Bickley Blast: Can the Arizona Diamondbacks find their identity once again?

Bickley Blast: Can the Arizona Diamondbacks find their identity once again?

and Marada Mornings. Arizona sports, the local sports leader. Bigley Blast. It was jarring and strange to see the Diamondbacks playing in a tiny ballpark in West Sacramento over the weekend. It felt like a baseball team that had been relegated to the minor leagues. And after the deflating emotions that swirled around the trade deadline, the symbolism hit pretty hard. So what now? Well, the Diamondbacks return to Chase Field tonight for the first time since waving that metaphorical white flag, and will the fans show their displeasure. Will they avoid the ballpark entirely? Or will they give the team a mulligan after all those early injuries? No doubt the next two months are very important to the future of Tory Lavell, his coaching staff, and the vibe around this baseball team. If they do not regain and find their identity or a slice of redemption, everybody will pay a price. And with football season just around the corner, a nose dive to end the baseball season could lead to sweeping changes and a long, long road back. If you noticed, over 26,000 people showed up for the Cardinals scrimmage on Saturday. A sure sign of where the excitement and optimism currently lies in the valley. And the Diamondbacks, well, they once had their grip on this town and our hearts, and they can’t let that disappear without a fight. All right, today’s Bickley Blast brought to you by my great friends at Chapman BMW. Make luxury attainable. Find them online at chapmanbmw.com. Well, first of all, I I appreciate Ken and Mike taking accountability because um we’re all in this together. And never once have I ever felt like I’ve been on my own island and and they were pointing the finger at me. And I think that’s what makes this this group and this organization so unique is that when one fails, we all fail. Um, and the way I look at it is I could have of course done a better job in several areas. Um, I love defense. I love pitching and defense. That’s that’s who I am at my core. And uh, you know, with a new infield coach, I knew that there was going to be some some growing situations and maybe I could have jumped in a little bit sooner, a little bit more to help facilitate that. Um, so we didn’t have those early lapses in April because all those games in April added up. If we had won four or five of those games in April that we projected to win, uh, we could be in a totally different space right now. And Troy Lavell on with Burns and Gambo Friday here on Arizona Sports. The question posed there where this season went wrong. And he’s right. There’s accountability being taken by ownership. There’s accountability being taken by the general manager’s office. Tory Labella is taking his share of it as well. But where the season went wrong was identified very early and it was going go back to last year. The urgency that was not shown early in the season for a team that missed the postseason by one game. There just seemed to be a it’s okay attitude from day one with this baseball team. And that is certainly you have to pin some of it to the manager, but the players also kind of went out and and and put forth that attitude as well. You know, I need a day off. Mhm. You know, it’s the day before the All-Star game. I need a day off. And and yeah, I’m singling out Catel Marte. He’s not the only one. No. And that policy of of days off and rest and caution has kind of worked its way throughout this entire roster. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So, um, the manager definitely enabled that mindset. There’s no doubt about it. He’s a players manager to the nth degree. He’s an empath. Um, and I’m real curious how Ken Ken Kendrick is feeling about this. It’s it would be something. And, you know, a lot of the fan base has closed the book on Tory Lavell. You know this. You’ve been you’ve been railing about this all year long. Well, a lot of that fan base closed the book last year on Tory Lavell. They’ve thrown the book in the trash now. That’s right. and then they went back to get the book out of the trash and now they’re setting it on fire. So, right. And so that that’s kind of uh where this whole thing is. But it’s it’s interesting to me because as I said before, there’s uh what a history between uh this group and the one thing that you can say about Ken Kendrick and you can say about Mike Hayes and you can say about Tory Lavell and Dererick Hall, they’re tremendously accountable. Things go wrong, they are very very quick to put up their hand and say my bad, that is our fault. uh they rarely ever obfiscate or point fingers and and I it’s a sign of a real uh healthy functioning group of people but the question just becomes uh it’s you can just drill it down to the very basic is it time is it time for a new voice well Burns and Gambo also posed that to Tory Lavell on Friday does he feel like he’s coaching for his job the rest of the season we’ve talked a lot about this auditioning process for a lot of these players is it a further audition for job security for Tory Lavell. I live in that space every day. Nothing ever changes uh with me. I can’t necessarily worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day. I just want to go out and be the best version of myself because if I’m worried about the wrong things, I can’t lead this team. I got to be able to take care of what’s going on inside of the dugout and do my job. If I do my job to the best of my abilities, wherever it lands me, that’s all I can worry about. And I can’t worry about the things I can’t control. And my main control is to walk into this clubhouse today, lead these guys, help them help make good decisions to win a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics. Yeah. I mean, furthering the disappointment on this season, and we just talked to Todd Walsh about it, and Todd has a unique perspective traveling with this team, and he talked in great detail about how he felt the trade deadline affected a lot of players on this team. And again, that’s a reflection of things gone wrong. I’m not I’m not gonna sit here and eliminate the human element of baseball. They are human beings playing a game. Yes, they’re the envy of a lot of people because they do it for big dollars, but there is a human element to it. However, that human element has been in place since 1876 basically when they started playing baseball professionally. Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Diamondbacks team certainly, but any team affected as much by the trade deadline as this one because they were playing their worst baseball in conjunction with being worried about where they were going to play next. Yeah. And you’ve heard a lot of people talk about the focus was off and this was off and that was off. Maybe it was the sheer number of players that were being talked about. Maybe it was the fact that the talking began early that the Diamondbacks kind of were declared s sellers pretty early in the process. Whatever it is, I tend to agree with you. It’s the trade-off. You get paid when you get paid the money, you get paid to play professional sports. What you reconcile before you even start is there are things about this job that are not ideal. The fact that you can trade me to a different city at your whim overnight and suddenly I’ve got to rip up my life and go there and try to be a professional. That’s the bargain. That that is that is the deal. Deal with it. And to go back to Tory Lavell, that’s the job of a Major League Baseball manager is to keep the team focused. This is not, you know, the NFL where you’re calling plays. No, during a game. This is not the NHL where you’re doing line shifts during a game. The I, you know, during before a game, after a game, during a game, it’s to keep the team focused. And they seem to have lost focus over the last week. And yes, and the reason why they were they had so many players affected by trade deadline rumors is because they woefully underachieved. Where does that fall? It falls on the manager and the players. Yeah. No, exactly. I And and again, there was there’s been something off about this team from the very beginning. As you said, I I expected a different kind of team, a a hungry team, a team with incredible edge based on what happened the following the last week of last the previous season, and it’s that hasn’t been the case at all. So, I I don’t I don’t know where my instincts take me when it comes to the manager. Part of me part of me doesn’t see a universe where they bring him back for year 10, but then part of me thinks, what if what if they show a ton of fight here down the stretch and then they maybe blow out some of his staff and give him a new third base coach and another new pitching coach and another new infield coach and who knows? I I I don’t again I’m just I’m just riffing now. I don’t know. I my instincts I’m not clear on this one. Look, I think the the what if is is pretty substantial here because there are 50 plus games left. Yeah, they could make an impression. I don’t think they will cuz they’ve failed to make one to this point. That’s right. So, but we we’ll see. I mean, they they haven’t made a move yet. Well, you got the Padres’s in town for three tonight and the Padres’s are really good and the Padres’s have got some swagger. Uh, the Diamondbacks better find, to quote Tory Lavell, find themselves in a space where they can find the best versions of themselves, he how’s that for some hippie- dippy stuff? Thanks for watching Bickley and Marada. Click to see the latest Bickley Blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports.

The Arizona Diamondback claimed the series win over the Athletics, their first after the MLB trade deadline. Dan Bickley breaks down how the D-backs went from having a hold on the Valley and wonders if they can find their identity before fans check out, ready to cheer on the Arizona Cardinals.

Diamondbacks beat Athletics to end 6-game losing skid: https://arizonasports.com/mlb/arizona-diamondbacks/beat-athletics/3591904/

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