchers and catcher report to Salt River Fields to do some stretching and work on their pickoff moves and practice signs and whatever else those guys do. In the meantime, the bulk of the talk around baseball will be …
Continue Reading →It seems like every time we’ve delved into lineup topics over the last few years, the question is really about who is batting leadoff. Sure, there was the question about whether to bat Paul Goldschmidt second or fourth instead of third, but we know that the idea of “lineup protection” is probably overblown, and that most lineup questions …
Continue Reading →Strikeouts were a problem for the Diamondbacks’ pitching staff in 2015. As a collective group of pitchers, they were 19th in the majors in strikeout rate. The starters were 18th and the relief corps ranked 24th. It was a bottom-third result when you put it all together in terms of strikeouts. We like strikeouts, but as you’ve hopefully noticed here, …
Continue Reading →In baseball, we hate waste. There aren’t too many teams with two catchers, each of whom would be starters on most teams; if you’ve got two and you feel like you can’t fully use both of them, one usually gets worked into a trade, either by the team, trying to fill a need, or by an enterprising trade partner. Now …
Continue Reading →I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. There’s no designated hitter in the NL and that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned. I like the double-switch. I like how the manager really has to pick his spots. I like how utilizing the bench and the bullpen are more heavily-tied to strategy in the NL as …
Continue Reading →There’s a weird disparity in baseball right now. Jason Stark profiled it well for ESPN last week. In the American League, there are few, if any, teams that have no chance to compete. Using Fangraphs’ projected standings based off Steamer projections, there is no team predicted to win fewer than 78 games. Ten of the 15 teams are projected …
Continue Reading →I’m frequently surprised by how aggressive some people are in negotiation — and how frequently it works. I tend to stake out ground and defend it, rather than go all over the place. The benefit of that kind of general reasonableness is that you get to take an unreasonable position from time to time and garb it in that same …
Continue Reading →Before Welington “Beef” Castillo came along, the Diamondbacks’ catching situation was laughably bad. It inspired a number of articles that all came to the same general conclusion: they aren’t actually going to run that out there all season are they? They were, and then the Mariners did a dumb thing (as they are seemingly prone to doing) and took Mark …
Continue Reading →Just being perfectly honest, you don’t really need to read this post. If you’ve seen the headline, you know all you need to know. It was fun, though, to use batted ball velocity data to pick apart David Peralta‘s better success against lefties in 2015, and I think enough of that to rely on it to figure out some …
Continue Reading →On Monday, the Diamondbacks made a big announcement. Okay, maybe not so big, but at least it was an announcement. The team will bring 23 non-roster invitees to Spring Training. These are all players who are not part of the team’s 40-man roster. There are some exciting names and some who you might be wondering about. Let’s go rapid fire …
Continue Reading →This offseason, the D-backs aren’t inclined to leave as much to chance — they shelled out the dollars for Zack Greinke, shelled out a different kind of capital for Shelby Miller, and by trading Ender Inciarte, they made it look like they know who their starting outfielders are, and that they think a fourth just isn’t that …
Continue Reading →@ryanpmorrison
Best part of Peralta’s 108 mph fliner over the fence, IMHO: that he got that much leverage despite scooping it out… https://t.co/ivBrl76adF, 
RT @OutfieldGrass24: If you're bored of watching Patrick Corbin get dudes out, you can check out my latest for @TheAthleticAZ. https://t.co/k1DymgY7zO, - Of course, they may have overtaken the league lead for outs on the bases just now, also...
But in 2017, Arizona ha… https://t.co/38MBrr2D4b,
- Prior to the games today, there had only been 5 steals of 3rd this season (and no CS) in the National League. The… https://t.co/gVVL84vPQ5,
- RT @OutfieldGrass24: Patrick Corbin has a WPA of .318 and it's only the fifth inning.,
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- ICYMI, I posted my #DbacksMinors top-10 prospects yesterday. You can find those rankings and the entire top-30 here: https://t.co/zOJeYnBrnk,
RT @CLEFOAINTACRIME: Here's my Goldy trade magnum opus/agitprop https://t.co/Ba2sVmOBnn, 
RT @TheAthleticAZ: Today, our Live Q&A on @Dbacks at noon.
Goldschmidt's gone, and @ZHBuchanan takes subscribers' questions. from noon… https://t.co/sOamb1msqd, 
RT @enosarris: Let’s debunk some myths surrounding Patrick Corbin https://t.co/lzhOTIAmyt, - RT @TheAthleticAZ: Here's an emerging metric that brings some #Dbacks optimism. @OutfieldGrass24
https://t.co/eKQBpe0H7M,
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