You surely know The Saga of Daniel Hudson by now. He’s been through more than his fair share of ups and downs — going from excellent young starter to double-Tommy John-recipient to nearly-washed-out big leaguer to very effective relief pitcher. The journey of his baseball life has weighed heavy on Hudson over the years, a fact revealed in his demeanor …
Continue Reading →One of my favorite debates within the baseball analytics community is how to evaluate pitching. We’ve collectively moved on from ERA since it has some obvious problems. The first is the most glaring: ERA tells most of the story of what happened, not how talented a pitcher is. We don’t really care what happened, we care mostly about how good …
Continue Reading →The D-backs celebrated the ten year anniversary of becoming World Champions, Brandon Webb attempted a comeback in the Rangers organization, and Katy Perry taught you that you are a firework. Do you remember 2011? That was the season that Daniel Hudson threw more than 80 innings for the organization that traded for him at the 2010 trade deadline, nearly six …
Continue Reading →There are very few circumstances in which it makes sense to stand pat during any trade season, be it in the offseason or in July. This July, however, the D-backs are about as far on that end of the spectrum as a team can be. Currently sitting in 4th place in the NL West and in need of an historic …
Continue Reading →It’s Wednesday and so, yeah, today already feels like a downer. People that say, “just two days before the weekend” are wrong. It’s three. Today counts. Don’t be one of those people. Not helping matters is the fact that Archie Bradley pitched super awesome last night until he basically got destroyed. That happened in his previous start, too. The D-backs’ …
Continue Reading →Few things in life seem to make sense. Why do bad things happen to good people? What makes rational people do irrational things? How do I always manage pick the slowest checkout lane? Well, at least there’s an answer for that last question. That notwithstanding, life loves to sprinkle in little bits both of mystique and brooding.
Nevertheless, this is …
Continue Reading →It’s a magical time of year, the time in which mountains are made of molehills, common sense proves evasive and The People generally freak out. The Diamondbacks have sunk below .500 for the first time in 2016 as of this writing (hopefully they’ve “surged” to even in the standing by the time of this reading) and we’re all basically doomed. …
Continue Reading →The D-backs will roll with just Andrew Chafin as a lefty out of the ‘pen to start the season, with Brad Ziegler, Daniel Hudson, Tyler Clippard, Randall Delgado, Silvino Bracho and Jake Barrett all throwing from the right side. With Josh Collmenter omitted because of a trip to the DL and Enrique Burgos and Evan Marshall…
Continue Reading →On Tuesday I previewed arsenal scores, a metric created by Eno Sarris at RotoGraphs. The idea is simple: evaluate each pitcher’s pitches based on swinging strikes (good) and ground balls (also good). Sarris was kind enough to share his data with Inside the ‘Zona I’ve used it already to showcase D-backs starting pitchers. Now it’s time to highlight the …
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 →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 →If they haven’t already settled on a 2016 salary, seven D-backs players will file for arbitration on January 12th, next Tuesday, with exchanging figures with the team a few days later, on Friday, January 15th. So what’s going on with those cases right now? On Monday, I ran through pre-figure exchange strategies for both sides with respect to Rubby De …
Continue Reading →Earlier this week, we had some fun looking at the best and worst pitches from Diamondbacks starting pitchers in 2015. There were some really good pitches on disply there, even considering the struggles that the staff had last year. This time around we’ll position the microscope on the relievers, but there’s something notable to include here: relief pitchers have …
Continue Reading →The D-backs have a great young team of position players, and the makings of a pitching staff that could be at least solid. With the team on the upswing and organizational memory of .500 seasons in both 2013 and 2014, it’s easy to focus on how high the team can go. That’s important, and maybe the most important thing. Still …
Continue Reading →Closers are overrated. Think about it: saves are a made up stat and all closers really are are the best reliever on their respective teams. Can you name a team who used their best reliever consistently in the 8th inning? Yeah, neither can I. And I think we’d all agree that Brad Ziegler was Arizona’s best reliever in 2015. So …
Continue Reading →The gun may have been a little hot on September 1 in Colorado (all five of the D-backs’ top pitches by speed were thrown that day), but that’s when Rubby De La Rosa fired the season’s speedingest bullet. It finished an at bat, after Christian Adames had fouled off five other pitches — and we can only guess how Adames …
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