{"id":663527,"date":"2026-04-04T22:31:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T22:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663527\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T22:31:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T22:31:27","slug":"sb-nation-reacts-results-faith-in-ryne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663527\/","title":{"rendered":"SB Nation Reacts Results: Faith in Ryne"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a> fans and fans across the country. Sign up here<\/a> to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s early days, but we had seen each starting pitcher for the Diamondbacks once this year. That\u2019s surely plenty to be able to make a pronouncement about who\u2019s going to be our Cy Young candidate for 2026, isn\u2019t it? Things do get a little more complex because of the injury situation. Merrill Kelly is going to get his season under way when everyone else has already had a couple of starts ahead of him, and theoretical \u201cace\u201d Corbin Burnes will not be taking the mound until even later in the schedule. These factors, and the lack of any obvious answer, is exactly why we had this week\u2019s poll. And the envelope, please:<\/p>\n

Despite a wobbly first start – and a second one which was not much better (including the unearned runs, anyway) – the SnakePit is still keeping its faith in Ryne Nelson. That\u2019s understandable: his body of work last year after coming into the rotation was impressive, and a couple of shaky outings don\u2019t negate all that. However, I\u2019m very concerned about the peripherals. Nelson has walked (6) almost as many as he has struck out (7), and the long-ball problem from last year seems to have got worse so far, with four homers allowed in only 9.1 innings. Indeed, so far Ryne has allowed one hit which didn\u2019t leave the yard, for a BABIP of .043. That\u2019s going up, I suspect.<\/p>\n

The impressive first outing by Eduardo Rodriguez certainly opened eyes, and helped boost him into third place. Last night\u2019s game made him the first Arizona starter since Curt Schilling in 2002 to open the season by throwing consecutive games without allowing an earned run [some pitchers have done it in their first two starts, such as Nelson in 2022, just not right at the beginning of the year]. Probably the biggest surprise might be the low level of support, down in single figures, for Merrill Kelly. I get him not out-performing Nelson based on 2025 numbers, but I definitely expected him to come ahead of E-Rod and Gallen. Zac hasn\u2019t been truly good since the first half of 2024, with an ERA from July 1, 2024 of 4.62 across 51 starts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be interesting to revisit this around the All-Star break, and see whether opinions have changed, with a bit more significant of a sample size to look at.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2404],"tags":[146,22,75962,4314,19173,5,38,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-663527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-diamondbacks","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks","10":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks-discussion","11":"tag-arizonadiamondbacks","12":"tag-az-snake-pit-community","13":"tag-baseball","14":"tag-diamondbacks","15":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116348812646751042","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}