Some change is normal when a new GM is named, but last offseason, the recalibration that GM Dave Stewart and CBO Tony La Russa undertook was anything but normal. Retooling is the kind of thing you see when a team just missed, and expiring club control would make some turnover inevitable; when the D-backs entered the 2014-2015 offseason, they did …
Continue Reading →This little piece is about Jeremy Hellickson. Sorry, just kind of didn’t work him into the headline. More specifically, though, it’s about the dilemma about whether tendering Hellickson a contract is a dilemma. The chances that they’ll tender him are pretty close to the “yeah, definitely” range. But should they be?
Hellickson started his career as a baseball conundrum …
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 →Let’s just skip the introductory paragraph. I’m not a fan of beating a dead horse and that’s what all of these starting pitching posts seem like after a while. The starters were 27th in WAR, 21st in ERA, 24th in FIP, 26th in HR/9, 22nd in BB/9 and 18th in K/9. That’s bad and …
Continue Reading →This year, all of the first-round picks in the MLB draft signed with their teams (although one in particular did go down to the wire…). We won’t get a final draft order for the 2016 draft until well after the season ends, since some free agents could cause changes — but things are a little simpler than normal. And while …
Continue Reading →Once upon a time, the Diamondbacks were a relevant baseball team. If it seems like that was a long time ago, it’s because it kind of was. If it seems like that wasn’t a long time ago, it’s because it kind of wasn’t. I don’t really know what that means – it was a middle amount of time ago? The …
Continue Reading →The D-backs staff’s ground ball percentage has tailed off a bit from where it was earlier this season, but it’s still up there — 46.1%, ranked 12th — and that’s still some kind of small shock, considering it entered the season with a staff of fly ball pitchers. A huge part of that is the relentlessness with which they’ve pitched …
Continue Reading →Okay, the title is a little ominous, but hear me out. Jeremy Hellickson is entering his third year of arbitration this winter. He’s making $4.28 million this year, a figure that was decided upon after he missed a good chunk of 2014 with injury and had uninspiring results. Hellickson has stayed healthy in 2015 and has improved his stock on …
Continue Reading →D-backs position players rank 3rd in the NL this season in FanGraphs’ version of Wins Above Replacement. Sure, they could be better — two teams actually are — but for a team that finished last in baseball just last year, that’s a pretty enormous accomplishment. Hitting is a big part of it. The D-backs currently have a 96 wRC+, and …
Continue Reading →It’s starting to look like the D-backs may end up having discussions about Jeremy Hellickson — something we thought in our Midseason Plan would be a good idea to initiate. Hellickson followed a rocky April with a solid May, but had his worst month in June. So far in July, he has a 2.50 ERA in three starts. Not enough …
Continue Reading →If you read everything Eno Sarris writes (recommended), you already learned about the Mets and the Dan Warthen slider about 10 days ago (required). If you don’t and/or haven’t, go do that. I’ll still be here when you hopefully get back. And actually, knowing the title of this piece, I’m pretty sure you’ll come back if you do go do …
Continue Reading →The Diamondbacks are not a particularly good team when it comes to pitching. By ERA, they rank 26th in the majors. Since we know that Chase Field punishes pitchers more than almost any other park, that’s probably not the best way to look at them. If we choose a defense-independent, park-adjusted metric, they’re basically the same, ranking 24th…
Continue Reading →This July, the D-backs are less at a crossroads, as they may have been last year, and more at a mountain peak, finally seeing the journey ahead with a high degree of clarity. The team has built for 2016 and 2017, and never at the expense of this season. But as of this writing, twelve efforts to climb back to …
Continue Reading →A funny thing happened at the start of the season: even though the rotation was to be manned by three fly ball pitchers, by the end of April the D-backs staff was fourth in the majors in ground ball percentage at 49.1%. It wasn’t all Brad Ziegler. Archie Bradley was a big part of the sharp change in the …
Continue Reading →Jeremy Hellickson‘s season stats are pretty bad. An ERA of 5.08, just over six strikeouts per nine innings and nearly three walks per nine, too. None of that is good by any measure. And none of that is a big surprise as Hellickson just isn’t an impact guy any way you want to paint it. As Ryan and I …
Continue Reading →Last week, Baseball Prospectus introduced a new metric for pitchers: Deserved Run Average, or DRA. By zeroing in on some key component statistics while still baking in some context, we can get a read on how much of what the D-backs’ pitchers’ stats look like thus far is chance or bad luck, and how much is not far off the …
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