So how we feeling?
Preston: Hopeful the Hillsboro Hops can hold on to first place in the Northwest League? While I’d hate to say the season’s over already, and it obviously is not, things aren’t looking good.
James: I guess that I am mostly feeling much like I did last year – frustrated. THis team is better than the results they have achieved. A few bad mistakes here and there have torpedoed their standing for the moment. They are hardly out of it right now, with so much of the season to go. But it sure would be nice to see them get healthy and then go on a tear much like Detroit did after their sell-off and eventual run to the playoffs last season.
Ben: I’ll echo James – I’m more frustrated than anything. It feels like the team is underachieving compared to both expectations and what they’ve demonstrated earlier in the season. There’s also so little room for error in an ubercompetitive NL this year. I think what’s most concerning to me is the team’s pitching. At the moment, the only pitcher I actually have faith in is Merrill Kelly. I am terrified of the peripherals for both Corbin Burnes and Brandon Pfaadt (FIPs of 4.10 and 4.92 respectively) while Zac Gallen and Eduardo Rodriguez have been truly dismal. And don’t even get me started on the dumpster fire that is the bullpen. Those kinds of performances put that much more pressure onto an offense that has been inconsistent so far.
Wesley: I have long since accepted the fact that this team, in general, was created to frustrate the ever living f* out of me. This is a talented roster on paper, that shouldn’t be this bad, yet here we are, again. Maybe the problem is the team’s evaluation of talent is faulty in the first place? At the very least, there’s a problem with how the team is evaluating/coaching relief pitchers. Strength, conditioning, and recovery seems to be an issue too. I’ve never tried to hide the fact that my opinion of Gallen has never been that positive. He wasn’t much of an actual ‘Ace’ to begin with in my opinion, which was why I was pushing for a trade for at least the last year. The Erod signing has been a mess since the beginning. TheIt’s a pessimistic take, but it is what it is. I
Spencer: Much like Preston, I’m more interested in other teams/leagues at this point. With each embarrassing loss, I’m looking more and more forward to the deadline sale that maybe nets impact talent for the first time in…a long time. Honestly, I’m starting to blame those nostalgia-ridden purple City Connects as I search for answers and reasons for this most recent Arizona Collapse.
Makakilo: Not good. The problems extend beyond the bullpen. My take is that in the last 9 games (20-30 May), the Diamondbacks did not make the most of two strengths: great starting pitching and great offense.
Starting Pitching. Data surprisingly showed me that when each starting pitcher goes beyond a specific number of innings, their results are worse than the bullpen. The Baseball Savant data that initially grabbed my attention is in the following table:
Perhaps it would be better to limit innings by each starting pitcher. Burnes should pitch 7 innings Max. Nelson could pitch more innings on occasion, but based on Lovullo’s post-game comments Nelson should pitch 6 innings Max. Kelly should pitch 6 innings Max. Gallen, Rodriguez, and Pfaadt should pitch 5 innings Max.
To keep the bullpen arms fresh, bullpen pitchers need to rotate through the Majors, like I have seen the Dodgers do in past seasons (I have not looked at whether they are doing it this season).
Offense: Despite Saturday’s game with 7 runs, the offense is in a slump.
For the first 48 games of the season, the offense:
was as good as last season in getting runners on base.
was as good as last season in scoring baserunners via homer.
was nearly as good as last season in scoring those runners via non-homer.
The last ten games:
10% less baserunners-per-game than last season.
2.7% less of their baserunners scored via homer.
3.5% less of their baserunners scored by non-homer.
For details, see the following table:
DBacksEurope: My initial thoughts on this season were that we were not going to be as good as we were last year and I do not think I am far off at the moment. The team can still turn the tide, though, just like they did last year, although we already seem to have an offence that is delivering, unlike last year at the beginning of June.
Let’s take it one section at a time, are the struggles of Gallen and Rodriguez holding the team back more than the overall success of Burnes, Pfaadt, and Kelly are pushing the team forward?
Preston: No. The issue is the bullpen. Injuries (including to Rodriguez) would be second on that list. Defense would be third. Gallen’s struggles are worrisome, but he’s shown flashes of what he needs to be, including last time out. But if the bullpen can’t hold a six run lead, it’s going to be hard to win games on the strength of starting pitching unless we suddenly get a 30 year old Randy Johnson and Torey lets him throw 140 pitches a game. And how many of those collapses have been triggered by a defensive meltdown?
[Needed edit following Saturday: obviously not, given that Pfaadt’s success is now no longer.]
James:No. Despite the struggles of Gallen and E-Rod, they have still given some depth, even if not good depth. Without their contributions (such as they have been), the bullpen is even more torn to shreds than it already is. Furthermore, in the case of Gallen, it has mostly been about one bad inning. IN this last outing, it was the final inning, which would seem to indicate that there were moves that could have been made to prevent some of the meltdown. The team truly needs to find some healthy, fresh, bullpen stability if they are going to make a run at the postseason. The bullpen’s inability to shut down the Pirates’ offense, despite Pittsburgh struggling to score three runs per game is a massive indictment on just how bad the bullpen is at the moment.
Ben: No, as bad as those two have been, they have the ability to be very effective on a given night when their respective control is there. Plus they’ve still covered 110+ innings which is valuable in and of itself. The obvious answer is the bullpen. Torey truly has basically one or two reliable arms right now, and that’s just not enough to cover the necessary innings.
Wesley: Like everyone else has said, it’s the bullpen. It’s always the bullpen.
Spencer: While I agree it’s mostly the bullpen, I don’t think we can just ignore how atrocious Gallen has become and how awful ERod has been. Without Montgomery in 2024, we’d be calling for his head without thought already. And Gallen is pitching himself out of the QO and maybe even deadline value. No team can compete with only 3 ok starters and holes in other places.
Makakilo: Looking at their recent starts, there are two groups of starters: the prime time and the not currently prime time. [Addendum, added unknown injury group] My view is that Pfaadt, Gallen, and Rodriguez should be limited to 5 innings per start until their results show they are ready for more. Optimistically, they can be fixed, likely by some seemingly small change.
Prime Time:
Nelson: 3 ERs in 17.2 Innings (last 4 starts) (plus 4 scoreless innings of relief)
Kelly: 8 ERs in 11 Innings (last 2 starts)
[Addendum]
Unknown Injury:
Burnes: 6 ERs in 18.2 innings (last 3 starts)
Not Currently Prime Time:
Pfaadt: 18 ERs in 15.2 Innings (last 4 starts)
Rodriguez: 21 ERs in 16 Innings (last 4 starts)
Gallen: 19 ERs in 21.1 Innings (last 4 starts)
DBacksEurope: Well, there definitely is a good argument that can be made that the starting pitching is not delivering the amount of innings that this team needs and this team needs a lot of starting pitching innings because the bullpen is as bad and overtaxed as they are. However, the starting pitching is probably below average at the moment, but not as bad as we might think, while the bullpen has been atrocious. So, yeah, the bullpen is probably still the biggest problem.
Are we worried about the offense’s cold streaks? For every ten run outburst, it seems as though there are 19 unanswered runs,
Preston: The big innings get the attention, and there’s reason behind that. But the most sustainable part of any offense is the home run ball, and the Diamondbacks rank fifth in that category, in addition to being fourth in OPS+. There’s been a bit of bad luck in terms of sequencing, as despite having averaged over five runs per game, they’ve still slightly underperformed their base runs (by one run every five games.) They’ve also allowed a run every ten games more than their base runs would indicate.
Some would fixate on the number of runners left on base, but the fact is that good offenses leave a lot of runners on base, and the Diamondbacks aren’t doing so any more than would be expected. They’ve left 14 runners more than average on base, but they were getting a lot more than 14 runners above average on base in the first place.
Also, to possibly ease the hurt from the Pirates’ series, Pittsburgh has left many more runners on base over the course of the season than have the Diamondbacks, despite scoring closer to two fewer runs per game. We got hit by some major regression in terms of their offense.
James: Teams always look for consistency in players. Wild fluctuations from one extreme to another are difficult to manage around. It would certainly be nice if Arizona could find a steady, productive pace to tick away at. But, given the personnel on the roster and the fact that hyper-consistent bats (the good ones that is) tend to cost $25+ million/season, I’m okay with what AZ is doing. I would like to see them more aggressive on the bases, but that’s a small matter.
Ben: Yes, I think it’s concerning that the offense can be so inconsistent. I completely understand that players and teams will have patches of inconsistency across a season, but it still worries me when there is so little room for error in their postseason pursuit. I’m more concerned at how shallow the lineup can be when Carroll and Perdomo are struggling at all. But they’ve also shown exactly how dynamic they can be when they’re clicking correctly.
Wesley: The offense will be fine, though Ben makes a very good point about the team having little room for error if they want to actually make the postseason. I don’t think people realize how good the Dbacks offense is. They have six players with wRC+ 120 or higher. They technically have ten players with wRC+ above 103, but Ryne Nelson doesn’t really count. However, Lourdes Gurriel Jr may very well improve his statline enough to push it over 100 on the season if he continues to heat up. Excluding Jake and Jordan, Jose Herrera and Alek Thomas are really the only weak bats in the Dbacks lineup on a regular basis.
Spencer: Of all the major parts of the team, offense doesn’t worry me. They remain themselves against every team we face, scoring many runs. Sure there are bad bats (I’m ready to send Alek Thomas elsewhere for whatever), but overall this offense would be great if it had any pitching talent in the same clubhouse.
Makakilo: The problem is bigger than being streaky. The last 9 games show that the offense is in a slump. Their runs per game fell from 5.25 (in the first 48 games) to 3.78 (in the 9 games prior to Saturday’s 7 run game). More details are in my previous answer.
DBacksEurope: We already knew that with Lourdes Gurriel Jr and Eugenio Suarez this team was going to be frustratingly streaky from time to time. Moreno’s bat is up and down as well normally, while Carroll seems to run through rough stretches too. However, this offence is still one of the best offences in the entire league statwise, so I don’t think they are a concern. Every major league has streaky offences.
Is it possible to fix the bullpen?
Preston: From a personnel perspective, I’m of the opinion that we need to aggressively promote rather than trade and cost ourselves another Chad Patrick or Andrew Pintar. Despite the inability of the incumbents in the bullpen, Christian Montes De Oca was up for a week and didn’t get in a game. That’s patently ridiculous; he couldn’t be any worse than what was out there. Could we see Hayden Durke up before the year is out? There’s a chance. But the best hope might be Yilber Diaz figuring things out.
Also, Andrew Saalfrank will be back soon. I don’t know how much that helps; in fact, it takes away another 40-man spot.
James: Sure, it can be fixed. But it will require the talent evaluators and Mike Hazen to both be on their game and to have the courage to take some risks. As Preston pointed out, there are some options internally to be investigated – preferably without further disturbing the ghost of Jon Duplantier’s right arm. Beyond that, there are indeed fitting relievers to be had via trade, but one needs to pick the right arms and at the right time. We don’t need another Jake Diekman situation on our hands, where the front office went out and picked up a quality lefty reliever with a long track record of success, only to have him ride the bullpen cart into infamy as a disaster in AZ before going back to being good the next season – elsewhere.
Yilber needs to get through the yips.
Puk needs to return healthy.
Aggressive promotion based on smaller sample sizes.
Finding at least one, if not two reliable relievers, even if they are just inning-eaters for the fifth through seventh innings.
That would change the overall composure of the bullpen while continuing to rely on those that AZ already had penciled in as leaders of the crew.
Ben: I think so, yes. I’m with Preston that I’d like to see Montes De Oca get an opportunity to demonstrate what he can do at the major league level. He’s shown some promise in Reno and it’s not like the team can be particularly choosy at the moment. Otherwise, there are always relievers on the trading block from lesser teams, but that’s also such a gamble that it makes me worried on what it might cost.
It’s a gripe I have about how the team handled Lawlar’s time in the bigs too. Montes De Oca didn’t get into a single game and Lawlar missed multiple games sitting on the bench or was only brought in at the end of a game. To me, younger prospects like that should either be getting consistent opportunities in Reno or semi-consistent opportunities in the big leagues.
Wesley: The way they’re handling Lawlar and Montes de Oca is baffling to me. The best option to throw whatever live arm from the minors at the problem, and see what sticks.
Spencer: No. They all have potential based on previous results (not counting these new emergency choices I don’t know anything about), but this year only Shelby Miller and Jalen Beeks inspire confidence in me. I think we overhyped JMart and of all of them, I’m most critical of him because he’s been anointed as an important piece but this has looked more like Mets Juan Soto personality than worthy of a roster spot.
Makakilo: Yes. I’m confident that we will see a few different bullpen pitchers. There is a good chance that the overall bullpen results will improve.
DBacksEurope: No. Ever since the 2021 season Hazen has been saying that the bullpen needs to be improved but he is obviously incapable of doing so, so I am saying that this cannot be fixed, at least not by this front office and management.
Should Torey be on the hot seat? What about other coaches?
Preston: I completely scrapped and re-wrote my response following the game on Saturday.
I think that Torey has earned himself a very long leash given his track record here. I still don’t think he should be on the hot seat. But it’s no longer a question of should. He is on the hot seat. There are some performances so embarrassing that it becomes impossible to stay the course. Last night was one of those; perhaps not in a vacuum, but following on the heels of so many other poor performances it was. But if you are going to fire, fire more than just Torey. Brian Kaplan was brought in to fix a problem and has made it so much worse that we are literally longing for last year’s level of incompetence. He should be gone. Jeff Bannister has been a part of all of this; I do not think he is the right choice for interim, and so he should be gone as well. And Mike Hazen has done well to put together a core of position players to make this team a potential contender, but I think we can safely conclude that he is never going to fix the pitching staff issues that have plagued his tenure. Thanks, but happy trails.
I don’t think Kendrick and Hall take that drastic of action, which is a pity, because the only actions to take at this point are either no action or drastic action. Firing the manager, depending on the state of the clubhouse, could make matters far worse, unless there are general firings so that he’s not being scapegoated. But Kendrick and Hall have to see that there are issues from the top (including Kendrick; don’t think I’ve forgotten who pushed for signing Jordan Montgomery) all the way down to the pitching development. We can’t know that the change in organizational pitching philosophy from Strom to Kaplan caused Yilber Diaz to acquire the dreaded y-word, but it can’t have helped. Hazen has had almost a decade to put a group in place to fix these issues. He’s failed to do it, and the closest he came (with Strom) resulted in (reportedly) internal strife with one of the team’s ace pitchers and eventually this. He’s never put together a high-quality pitching staff, he’s never going to put together a high-quality pitching staff, and it’s time to give him our thanks for the position player development he has done and show him the door. (Since he’s not a control freak when it comes to the draft, I don’t even think it needs to wait until after then. The front office already has a good idea of priorities and which players they want.)
James: I see no reason to put Lovullo on the hot seat, beyond where any other manager in the game would be if there were some hiccups. Lovullo has shown he has the temperament to weather these sorts of storms without losing his head. There is something to be said for that. Also, this team is about to get drastically younger in a hurry. The departures of several veteran players this winter is going to force the club to more rapidly embrace their youth movement. Lovullo’s biggest strength is likely in that development. Lovullo’s biggest “mistakes” so far this season have generally involved giving too much leash to a “trusted veteran”. That is the sort of thing that can be said for nearly every manager in the game. Also, I’m skeptical that the Diamondbacks have anyone in-house ready to step up and do a better job than Lovullo has, especially since coming out of the epically bad 100+ loss season. I’d be more inclined to start firing players and/or fringe staff members failing to live up to or develop the results expected by the talent evaluators, while also putting those evaluators under scrutiny.
Ben: This feels like a classic “You can’t fire the players” situation. It’s not Lovullo’s fault that some of the tools at his disposal – especially in the bullpen – have underperformed so much. There are certainly quibbles to be made about his bullpen usage, but that’s probably true of every big league manager. As far as I can tell, the team still seems mentally locked in for the most part and that’s an area where he can have a pretty big impact. Having said all that, there will definitely be some pressure on him if the team fails to make the postseason for a consecutive season. This is a roster designed around being competitive this year and it’s hard to argue they haven’t underachieved in relation to the expended resources.
Wesley: I think Torey isn’t the cause of the problem, but the rest of the coaching staff, I do think should be looked at..
Spencer: In the offseason, perhaps the coaches and maybe Torey should be replaced again, but all in all, the poor performance is on the players. They know what they need to do and just aren’t/can’t.
Makakilo: NO, and no. Lovullo is a top-5 manager in the Majors. His coaching style is especially effective for young players (the Diamondbacks are a young team). Also, changing coaches mid-season could do more harm than good.
DBacksEurope: I think Torey is on or not on the hot seat just like Mike Hazen is. I really believe their fate is pretty much tied. If one goes, the other will soon follow. My personal opinion is that Hazen is to blame much more than Lovullo: he has been responsible for the reinforcements, signings, trades, development of players, etc., which has been subpar. Lovullo has made some questionable choices here and there but overall this team isn’t delivering what we think they should deliver due to choices made in the front office. I am not saying anyone should be fired, but I don’t see the Diamondbacks going back to the World Series anytime soon with this front office and management. I can live with that, but next year we will be getting closer to the 10-year mark for Mike Hazen and the balance isn’t that great for him (although still a lot better than many other team’s performances).