Who are the cornerstones of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ future?

Who are the cornerstones of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ future?

Yeah, you can go ahead and tip J this one for me too, please. Thank you. There’s this one swung on and that’s it to deep right and she’s going to fly as well. Oh man, it’s a home run derby here in Arlington. Verdomo, his 12th of the season. And they are just blowing the doors off of Valdi. It’s 5 nothing in the third. Makes me so sad. It’s like a time machine, Kellen. It’s like going back in time and going, “Man, they were beating Nathan Evaldi 5 nothing. They had home runs from Corbin Carroll and Tyler Lleier and Heraldo Purdomo as you just heard there and it all ended so poorly. I just wish we could go back in time and just be like, “Hey, they’re 5 nothing and everything’s okay.” Heraldo Purdomo uh part of the onslaught last night. Uh Diamondbacks of course lost that game. Uh Ryan Nelson gave up a big uh home run and then the bullpen couldn’t hold it in the ninth and in extra innings. But the if you’re looking for good news, um the Heraldo Purdomo breakout season continues. Certainly money well spent in the offseason by the organization and you can’t say that about every single guy they gave a contract to. There are question marks with a bunch of them. But Heraldo Purdomo certainly has been money well spent for the Diamondbacks organization. Yeah, he absolutely has to the point where he’s having a breakout year and it’s one of those balancing acts that baseball as a sport especially deals with inside of the analytics and all that kind of stuff where you look at it as either like this is going to be like his best year or this is the start of something that we should start to get used to. And I think it’s more of that if I’m being honest because you look at the way that he’s incrementally or sizably improved every year since he got in the majors. It’s to that level. Well, this year he’s just flat out been one of the best shorts stops in in baseball. I tweeted out some of the stats yesterday. Entering today, he’s third in war. He was first in RBI’s, first in walks, first in on base percentage, fifth in hits, fifth in OPS, sixth in average. Like, and if you look at the war standings specifically, you can believe in the metric, not believe in it, whatever. The point being Heraldo predom ranks ahead of guys like Ellie de la Cruz, Cory Seager, Gunnar Henderson, Francisco Lindor, Bob Bashette, Xander Bogarts, Willie Adamis, Dansby Swanson, Mookie Bets, Carlos Korea. He has been a better player than a lot of those guys, I would argue. And and if you believe this metric, all of them like Bobby Wit and and Trey Turner are the three guys and and Purdomo have really been the three guys playing at a level above everyone else. Jeremy Pñena as well in Houston’s having an outstanding Wait, who are the guys with Bobby Wit? Trey Turner in Philly and then Jeremy Pñena is like ranked around similarly where he’s at in Houston. He’s having a very good year. But those are all of the guys that he is outperforming. Like it’s one of the deepest positions in the sport, if not the deepest. And he is separating himself this year. And that in turn can change how you think about this baseball team going forward because none of us none of us had this on our prediction sheet going into this season that this would be a breakout year for Heraldo Purdom where he could uh bring in a 100 runs uh rack up 100 RBI’s and be a differencemaker offensively the way that he has this. Not like this. I I mean I I think if if you had told me that Heraldo Purdomo is going to be one of the Diamondback’s better players this year, sure I would have I would have bought it. and and War, you know, we’re not going to sit here and debate War. I I I like War. Um it’s it’s like a lot of these it’s a tool. It’s an interesting tool. He leads the team in wins above replacement among position players and position players in addition to where he ranks among. So I I think it’s one way to certainly tell the story about Purdomo. No, I wouldn’t have had this on the bingo card. And yes, I do think I do think that he is part of a core that really makes me wonder what next year’s going to look like for the Diamondbacks. And you when you were filling in for Gambo when he was off, you know, trapesing around Europe. Earlier in the summer, we had a lot of conversations about, you know, what the next iteration of a good Diamondbacks team is going to look at. And we were talking about going into the deadline and and how do you how do you make trades to keep this going? Can you keep this going? And specifically, we had a conversation and I remember very well about what window are you trying to cater to if you’re Mike Hazen. Are you trying to cater to the Catel Marte window, the one that maybe only has a year or two left in it and you you need to load up now, or are you catering to the Corbin Carroll window, the one that that it might not it might not be as as strong next year, but it’s certainly got longevity to it, right? Like it certainly can last five, six, seven, eight years. And I think Purdomo, while he fits in both, certainly lends a lot of credence to the Corbin Carroll window. Like like, okay, but maybe you don’t need to be great next year, but you should certainly be good for at least the next half decade when you’ve got a core of Corbin Carroll and Heraldo Purdomo in the middle of it. Conveniently, ESPN released their MLB rank and again, this is like war where like you’re ranking players and everyone’s going to disagree on like where certain guys are at. But if you look at the teams with two position players in the top 20, like the top 20 players in baseball, you’re looking at position players. Three teams have two guys. It’s the Cubs, it’s the Dodgers, and it’s the Diamondbacks. Corbin Carroll’s 18th on this list. Catel Marte is 20th. And those three teams have two guys that could be in the running for MVP pretty much any year. Like that’s what that sort of ranking solidifies. Heraldo Purdome was 44th on this list. They view him as a top 50 player in baseball this year. And that’s sort of the gap that was always going to be there, it felt like, going into the year. And part of why there’s so much importance on Jordan Lawler and how he looks for the rest of this year and next year as well, because of the star potential that he has among the position players that is absent with everyone else outside of Carol and outside of Marte. I’m not saying that Heraldo Predom is going to win five silver sluggers at shortstop. He’s going to make 10 All-Star games after this year, but there is a maximum ceiling that he has shown this year to be one of the best players at his position that we did not know going into the year. So, if you look at like the output that they could get from their position players, you can win a lot of games even with substandard pitching if you have Carol playing at an elite level, Marte playing at an elite elite level, and Purdomo playing at an elite level. Unless you have a bullpen like you do this year apparently, because that’s what we’re watching this year. And then it makes you kind of re-quest why you’re thinking this in 2026 when we just watched it this year. And it’s it’s conversations like this that make me wonder and I saw the quotes from Derek Hall that he gave to Nick Pakoro late last week. We talked about it a little on the show. It’s conversations like this that make me wonder like if I’m Ken Kendrick, okay, I understand I I’m I’m going to take a loss in 2025. I’m going to take a loss at the Gates in 2025. I I I spent a lot of my roster and and they didn’t they they didn’t deliver for me. But if you’re talking and if I’m Mike Kasin and I’m pitching Ken Kendrick and Derrick Hall on continuing to spend maybe not at the $200 million level, but certainly at a high level, that’s my pitch, right? My elevator pitch to Derek and Ken is going to be, hey guys, I don’t know if you know this, we got three of the best 50 position players in all of baseball. We have to go for this, right? like we we are compelled to take advantage of the fact now what they’re going to do with Catel in the offseason. I don’t know. There’s some grumblings about whether they could listen to offers and move him and things like that and his, you know, overall commitment to the program. Okay, let’s set that off to the side for a second. But my elevator pitch to to Derek and to Ken is I’ve got three of the 50 best players in baseball. We have to go for this, right? Like we have to keep this going and keep spending. And not many teams have this opportunity. I just don’t know if they’ll spend to the levels that they have the last couple of years because of getting burned this year even though the everything about it says they should keep this rolling. If Purdomo plays this way again next year though to your point on the extension $6.5 million that he’s making next year and then nine the year after that. Like this could be another Hazen masterclass in terms of the extension and when he signed it. I know the fat deal isn’t going so well this year. I know that the – deal isn’t going great this year but he’s had some strokes of genius in other areas for sure. The one guy that I’ve been waiting to join this club and I I’m starting to wonder whether it’s gonna happen or not is Gabby. Yeah. I always thought Gabby was gonna join this little I didn’t think Purdomo was going to join it like this, but I always thought Gabby was going to establish himself as sort of a no, I’m part of this conversation, too. He’s been hurt, but it really hasn’t happened, has it? Well, he’s just always had an injury pop up that’s keeping him out a month or six weeks. And some of it’s bad luck, but at the same time, it’s just been happening a lot in his career so far. Yeah. Uh, not for him. Thanks for watching Burns and Gambo. Click to see more from the guys and hit the button in the middle to subscribe so you never miss a video from Arizona Sports.

Corbin Carroll and Geraldo Perdomo each homered to pull the Arizona Diamondbacks ahead 5-0 early in Monday’s game over the Texas Rangers. Dave Burns and guest host Kellan Olson debate which young players of today are the cornerstones this team will build upon moving forward.

Diamondbacks clobber Nathan Eovaldi, still suffer walk-off loss to Rangers: https://arizonasports.com/mlb/arizona-diamondbacks/walk-off-rangers/3592662/

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