PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - 5 Reasons the Diamondbacks Have Started Slow in 2024 (and How to Fix Them)

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

The Diamondbacks are broken, so we take a look at the root causes of their struggles and how the Snakes can fix them to get back on track. We also discuss the Tommy Pham revenge tour, the D-backs leaning into being the Bee-Backs, this week’s MLB Power Rankings, and more!An ALLCITY Network ProductionSUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX Events: Get your tickets to Suns Takeovers, Coyotes & Suns Watch Parties at BetMGM, and MORE here: https://gophnx.com/events/Factor Mealkits: Use code PHNXDBACKS50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box and free wellness shots for life with any active subscription at https://factormeals.com/phnxdbacks50Desert Financial Credit Union: Open a free checking account online with Desert Financial Credit Union and get $200 in bonuses https://www.desertfinancial.com/200Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Circle K:  Join Inner Circle for free by downloading the Circle K app today! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!OGeez!: OGeez! is not your average cannabis-infused gummy. Head over to https://www.ogeezbrands.com to find where you can purchase. Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Four Peaks: Follow on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. When you shop through links in the description, we may earn affiliate commissions. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

GEE to you all, or should I say Skibe to you all. Welcome in to another edition of the PHNX D-Backs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as the Queen Bee. This is my drone over here, occasionally known as your thunderstick, Jesse Friedman. And we welcome you in to a podcast where we are going to make a poor attempt at fixing the Arizona Diamondbacks because this team is broken. It's broken. The team's broken. Yeah.

I was just thinking about if Tuesday night doesn't go the way that it did. If it doesn't end as gloriously as it did for Diamondbacks fans with Christian Walker hitting that two-run walk-off. Dodgers steal it late or Diamondbacks don't come back or whatever the case. Diamondbacks just don't come back. Just lose it two to one or three. In a game where the Dodgers in innings one through nine, they only scored because of a wild pitch and a Bach, both from Joe Manciply.

If that's how that game ended and the Diamondbacks had just gotten swept by the Dodgers and they were 13 and 19 right now, be a dark time for Diamondbacks fans. And it's still kind of a dark time. Yeah, it's not great. Things are great. But a little bit less dark, you know, like four games under 500 through 32 games. It's not a good spot by any means. But the team is still in the mixish. And it certainly could be worse for whatever that's worth.

Well, at least we have the bees and the friends we made along the way. Connor, did you befriend any of the bees? No. Did you name any of them? No, no, didn't get a chance to meet any of them. I did have a chance to fall in love with Matt Hilton. He's a heartbreaker. I'm just saying that now.

I learned more about bees in a 24-hour period of time than I thought I ever knew, though. Like, I remember learning about bees in, like, elementary school. And then suddenly I was thrust into a position of knowing their entire ideology. all sorts of myths and legends about bees. I watch Candyman, which, by the way, I was going to put some work into a Tom Candyotti Candyman meme, and then I was like, no one's going to get this, really.

I certainly wouldn't, but I don't get any of your men. I know Gerald would over there for sure, but of course, there's on Diamondbacks have a lot to fix when it comes to what's wrong with this team right now. And, I mean, there's some, none of this information is going to be new to anybody that's been watching this team.

but in kind of ranking the problems with the Arizona Diamondbacks, you can't help but put injuries at the number one spot for this team right now and the biggest thing impacting them. And that's something that they have zero control over. When we discuss our ideas to fix this team or ways that they could possibly rectify, at least I guess tread some water for a little while here while they're waiting for some of these guys come back, nothing you can do about injuries except to be patient and not.

risk these guys coming back too early. But right now. And I think I will say just real quick, I think that's something that the diamondbacks can do differently in some ways. Tori Lavello was pretty open with us the other day, that he has regrets over how the team handled the Eduardo Rodriguez situation that he wishes they had done reimaging. And, you know, who is to say if Erod is back right now,

if they don't have him start throwing again within seven days of the injury originally happening, you know, even if they play, that better. He still might be out at this point, but he at least wouldn't have suffered the setback that he did. And now it feels like the diamond backs are potentially going to be waiting even longer for him to return. So patience is really important. The diamond backs do need these guys back pretty much on all fronts, but they need to make sure that they're being cautious and making sure that guys are ready for all of these next steps before they allow them to take those next steps. currently tied for fifth most players on the IL with 10.

Yeah. You know at one point that if you included some of the guys that were on their 40-man roster, they were up to like 13 at one point. But I mean, when you look at this team, when you look at, of course, the way that that impacts everyone else. And you look at how many times mistakes were made by replacement players who were there based on, you know, the injuries and how that might have played out differently this Diamondback season looks completely different,

but that's an alternate reality that does not exist. At least we're not in that reality right now. We are in the reality where they are tied for 11th in Warp lost due to injuries via Baseball Prospectus. Yeah, Warp is Baseball Prospectus's measurement of Wins Above Replacement, which is sort of the outcast among all of the various measures of war. We don't use a warp from baseball prospectus very often. but they have a very helpful tool that tracks injuries around the league.

And so they're measuring the amount of war lost to injury. And of course, they're going to use their in-house war metric, which is called warp. But yeah, it may be surprising to people that the Diamondbacks are only 11th in lost warp due to injury at this point. That is going to escalate for sure because now that Merrill Kelly is on the injured list, that hasn't been the case for very long. He certainly was projected to be one of the more valuable pitchers. on this team and that loss is costly moving forward. But anyone thinking that the Diamondbacks are the only team dealing with fairly significant

injuries, that's just not the case. And these numbers bear that out. A lot of, I mean, the Braves right now, right? Like Spencer Strider is out for the season. That's a really big loss for them. Ozzy Albi's missed some time. Sean Murphy, their catcher, their primary catcher has missed the majority of the season as well.

Like even just those few players, those are really big losses for a team like the Braves, of course, the Braves have just otherworldly amounts of depth in order to withstand that sort of thing. But you look across the rest of the league as well. The Diamondbacks are definitely not alone in this. When you look at the accumulated time miss, we have eight days by Gritchick, 31 days by Alec Thomas, 28 days by Perdomo, 35 days, E. Rod, Cwall, Jameson, Luis Friest has been on the IL for 16 days. Ryan Nelson, 13 days, 12 days for Melchell. 11 days for Miguel Castro and nine days for Kyle Nelson who will be out for the remainder of the season. So there are some things here that aren't going to be fixed anytime soon.

And hopefully some of these guys do come off the aisle soon. And that's an easy way to fix missing them. However, like Jesse said earlier, the Diamondbacks are going to be, I think, more cautious now. Yes. Especially considering the, I guess the regrets that they have right now. that they don't really know how erod would have you know it would have impacted him differently you can't help though feel like because he said he was feeling good and because you were you know very uh i guess excited to get him back is is one way to put it the other way is is a little desperate

to get him back you might have pushed him a little too early so but the injuries everybody knows about the injuries we've been covering those extensively and if you are once again a debacks fan you know about the injuries but another thing you know about is corman carroll struggles both defensively and offensively, though defensively, he has not been as bad as... He defensively remains up for debate. I still kind of want to fight Damon on this one.

No. We had that argument last. And it's understandable. Like he... You guys are wrong and that's okay. We're not wrong because the numbers don't lie. We have a whole segment about that. But what we...

That's what I should have done for numbers, don't lie. That would have shut Damon up. That would have shut Damon up. Wrong, right? Because the numbers don't lie. One positive outs above average. Yeah. That's fair.

Yeah, let's throw a parade, Jesse. No, but the point being is he's definitely not as much of a liability as he has seemed at times. Because once again, it's kind of a comparison, Alec Thomas being out there. So Alec Thomas just is an excellent centerfielder. By comparison, I think a lot of outfielders do not look as good as Alec Thomas out there. But I do think, like Jesse said, some of Corbyn Carroll's struggles with the defense are more highlighted by the fact that he does have excellent. speed and is able to get to balls but has had you know hasn't made some clean amazing spectacular plays like we see alec thomas just kind of do effortlessly right alec thomas jumps up off the wall

and grabs the ball and like does it like it's like just standard practice every ball player should be able to do it yeah and especially with the way that that god damn airplane hanger we play in is is designed it's not the easiest thing to do but the bigger problem has been corbin carroll's uh you know my bats and his offensive production. 100%. Yeah, I mean, Corbyn Carroll has a 547 OPS. He is 100 and ranks 150 or 165th out of 181 qualified hitters in Major League Baseball, which is obviously, I mean, that's, that's in like the bottom 10% of Major League hitters,

which is not exactly what you expected from, from a player is as good as Corbyn Carroll, who just finished fifth and MVP voting as he did. We expect this to turn around as we discussed last night. Torre Levello expects this to turn around. He was talking about how he feels like day one of the Corbyn Carroll turnaround was a couple of days ago. The bats have started to improve. And we said that too. We said that just looking at him in batting practice.

And again, batting practice is hard. You're out there. You expect to see guys hitting well in batting practice, right? But then there is the fact that sometimes you just see guys dialed in. I mean, I can think of a couple of times where Kattel was just hitting the ball all the way to Gonzo Grill. and I couldn't, you know, I just couldn't get out of my, I'm like, Contell is going to go off tonight. It doesn't necessarily translate over to them going off that night. But Corbyn Carroll's batts have seen better.

His, you know, pregame batting, you know, practice at bats have seen better. And he just, he seems to have more power and he's, and he's hitting the ball harder. But right now it's not, it's not equaling him, you know, doing better on the field, right? It's still 547 OPS. I know that there are, there was a roto, story, a Roto Wire story that basically you know is asking if it's time to drop Corbyn Carroll from your fantasy baseball team so like

yeah things are not good for you got a crazy you got to feel for all the troubled fantasy baseball Corby and Carol owners out there Derek for sure that's what that's what we're drafted him first round hypothetically Corbyn Carol yeah I mean we talked about it on this show I think Corbyn was ranked as the second most valuable position player.

After Acuna. After Acuna. And Acuna hasn't actually been very good this year either. That's crazy. So people are, yeah, yeah, it's tough. It's a tough year to play. It's a tough sport. It's a tough year in fantasy baseball.

Gabby Moreno also has not homered yet as well, right? Corby hasn't homered yet. He has. Yeah, he has one. Corby has one. Corby has zero. Opposite field for Corbyn. That's right.

He hasn't pulled a home run yet. He has not pulled. He's pulled. Yeah, he's made very little hard to pull. side contact. We did see that double the other day. And the one that right field corner would have been a home run in like 17 out of 30 ball parks or something like that. Yeah, Corbyn's hit a, he's hit a couple of fly balls at home to deep center field, which as we all know is a terrible place to hit the ball if you play

in Chase Field because you have to basically hit it to the moon in order for it to get out of that stadium in that particular direction. There was that one game, Jesse, where I bet on him. Remember we were sitting there watching that game in his last AB, he hit it 105 off the bat, straight center field like onto the warning track and I was just sick to my stomach. Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough place to hit the ball to center field for sure. Basically a 600 OPS combined between Corby and Gabby. Which is a problem, right? I mean, that's where a lot of your production falls off from last season because those two guys were so incredibly good last year. Yeah. I mean, in the in the playoffs,

Gabby was hit in third and Corby was hit in first or second. Like a lot of your offense came from those two guys. And up to this point, the season, you know, the combined production there has been well below average. And obviously, Gabby and Corby and Corby and Corby and Corbyn bursting on the scene and being as good as he was instantly always felt a little like, oh my gosh, how is this happening? Like, this is not a normal thing that happened to baseball. It was a dream come true. It was. I mean, it was as good as you reasonably could have hoped for. But sometimes it, you know, those struggles don't come initially, but they do come. a little bit later and it feels like that's what we've seen so far from from

Corby this year Connor says my bold prediction of Gabby hitting 20 plus homers this year is not looking good Connor I believe I said he was going to lead the team in home run yes yes you did which I don't think yeah that I mean that was a crazy prediction when you made even at the time yeah but now it's even more it is not it is not age particularly well can I can I give you a sort of a crazy Corby and Carol backtoid here I would love to hear this is gonna be bad though I It is going to be bad. I don't want it.

This is from a story that I have coming out later today. I'm just going to spoil this piece of it. I looked at Diamondbacks hitters over the years who have gotten off to as slow of a start as Corbyn Carroll has because let's face it, good hitters get off to slow starts. This is not all that unusual. But a 547 OPS, I mean, that is really low. So I looked at Diamondbacks hitters over over the course of this franchise's history who after 30 games had an OPS of 547 or below.

With a minimum of 100 plate appearances, because I wanted to make sure that we're talking about full-time players here. Do you have something to say, Damon? He said, bless you to me. Oh, he just said, okay. Yeah, okay. I just wanted to bless my sweet there. He's a good person. All right, fair enough.

Plug it along. Let me sneeze over here. Yeah, I'm a terrible person. Not putting my soul back in my body. That is the sign of a bad guy. It is, really, right? It's a telltale sign of a terrible human. A certified bad guy, Jesse Friedman.

So this is the list of Diamondbacks players who have ever had a start as bad or worse as Corbyn Carroll through 30 games. Carson Kelly in 2022. Nick Ahmed in 2015, 2021, and 2016. So three different times. Cody Ross in 2014, sort of at the end of his career. Cody Ross had some good years, but not so much toward the end of his career. Jeff Mathis in 2018. This is not a game I want to play. This is murderers row of every awful Diamondbacks hitter. Tony Womack in 2003. All right. Okay. You know, there's some fond memories there.

Not necessarily a great hitter in his career. Juan Brito in 2004. I'm not going to. Jesse, let's just stop doing it with that. Let's save it for the article. Jake McCarthy just last year, a bit of a slow start there. Seth Beer in 2022.

And then Tim LeCastro in 2021 and Tuffy Goes a Wish in 2050. Why is he? That is the fullest. So yeah. Congrats, Jesse. There's puke. everywhere back here behind the desk. Solario says Jesse and his facts.

Mark Salarra says Jesse not passing the vibe check. I figured I wasn't going to make people super happy with that. But it is a little bit interesting, right? It just puts in perspective that Corbyn is not just struggling to open the year. It's been kind of a different level of struggle than we ever saw from Paul Goldschmidt or, you know, David Peralta in some of his better years or age of. get Pollock or whatnot. There was a year, I expanded the search a little bit later in the story.

There was a year where Paul Goldschman had a 648 OPS through his first 30 games, and he finished that year with an 850 OPS. That was in 2012, kind of right as he was entering the prime of his Diamondbacks career. So, yeah, this is not to say that great hitters don't ever struggle, or the great Diamondbacks hitters have never struggled to open the year, but we've never seen it quite like this. they need to relax they need to relax Corby needs to relax this team needs to relax they need to somehow find some of those vibes

that they had from last year when they really seemed like they were having fun but they also got off to a very hot start let's not forget that it's easy to have fun and to have everything be loose when you had an incredible April and in fact had the best record in Major League Baseball up to a certain point I believe in May right yeah they had the best record in the NL as of like June 9th, I'm remembering. Right. And so when you talk about that, it's easy for things to be good.

And then when things are good and you're playing loose, things go your way. And that brings us, of course, to another big problem with this team right now, which is lack of timely hitting, lack of hitting in big situations with runners and scoring positions specifically. They've just been terrible this season. They're slashing 147, 259, 266 in high leverage situations. That's really bad. They have a 525 OPS and a 49 WRC plus in high leverage situations.

The second worst in baseball only behind the Marlins. Never great when you have, when that phrase, second worst only behind this one team. Yeah. That's not a happy seat, especially when the team is the Marlins, given the way that they, I guess the Marlins are, have become like the National League white socks for me where I just take random shots at them. They deserve it. And the Rockies, we do take some shots at them. They also deserve it.

I think the Rockies are definitely your White Sox of the National League. That's probably, yeah, because the Rockies have now trailed by the one as of today. They have trailed in 31 straight games. Wow. In 31 straight baseball. I think their record is so bad. I think they're on pace to lose 124 games. Oh, that's neat.

That's neat. Wouldn't that be wild if we had a team in the NL and a team in the AL that just went like 30? Both lost over 120 games. Like 36 and 126 or something like that. I'll tell you. The Diamondbacks right now, the thing that messes up the eye level for everybody is like four games that the Diamondbacks had where the offense, their offense of output was crazy. Yes. Outside of that, their offense has not been very good as a whole.

No, no. Yeah. It really has. Even when you factor in those games. The Diamondbacks, yeah. I mean, they've won three games by a combined score of 47 to three. and if you eliminate those, then they've actually been outscored by 26 runs

in the other games that they've played this season. So it really is that they just poured it on so much in those few games. And outside of that, as you said, the offense on the whole hasn't been all that great. This season, the debacks have a team OPS of 719, which does still rank in the top half of the league. It's 12th, but it's fallen quite a bit here

in the last week or two as the offense has struggled. And somehow the debacks still have scored the fourth most runs in baseball, which continues to be sort of baffling. It's a stupid. It's a stupid sport sometimes. Yeah. It feels weird to say that runs scored is a stupid misleading stat. Like, it is literally the number of runs that you scored.

Like, how could that be a misleading, meaningless stat? But it absolutely is in this case. But it kind of is with how the Diamondbacks have played this year. Yeah. If you watch this team, like. Well, and I mean, it's the opposite of last year, right? Because they had a negative run differential, despite the fact that their record was solid. And it was because in the last.

losses, they were absolutely getting torched, but they were able to win close games, which they haven't been able to do this year, right? I feel very hypocritical because for all the comments that I made last year about the negative run differential, this team has been not quite as good as it looks. And then suddenly they've got a heavy positive run differential. You're like, how this team is as good as it looks. It's misleading. Run differential doesn't really mean that much.

You can't have it both ways. That's, I feel like I have to, though. Like, I don't know how else to, I didn't think that last year's team was, you know, they won 84 games. They were able to find their way to the playoffs. They went to the World Series, and I don't think anyone really cares how they got there. But even Mike Hazen himself acknowledged after the season ended.

Like, yes, we were a minus 15 run differential team. We have to get a lot better. And the debacks tried to do that, and it just hasn't really worked out so far for a variety of reasons. But for that reason, we are putting the lack of offense above one of their other issues, which is the bullpen, obviously, right? But, I mean, as bad as the bullpen has been, there are times where this Diamondbacks offense, either A, hasn't done enough to even make you care about them giving up more runs and allowing the lead to blow up a little bit more. And B, honestly, the offense hasn't been good enough, you know, to completely blame the bullpen considering that this team doesn't seem to be able to tack on runs late or in those high leverage situations that we discussed.

However, a functioning bullpen should be able to come in sometimes and hold the opposition scoreless. And that is something that I feel like we as a fan base have gotten way too fucking used to with this team and this bullpen. Diamondbacks fans will literally say like, oh, they only gave up two runs tonight. Like that wasn't a bad night for the bullpen. Yes, it is. Yeah, they shouldn't give up any runs. And I know that's not like the way the bullpen's worked. I don't know about that.

You know what I mean, though. Like the bullpen at times should at least be able to function. in a role where they're able to come in and hold and shut a game down. And we don't see that out of this bullpen. We've seen it maybe in two games. You should at least see that a few times. I can think of two games where it worked the way it should. And the Diamondbacks didn't have a 15 run lead, right?

Like it's different when you're talking about a run, a lead being over 13 runs like they've had. They protected those leads very well. Yeah. Exceptionally. Yeah. That's another thing that bothers me about this bullpen. but we're not even going to get into that.

When the Giants were, you know, down 15 to 1 in the 8, like the D-Vax bullpen was shut down material. Miguel Castro just has his stuff that day. Three strikeouts and immaculate inning, all that kind of stuff, right? But while we talk about the Diamondbacks flashing 147, 259, 266, and high leverage situations offensively, opposing teams are hitting 342, 426, 513. That's average. That is average against the Diamondbacks relievers in high leverage situations. That's a 939 OPS. It's not great.

Yeah, it's not great. Shut it down. Fill it in with concrete. We don't need the bullpen anymore over there. They don't deserve it. Just make them come out of somewhere else. They need to sit in the back until we're ready for them. I mean, the reality with the bullpen, right, is that Ryan Thompson and Kevin Ginkle have been pretty much everything.

that you hoped and expected they would be. Two times. And you don't have Paul Seawald, which it is hard to overstate how significant that loss has been for this team. And the rest of the group, there's just really hasn't been a single reliever that has emerged as being reliable. I know Bryce Jarvis had a nice stretch there, but then he kind of got hit around a little bit in a couple key spots.

Just Martinez, even though he was walking like a guy in inning, he was kind of finding his way in some lower leverage situations. but he got knocked around a little bit the other day. So it continues to be the case that there just isn't outside of Ryan Thompson and Kevin Gingle. I don't think there's really a whole lot of reason to really believe right now in any of the other Diamondbacks relievers. That's just been the reality of the situation early on. Make me believe in you. And at least the Diamondbacks as far as things to fix that have brought in other arms, have tried to do things now at least lately.

like you you as a team do have to show trust in relievers that haven't earned that trust yet you do have to show belief in relievers that you don't believe in but i mean you can only do that for so long and even though injury is the reason why friess and castro and kail nelson are all right now not being utilized those guys absolutely absolutely deserved at this point to be replaced and to give someone else from the minor leagues an opportunity so far i've liked what we've seen out of a couple of guys logan allen has looked really good Brandon Hughes has looked very good. And a lot of this could change based on the fact that the diamondbacks are turning over to some other pitchers to give them an opportunity. Maybe these guys prove themselves enough to stay up. Bryce Jarvis totally deserves flowers for what he's done this season. And even though at times, you know, he hasn't been as solid as, say, like Ryan Thompson, Bryce Jarvis has been asked to do much more work, I think, than a lot of the relievers, at least as of late in the bullpen. And he's done a fairly decent job out there.

At this point, I mean, it doesn't matter if a relief pitcher has been in Reno the whole year or if they were claimed off waivers like two days ago. The Diamondbacks are, it feels like the Diamondbacks are just going to be on a search for a while trying to find guys that will stick and perform well. If Brandon Hughes comes in and has another couple of outings like he did to start his Diamondbacks tenure, he might be the high leverage lefty reliever in a week. right we saw that exact same thing with Andrew saw Frank last year where he came up and he was pretty effective and it's like all right base is loaded nobody out go go get him kid there's

there's a left-handed hitter at the plate right like what else could you want it's a left on-up uh yeah it's just a difficult spot right now the depth of the bullpen has been an issue we kind of figured it might be an issue and it has been and CWald not being there certainly doesn't help matters you look at the diamond back some of the underlying numbers with their bullpen

They have an 18.7% strikeout rate, which is 28th in baseball. That's really low. Not surprising at all. Just not a lot of swing and miss out there. They also have an 11.3% walk rate, which is the fifth highest in baseball. Also not surprising. And the difference between those two numbers, K-minus walk percentage, for those not familiar, that's a fan graph stat.

I don't think other outlets really cover that one as much. But on fan graphs, you can find it. It's something a lot of baseball nerds like to look at. And only the Rockies, only the Rockies have a worse K minus walk percentage, the difference between the strikeout and the walk rate out of their bullpen. When we're talking about things that are wrong with this team and we're using phrases like, The Marlins and the Marlins and only the Rockies, it's not good. That's not good, you guys. Of course, we would also have to talk about the defense because that has been this team's calling card.

At least it was in 2023. We know Tori Lubello prides himself on. his team's defense and winning the margins. And they are definitely not doing that this year. However, they do have some guys that are playing some incredible defense that you might have completely not even realized. When I looked up these numbers today, I fully expected the debacks to be like right around average, whereas they're usually well above average in the defense metrics.

They're actually still well above average. The Diamondbacks is a team, 19 defensive run save, which ranks fourth, eight outs above average which is tied for fifth in all of baseball. So they, based on those numbers, this team has been pretty good defensively. And as you alluded to, Cattel Marte has eight defensive run saved and four outs above average after like a month.

That doesn't make any sense. You look pretty good out there to me. But we've also seen them make a couple of like mistakes where it wasn't an error necessarily, but you watch a play and you feel like he should have gotten there, right? Yeah, his range just doesn't feel all that great at times. There are a lot of like kind of slow. I think Damon is just a skeptic of good. No, Damon's completely.

I expect high level defense. Damon's gone. We've lost David. I expect high level defense at a door. But, but Ketel, there are times where like there's kind of slow dribblers up the middle that it feels like he should be able to get to him and put a glove on it. But yeah, like he doesn't even dive, you know? Sure.

Yeah, there's one of those yesterday where I had that thought of if he, if he lays out for it, he might, he might have a shot. I think it's the Diamondbacks hitting 147 in high leverage situation that has radicalized Damon against the actual team. Am I not allowed to have opinions that are in any way negative? Is that fine with you, Derek? Or should I pre-approve those before we do the podcast? No, just just just message me. Okay.

We have a form you can fill out. Yeah, well, I'll Google submission form and then you guys can approve or deny my topics on today's show. So far, all denied. What's, yeah, deny. Just follow them up, pal. What's funny about that when you say that the Diamondbacks are fourth for defensive run save and tied for fifth with outs above average, they have a couple of guys that have sunk them, including Gino,

which has been a huge disappointment this season. Gino is minus one defensive run saved, minus two outs above average. You have Jace Peterson who's no longer with the team that had minus three defensive run saved, minus one out above average at shortstop. And then there's like 30 innings. Jase Peterson didn't get much. opportunity to shortstop right it was yeah it was bad in the time he was there and then of course blaze um blaze has gotten better but blaze still has minus five defensive run saved minus seven

ounce above average like with those i mean with those impacting that it it is very surprising that diamond backs are still have to still have 19 defensive run saved and eight outs above average right yeah i can't really say that this is like i thought about taking this off the list entirely because the tebacks defense on the whole according to these numbers actually has been above average. They're still right around the middle of the league in errors. We've seen more of those than we're accustomed to seeing for sure. And I think that's why this is still on the list for me is the debacks have still made

several key defensive mistakes, mostly by Blaze Alexander, frankly, in big situations. And they have lost games pretty directly because of those mistakes. And I also think of, you know, like Gabby Moreno with the, you know, the wild pitch where where Nico Horner scores from second and that loss against the Cubs, that was a really, a really tough moment. And that's not going to show up.

And in defensive runs saved, really, at least as far as I'm aware, kind of a freak incident. I mean, Gabby just lost it. Those sorts of things happen. But when push comes to shove in the biggest moments of these games, the DeBack's defense has not risen to the occasion like we've seen in the past. And yeah.

And I think that there is part of that that is, uh obviously due to some of the replacement players like i said earlier part of it is too just getting back to fundamentals which we've seen the diamondbacks at times really struggle with right like they have had they've they've had defensive communication errors and we've seen them fix that we've seen them work on that so that's something right now that feels like it's kind of easier to straighten out for for this team at this point versus some of the other things that might not be so easy uh but uh of Of course, you know, really, a lot of this is all impacted by the very first thing we talked about, which is injuries. And once Diamondbacks start getting some guys back, I think things could change.

Of course, there are some things that have been disappointing, especially at the bullpen. It really does feel like the Diamondbacks are once again in the same position they were last year at this time, but they don't have the great offense to kind of back up the poor performances by the bullpen. And then really, I mean, if I don't, I don't want to single anybody out particularly, but, But, man, Gino just between his defensive struggles and how bad he's been at the plate with the number of strikeouts he has. And I think he's only hit, what, two home runs this season? Like, he has just not been very good for this team considering we thought that this was going to be our fix for the problem at third base. I mean, Gino Suarez, the reason you bring him in is to hit home runs, right?

And it's still really early. It's certainly time for him to turn it around. but two homers in 30 or so games is not really what you're looking for there. That's a pace of around 10 homers for the entire season. And the underlying numbers back that up. Like, Gino, the batted ball, the quality of contact off his bat this year has not been particularly good. He's pretty much, he's below average across the board in hard hit rate and barrel rate and average exit velocity. Those are things that he was comfortably above average in last year.

And that is a little bit concerning to me. There are some signs here that Gino maybe as bad as slowing down. I don't have access to any bat speed numbers to confirm that, but he hasn't impacted the baseball the way that we saw him do last year in Seattle. To me, honestly, it would almost be better if Gino were hitting like 190 or 200, but the power was still there. If he had five homers or something was still running into one every now and then. But what you've seen is kind of more softline drives,

the quality of contact just hasn't been the same. Well, we have a side note here, and that is it's not just the power really that's missing. It's also the chaos ball, right? The fact the Diamondbacks have not been really playing the chaos ball this year. We know when Jake McCarthy gets on base, he's going to run. And I love that about Jake, because even the opposing team knows he's going to run,

and he was still able to snag a base in this series. but the Diamondbacks are just 16 for 23 and stolen base attempts this year and it's not the conversion rate as much as it's like the fact they're not running more, right? I mean the conversion rate though isn't all that great. It's not that great. 16 out of 23.

No, no, I know. It's better off just being zero for zero at that point. That's fair. Seven caught stealing is a lot for only 16, 16 successful stolen bases. Does that then carry over to why you're not seeing more attempts from this team at this point? Yeah, I think it probably does.

And the reality is without Heraldo Perdomo in there, he was at least a threat to steal. I think he had around 20 stolen bases last year. The debacks just don't, I mean, this current roster now that Josh Rojas is out of the organization, I always kind of felt that the chaos ball element of the Diamondbacks was maybe overstated a little bit. And now you pretty much have Corby and Jake McCarthy. Like there isn't really anyone else in this lineup on a day-to-day basis that you're like, yes, we want to send that guy every opportunity that we have. It's not as fast of a team as I think some people have in their heads.

You're not sending Gino Suarez. You're not sending Kevin Newman. Gabby Moreno's speed is around average. Rano Grishig, Jock Peterson, Lordus Guerrille. These guys aren't guys that you're going to have stealing bases. So maybe we do get some of that back when Al-Thomas and Geraldo Perdomo return. But the biggest thing is just Corbyn Carroll has not really been on base up to this point in this season a whole lot. and hasn't had as many opportunities to run as he otherwise would have.

Don't really know the answer, of course, to some of these things, but I do know that, you know, there are some simple fixes kind of like with roster construction, or not roster construction, starting lineup construction. We know yesterday that it didn't make a whole lot of sense for Lourdes to be in the two hole. We know there's some things there that Tori, you know, should maybe try to just go with the best potential stretch of hitters that he can. for run production instead of trying to perhaps pepper that production around throughout the lineup. It's resulting right now in a lot of instances where double plays and, you know, pop outs and things like that are just killing any kind of momentum that you have offensively to get things going, any kind of, you know, drive that you're putting together essentially to score some runs.

And I think that that's, you know, that's very real about what we saw yesterday. Like, again, you don't really know how it's going to go and considering the Diamondbacks, outscored the way they were outscored one run here two runs here that really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things however tory will be the first one to tell you sometimes that when the diamond backs can put some runs up like it does change their mentality a bit so you know kind of chipping away sometimes at a big lead like the dodgers had yesterday you never know how that could get things rolling you know if you're if you're able to at least get a couple of runs here and there it does feel a little bit desperate after a while then the desperation turns into some pretty but

some pretty bad at bats for this team. But hopefully they can start to figure things out, especially Corby and Carole. Yeah. Gabby Moreno. These are guys that, you know, of course, the Diamondbacks need. And they kind of go the way that those guys go.

Right now, those guys are struggling. So, of course, we see this team as a whole struggling. But yeah, the fixes part of this is not, is not particularly easy. I know we, we advertise that we have all the fixes in our, in our headline. They're easier said than not. is a little easier than done.

I will say like especially the injuries, I think maybe that fix is more of people realizing that there are reasons. There are big, big players, but on both sides of the ball that are currently missing, there's pitchers that are missing. There's, you know,

your superstar shortstop and your superstar outfielder are both out. And mistakes are being made at those positions that are resulting in, innings, you know, going on additional scoring opportunities for the opposition, or really, you know, on the offensive side of things.

just the end of any kind of momentum, once again, that the Diamondbacks start picking up. So, I mean, hopefully, you know, the injuries can rectify a lot of these problems. That's kind of what you're banking on at the end of the day is that once those guys get healthy, the lineup is a little deeper, the defense is a little better, the bullpen is better, the rotation is better. That really is kind of the key to everything else alongside Corby and Carroll, just getting back to who he was last year.

would go so far for this team. You talk about things like lineup construction. This lineup really only makes sense when Corbyn Carroll is mashing and has an 850, 900 OPS, whatever it is leading off or in the two hole. You really need that in order for this lineup to be easy to put together. Like right now, Tori just doesn't really have four or five hitters to stack at the top that you really feel good about, at least not at the same time. We haven't really seen that.

So Corbyn getting back would also fix. so many of this team's struggles early on. Yeah, I'm going to address that, Elizabeth. Eric just came on set, stole a hat like he wasn't going to be fucking noticed. Do you not know what's going on? Do you not want to come explain yourself? So, listen. Oh, that's not a good look.

Listen. Wow. That's fire, Eric. Listen, thank you. You look ridiculous. I just want to say this. You're hot. The other day, I was getting crap on our ASU show for not wearing a hat.

I usually wear a hat. and then I went and I stole this during a read and I put it on and one of our diehards said that they would buy a diehard membership for a year for somebody if I wore this hat for every ASU show this month. So for every ASU show this month, live at two right after this. Don't know, no free ads, no fucking free ads. The tab. I don't like that at all. Definitely do like the tap. I will be wearing this big hat and you will learn how to be entered in for drawing to win a free diehard membership if that is something that you want, which it should be. So that's why I sold the hat. Sorry.

That was a better explanation. I mean, it was, and that's why he came on and gave it. But speaking as a person with integrity, I would never wear such a silly item ever on this show or any show. No, you like to maintain a certain degree of professionalism when you're on set. Jesse gets it. That's kind of your marking quality. Jesse absolutely gets it. And you guys all get it.

So we thank you guys for being here in the PHN Export YouTube channel. Of course, if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, do so now. Sign up for notifications. That way you don't miss when that ASU show goes live or whenever our wonderful shows on this network go live. We also love it when you leave us alike. We love it. But Gabby loves it even more. Maybe if you drop a like and everybody that's here watching the show drops a like, maybe that will get Gabby going.

We've tried this so much, man. How am I say it again? Well, maybe that's the problem. Nobody's doing it. You're not doing it. Do you want to get Gabby going? Press the damn little thumbs up. Drop a like to make Gabby good at baseball again.

There you go. Uh, we'll get a 3.44 on base percentage. It's not that bad. Yeah. If you look at Jesse, so I was looking at the baseball savant page for all our struggling hitters. And every single one of them, they're like chase rate and whiff rate and all that is electric. Like best in baseball type of stuff. Every single one of them.

Corby, Gabby, like, it's so ridiculous. Yeah, Gabby hasn't really impacted the baseball that much this year. So, yeah. Well, hit that like button. I don't, wait, we're in a positive direction. and then you just found a way to land this plate right into negativityville. I appreciate it. I'm really good at that.

You're awesome at that. If you're listening on the audio podcasting side, subscribe over there as well. Leave us a review. We always appreciate those reviews. Those five-star reviews help us out a ton. Also check out our friends at BetMGM Sportsbook. BetMGM right now has their Grand Slam jackpot promotion, a weekly bet-and-get promotion every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

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Check out the show notes for full details. And now listen to Shane. Talk about the disclaimer. Let us bet's expire in seven days. One new customer offer only. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-Gambler. Available in the U.S.

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But once you've joined the Inner Circle, you will save 25 cents off per gallon. on your first five Phillips and then save three cents per gallon every day after that. So become part of the inner circle and join us today right now. Donkey in the chat is calling us out. He says, I didn't hear how we fixed them, though, in regards to this team. Well, if we really knew that, we would probably keep that to ourselves and then get the Arizona Diamondbacks to hire us and potentially pay us way more money than we're making over here. That's a big part.

It's a very lucrative. It's a very lucid. I mean, I'm not giving those secrets away for free. But I mean, I think really when you do talk about what fixes the Diamondbacks, I feel like, you know, again, the injuries kind of trickle down, right? Injuries would fix a lot of things. I think Corbin not feeling that pressure anymore, maybe perhaps having guys like Perdomo and Alec Thomas back in the lineup to kind of loosen him up a little bit,

guys that he's, you know, he is friends with, guys that, like, of course, can just kind of lighten the mood. Like we said that last year that at times there's important things about certain guys that were on this team. Even if their stats weren't the best, there were certain things about them like being really good vibes guys. And, you know, they obviously how connected this team became part of the legend. But that connection is the friendships that they made along the way, right? The power of friendship, as we all know. And I mean, I do think that there is, especially we saw that video with Gabby and Corby giving him the fake Gabby Moreno bobblehead. That was actually just a silver Corbyn Carroll bubble in.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. We could see them getting there. But it's, when times are tough, it's hard for that to, you know, be the way that the locker room is, the clubhouse is. And, you know, maybe if they can get back to that. But I think so far in regards to some of the other fixes like the bullpen, I think the Diamondbacks are doing what they need to be doing. They're giving other guys an opportunity. And like Jesse said, they're continuing their search and not just, I guess, staying, you know, with the status quo when guys aren't performing. It does help, though, that a lot of those guys are injured

because it doesn't really look as much like they're just pushing them aside to give Brandon Hughes and other guys a player. Yeah, they were kind of forced, right? Yeah. To explore some other options in the bullpen and maybe that puts them in a better place. Maybe it puts them in a worse place.

We'll find out. But you like what you've seen from Bannon Hughes in his couple of outings so far. Logan Allen, as you mentioned, has been pretty good, although he's mostly been pitching in lower leverage situations. Well, Elizabeth's right. She's surprised there's no one here saying that these problems could be fixed with a certain football slider. I mean, that's the most obvious.

I didn't even think that was worth mentioning. Stiferous. Yeah. It's the stiffest. We teach everybody in the bullpen of the football slider and then things will get better. But we've said football slider now too many times, so we know Roger Bessions it's going to show up. So we're just going to transition right out of Arizona Diamondbacks baseball and right into our power rankings for this week. Of course, you know that means no more Arizona.

diamond back talk at least for the time being but jesse let's take a look at this week's MLB power rankings of course up at the top we still have the Atlanta Braves nothing has changed there but man you just you had to go and you just had to piss me off and you had to move the dodgers back up in to number two didn't you i did the dodgers were five and two this past week i think they were also a plus 22 in in one week which is pretty impressive so dodgers are clicking man i mean we saw it over the last few days. The Diamondbacks were able to salvage the game two of the series, but they still got outscored 19 to 8, I think, in the series overall.

Dodgers really, really handled the Diamondbacks pretty well over the last few days. And they've been doing that with some other teams as well here in recent days. I think only like a couple of weeks ago, the Dodgers were narrowly above 500, but they're 20 and 13 now. That is no longer the case. The Phillies move up five spots. To number three, you've gone mad. The bees drove you mad, didn't they?

You can say that, Derek, but the Phillies just went six and one over the last week. And Ranger Suarez is like the best pitcher in baseball. Like, this guy's going to start the All-Star game for the National League. I don't think it's outrageous to be having those conversations based on what we've seen from him so far. Spencer Turnbull, a guy who just kind of came in as a filler for the Phillies' fifth rotation spot. He was unbelievable, had a sub 2ERA. Now I think Taiwan Walker has come in. DeBak's legend has come in and filled that fifth rotation spot,

but maybe it goes back to Turnbull at some point. The Phillies rotation is just unbelievable, and I always felt great about their offense and their bullpen. So this team just seems like it doesn't have any weaknesses isn't going to win a whole lot of games this year. Everybody shifts down quite a bit due to the moves by the Dodgers and the Phillies on these power rankings. Yankees dropped down two spots to number four.

Orioles dropped down two spots to number five. Thought there on the Yankees still being over the Orioles after these two teams played each other. Yeah, I think the Yankees just took two out of three from the Orioles over the weekend. That was a big, big series win for them. Shout out to Flex. He's an unapologetic Yankees.

Taking two out of three over the number five team and moving down two spots. It's kind of crazy, right? That's tough. In my mind, but the Yankees, the Yankees were three and four this past week actually. And the Orioles were three and three. So this was, for me,

this was really just about the Dodgers and the Phillies having outstanding weeks and jumping over them. Not so much that the Yankees and Orioles had like a terrible week or anything. But it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't great. Yankees lost four out of seven. And then going from there, we have the Guardians at six down two spots. Royals down one spot to seven. Brewer's down one spot to eight.

Cubs remain where they're at at nine, even though they've been losing to the Mets. And the Red Sox make their appearance in our power rankings for the first time. The Red Sox are 18 and 13, man. We keep cycling through different teams at number 10. And it felt like the Red Sox turn. They're 18 and 13. They have a plus 41 run differential.

They've won four straight. They've won four straight games. Tanner Halk has been unbelievably good. Sort of reminds me of a Ranger Suarez situation a little bit where it's a guy you don't really expect a breakout from necessarily, but he's really taking that rotation to another level. So still early for sure, but you know, I feel like we had to give the Red Sox some flowers

over there in the A.L. East. The Royals have the best run differential in baseball. That is wild. Yeah. I mean, it's been kind of going back and forth between the Guardians and the Royals in the last few weeks. Just as we all expected. The AL Central, dominating. The L. We've always

said it. The A.L. Central, by far the best division in baseball. Plus 50 for the Royals, plus 46 for the Guardians. That's just wild. Speaking of the AL Central, You could argue we're a little disrespectful of Minnesota Twins in our power rankings this week after the twins have won 10 consecutive games. 10 in a row. They're only 17 and 14, but you win 10 consecutive games and you're above 500. You figure to do okay in power rankings.

I don't think the twins have been playing great teams. I think it was the White Sox and the Angels and... But you're still getting taken care of business, right? The Diamondbacks have had those instances where they played like the Rockies several times. so far it's not to say they didn't win those series but they didn't sweep them either time right and that's something that sometimes you know you have to do when you have the opportunity to play a weaker team especially a division team like that but right um yeah i mean it's it's wild that the twins can do that and have almost nobody notice that they won 10 in a row i'd feel like normally that would

be a huge story for most teams but uh noted uh noted twins fan gerald borgay oh he loves that yeah he's all over that. He loves that. Honestly, Gerald might have seen their last loss. Because, yeah, I'm pretty sure that checks out. That's pretty funny. Well, you did bring up the White Sox, and I think this is my chance for us to do a little spying on our exes. Let me get a glass of wine here, and let me block the number here so that we can bother Tommy Fam for the Chicago White Sox.

I knew we were going to miss Tommy Fam. I knew it. It was so obvious. so obvious that we're going to miss Tommy Fam. But how much would be Miss Tommy Fam? Tommy Fam is nine for 24 with a home run, two doubles, and only two strikeouts. He is slashing 375, 375, 583 since being called up to the Chicago White Sox. I mean, he was a highly sought after free agent, Derek.

I mean, there were there were at least what, we heard 12 teams in on Tommy Fam way back in November. He signed early. No, none of those things are true. Tommy Fam was, yes, called up from the minor leagues because the Chicago White Sox, right? The lowly Chicago White Sox are the only team, apparently, that was willing to give Tommy Fam this opportunity

or at least the opportunity that he ultimately took. And he has made his mark since coming up to the majors. He's only struck out twice out of those 24 at bat. So it's been pretty impressive stuff from the former Arizona diamond back. I wanted to just take a step back because we were talking about the twins obviously and there is by the way Jesse a home run sausage that the twins have. I heard about the home run sausage. Yeah. And I'm going to need someone to help me make sense of this thing. Do they do they get to eat the sausage? How does the sausage I guess I guess work? I mean do you just hold it up? Is it a

I saw it. It's literally just a sausage. So I just need more information. But again, see, see what it's done for the twins. I once again implore the Diamondbacks to bring back something. The vest for the player of the game, it's just, it's just been sitting on a chair since the last time it was used. It has this much dust on it. It makes me sad every time. I might risk it all to steal it. I don't know. We'll see what happens when it comes to that. I have some like sanitary concerns with the, the twins. Rightfully so. I haven't looked into this super closely.

Maybe people in the chat can correct me if I'm wrong. But I believe we're talking about an uncooked sausage link that it is packaged. They are not. Fortunately, that would be especially concerning. It's just, yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it is. It's in a package. It's a cold sausage. How is it cold?

I mean, it's not cooked. It's a summer. It's a summer sausage. It's like the ones that you would like, yeah, room temperature. It's like one that you would like cut up and like eat with like cheese and crackers. It's not like a sausage that you would get off the grill and put on. It's not like a breakfast sausage. Jesse.

It's not very much. It's not a broad. No. No sausage like that, Jesse? Apparently. You know a big sausage officiantado? Apparently I'm not. That's tough.

Embarrassing, really. What happened was Dave Popkins, which is the twins hitting coach, he brought a somersotch, sausage into the duckout and beckoned his players to tap it before they hit. And now they all smacked the sausage. There's no better way for me to say that. Like I know the innuendo there. And it was intentional, but I promise you there's no better way for me to word that. See, this is what I was trying to get the Diamondbacks to do when I had the purple hair, right? Just standing by the door when they all go out, everybody.

gives me a little tussle on the way out. Everybody has that superpower serum or whatever the hell it is that made Lordus Gorell Jr. into a superhero for that brief amount of time that my hair was purple. And it could have could help this team. Yeah, I mean, there were talks of potentially having to take you on the road everywhere. There was. There was talks about that. Without you and your and your.

I think Lordis was going to put me in a bag of some kind or something if the road or the clubbies didn't want to really pack me up or whatever. But it's fine. We'll figure it out. But hopefully they'll do that. And see, I know if we talked about Roger Bessions enough, he would be here. So welcome in, Roger. Of course, welcome in to all of you. Those of you guys that aren't a diehard yet, of course, we know Roger's a diehard.

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still very much buzzing about the bees and when I say they are buzzing about it they have embraced this in every way that you can imagine Jesse yeah right there was a hot dog there's a beekeeper hot dog right that has a honey smoked pooled pork on top of a hot dog with some coleslaw and such sounds kind of fire yeah honestly that does sound pretty good it did like I saw honey as the first thing and I rolled my eyes before I even read the rest of the words I was like you just can't throw honey on everything and call it B related right but they they were very smart about that my guy chef Tilder over there of course is making some amazing concoctions they also

have I think an alcoholic beverage with like some Jack and Daniels honey Jack Daniels in it they're going with it and I appreciate it I'm here for all of it. They even have a B ticket promotion for this weekend. They do. Right? It ends tonight. Until midnight tonight.

Yeah, midnight Thursday night. What do you get out? What do you get it with that? Is it buy one get one free? I think it's yeah, I think it's a buy one get one free. On a bobblehead weekend? Let's go.

Yeah, that's a pretty good deal, isn't it? Right. And I think the Diamondbacks have been pretty smart about doing everything they can to fill that building because even though it was filled mostly with Dodgers fans this week, my God, was Chasefield packed for some middle of the week evening games, especially one that involved us being delayed by B's.

But of course, yeah. Did you read this press release of the Diamondbacks put out about this thing? Would you please? For one day only, fans can be aligned to dbacks.com slash tickets and use the promo code B guy to receive buy one, get one tickets to the Diamondbacks upcoming games this Friday, May 3rd through Sunday, May 5th against the San Diego Padres. I can't really blame them for their B5. puns because I made about 17 of them on the show the other day.

I made another four or five in my newsletter that went out last night. Well, and for my understanding, this isn't going away. And when I say it's not going away, I mean, the Diamondbacks have potentially some more plans when it comes to B related activities.

I mean, you know, he's, I think he's D. Baxter, but I think he might be changed to Baxter. I don't know, but there's a lot of things going on. including what could potentially be a home run celebration that we might have heard about with a beekeeper helmet for the diamondbacks in the in in the dugout i just have to ask helmet to the proper terminology for that i would think so yeah be keeper a net no like no the whole suit would be called a suit but the helmet is a helmet right it's like a hard like yeah i think that there's some protection there as well as the netting that goes around it i think like how do you bling it up though because you're you

you know Lordus is going to want to bling it up, right? Yeah. I was thinking like a gold one, but then now you're too close to a golden sombrero, right? Because it's a big hat that you're wearing in the dugout, right? It's almost a golden sombrero. You got to tread lightly when it comes to this. So I don't know. I don't know how we can do this.

But I will say in regards to the beekeeper helmet that they might be using, is it, I mean, has the moment passed? Like, is it trying to make something into, or make nothing into something, thing and then try to string. I don't know. I love the bee stuff, to be honest. I'm super on board, honestly. I'm fully supportive of the organization,

keeping the, keeping all of the bee stuff alive. We wanted them to go on. We wanted them to do the thing like with the sausage. We wanted them to go on a 10-game winning streak after the bees magically came down and, and, you know, graced us with their presence.

I mean, what a, what a great story that would be, right? If the Diamondbacks game on, on, what was that Tuesday, April 30th is delayed by two hours because of a B swarm and then instantly that season turns around and Diamondbacks rattle off like 12 out of 15 wins or something like that. You heard him hit B's so hard. The storylines are immaculate. They really are.

They really are. So don't miss out on your chance to get some buy one, get one free tickets, and come out for a wonderful weekend against the San Diego Padres. Of course, one cool thing that we recently learned about was the D-Backs have started offering a direct souvenir ticket program. which, you know, of course, digital tickets now are our life, right? They've made physical ticket stubs go away. It's a thing of the past. Most people don't even know that that is a thing, these younger people, these kids out there,

where I want to know, where's your cork board with all of your tickets from all the concerts you've been to? No, you don't have one of those? Well, if you grew up in the 80s and the 90s, you definitely did. And it sucks to not have that because I still look at some of my ticket stubs and think about the event. And like that's kind of the fun of having some of that stuff, right? And they are allowing you to once again do that. Direct Souveneer is offering fans a chance to purchase physical tickets once again to commemorate games you want to remember or if you just want to perhaps keep ticket stuff for every game you attend. And these are what they look like.

I think that they're kind of slick looking. They do. I mean, it's again, it's not just your like ticket master ticket, right? I mean, I've seen in the past, I remember going to baseball games where they had some cool tickets like this where like there were player. images on them or images of Chase Field and such. So I dig this and this is just a small sample of what those actual commemorative tickets would look like. Did they actually look like that?

Do you think? I mean, they were fairly close. Yeah, because the old tickets used to kind of have a big image up at the top, just kind of like where this was. And usually sometimes it would be like a player celebrating getting like the gum, you're like water dunked on them or something like that. So to be clear that the Diamondbacks did not actually give physical tickets at all during the playoffs. So there is no like real thing that we're emulating here.

No, that is just them coming up with what it might have looked like 20 years ago or whatever. No, no, no, no. That's actual digital souvenir tickets that you can buy now this season. They started offering these tickets last year for nine MLB teams. But now the Diamondbacks are one of the teams that you can purchase those tickets for. So that's just a sample ticket. You would get the date and the game that you went to your seat number. All of that stuff still on it.

But I mean, it's kind of funny to me that like here we are. you know you think the world advances to a point and you know there are some things that we kind of have to like hold up and say whoa technology we didn't need to replace those yet like we we liked those that was i know it was wasteful and some people didn't see the point of them but some people absolutely did so i think it's cool just to have that i know again like i have some of my i've even paid extra for commemoratives ticket tickets tickets for big events so that you got kind of like a cooler ticket instead of your standard ticket master ticket and when i got for a wwe event is that you've even paid extra for a It's lenticular and it's just still one of the coolest, like, tickets I've ever had. So I... Did you just say lenticular? Yeah, one of the, you know, the thing. When you can, like, it's like a... What you make me feel so old all the time.

They used to have cards and stuff like this where when you move the card like this, the image moves. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that's what the lenticular is, right? So, anyway, if you want to get a chance, of course, especially if you're like a big day, right? Like, you're taking someone out to their first baseball game or something like that. Like, all of that little crap I got. that I talk about from Wrigley Field. I love all of that stuff.

And I mean, sometimes when you get a chance just to go to one baseball game, you know, rarely, you know, you get to go. You might want something that is a little bit more personal, like something from your actual day versus just, you know, a t-shirt or something you could buy at any point or from a website without actually attending the game. So I think that's cool. Did you get a lenticular from Riggly? No, I did not, but I got my baseball card. I got my first-time certificate that they very much intended to give to children. but I still got mine. And of course, I got my beer bat that got confiscated on the plane because, God forbid, a plastic

beer bat comes on my carry-on. But anyway, we did want to give a shout out before we get out of here to one of the best people in baseball. Happy birthday to MLB Sarah Lang's. She is absolutely a delightful personality. She is one of the people that absolutely makes watching baseball and covering baseball better. So baseball is better because. So baseball bet is better because of you, Sarah, and we just wanted to say happy birthday because we know birthdays are in fact important.

Did you see the stat that or some of the info that Sarah was tweeting, was tweeting out yesterday about Citell-Marté and Chris Taylor facing off against each other lately? Oh, yeah, because it was their 1,000th game, right? Yeah. Both of them? Both Cotel-Marty and Chris Taylor. They played in their 1,000th game yesterday against each other, which according to Sarah Lange is the first time in MLB history, or at least the history of the history. they can track, which I think is all of it, where two guys have played against each other in their 1,000th career game.

Wow. And what Sarah also pointed out, which is utterly wild to me, is that when Ketelmarte made his major league debut with the Mariners in 2015, the guy sent down to the minors was Chris Taylor, who was also in the Mariners organization at the time. And then, you know, almost a decade later, they're playing in their 1,000th career game together at the exact same time. What a crazy story that is. And of course, Sarah Lange is the one who uncovered that from us. She's amazing. And another thing I love about Sarah Lange's is we completely see eye to eye on the idea of birthdays being important. Right. You get older. It's easy for your

birthday to just be another day or in some cases even a reminder of how much time is past and how old we are getting. Celebrate yourself. Birthdays are important. It's your day. And I think that's something cool that Sarah Lange's is always done. So we want to take a moment. celebrate her day on her birthday. So shout out to Sarah because, again, baseball is better because of you. So we thank you. Also, that's all we got for today. I mean, like we didn't give enough.

We definitely didn't give enough solutions to what's wrong with the Arizona. We pointed out a lot more problems than solutions that we successfully gave. But it's above our pay grade. It really is. And again, that would be proprietary information we wouldn't share with you guys if we really knew how to fix this team. Baseball would be bidding for our services. Hand over fist, but of course. I expect that kind of birthday, like a celebration for me on this show, by the way, now that you did that.

That's going to be expected out of you, Derek. That's wild. Like a nice, like, minute and 30 seconds. When was the last stat he pulled that blew our mind, right? Well, I'm just saying, like, we're doing, we're pulling out minutes of the show to talk about someone's birthday. He's not even on the show. I want my respect. I want my cookies.

Yeah, I mean, we don't do this often. Derek, when's your birthday, Damon? August 2nd. It's not coming up. Oh, yeah. Welcome to the summer. I'm going to forget tomorrow. It's not coming up.

It's three months out from today. Oh, God, I got to mark that in my calendar. That's a lot. Why is it that when you're in May, August feels like it's like almost a full year away? I don't know how to explain it. And why is it that after just talking about how special birthdays are, we're just putting his down. It's the least important thing in the world. Happy 75% birthday to me.

man. It's a big day. Yeah. Would you like to go on a nice little rant about about how special I am? No. Okay. No. We'll save that for your birthday. We'll save that for your birthday. But I'm sure. In the meantime, you guys can all follow Damon.

He is the people's producer. Follow him at Damon Dog. That's D-A-W-G. We are Damon's dogs. Bark Bark. We are at well, I am at Cap underscore K-Man with a K. This maniac next to me is at Jesse N. Friedman. Of course, our show is at P HNX underscore D-Backs, but all roads do lead to at PHNX underscore sports on Twitter, Instagram, and

Facebook. We thank you guys so much for stopping by. We will be back tomorrow with our postgame show, so make sure to check that out. Also, Jesse has another on the record coming. Yes, yes. We'll be talking with Sam Levitt, who does the pre and post game radio hosting for the San Diego Padres. Also, QB1 for ASU, I understand.

Yeah, yeah, he's a busy guy. Got a lot going on. He's got a full plate over there. Yeah, 100%. But that'll drop sometime tomorrow, late morning, early afternoon. Don't miss that. Don't miss our post game show. And then join us on Saturday.

Can't wait to see all of you guys for our takeover of Chase Field. But that's all we got. Again, we thank you again so much for your time. We'll see you tomorrow. I hope you have a wonderful evening and remember kids. Baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when you realize that birthdays are in fact important.