PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Are the Arizona Diamondbacks a top-10 team in Major League Baseball?

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

We take a look at Jesse’s Power Rankings for MLB and see how the Arizona Diamondbacks stack up with analysts across baseball. We also discuss Aaron Judge’s stealing signs, Randy Johnson being perfect, and updates from the D-backs farm system.WATCH YOUR FAVORITE TEAMS HERE: https://www.fubotv.com/phnx SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX Events: Get your tickets to the Keepin’ it 100 Golf Scramble, D-backs Takeovers, Knockout Nights & Suns Watch Parties at BetMGM, and MORE here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/phnx-56002330273 Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Manscaped: Save 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code “PHNX” at Manscaped.com. BetMGM: Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code PHNX (betmgm.com/phnx). Place a pre-game, moneyline wager in the amount of at least $10 on any market at standard odds price. You will receive $200 in Bonus Bets instantly regardless of the outcome of your wager! Just make sure you use bonus code PHNX when you sign up!Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (CO, DC, IL, IN, LA, MD, MS, NJ, OH, PA, TN, VA, WV, WY). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-327-5050 (MA)21+ to wager. Please Gamble Responsibly. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (KS, NV), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help (MI). Visit BetMGM.com for Terms & Conditions. US promotional offers not available in DC, Nevada, New York or Ontario.Pins & Aces: Check out pinsandaces.com and use code PHNX to receive 15% off your first order and get free shipping.Circle K: Text PHNX to 31310 to join the Circle K SMS subscriber club and get BOGO 32 oz Polar Pops! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!OGeez!: Learn more about OGeez! at https://ogeezbrands.com//. Must be 21 years or older to purchase.Four Peaks: Follow them on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. DISCLAIMER: We are not an online gambling operator, or a gambling site of any kind. The content of this website is intended to be used for entertainment purposes only and does not involve real money betting. Sports betting and gambling laws vary by jurisdiction. Please be aware of and respect the laws of sports gambling for your jurisdiction. We do not promote or endorse any form of wagering or gambling to users under the age of 21. We support responsible gambling. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-777-7207 (for Arizona Council on Compulsive Gambling) or 1-800-NEXT-STEP (Arizona Office of Problem Gambling) or text NEXTSTEP to 53342.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.

Hello and welcome into another edition of the PHNX. My name is Derek Monta. Of course, I am your mayor of PHNX. This guy next to me keeps you informed as to when we will be going live. It's your thunderstick, Jesse Freed. Somebody has to do it. Someone has to do it around here. Yeah, someone has to do it.

We had a lot of things to get settled. And honestly, one of the biggest things that people don't understand around PHNX is how much contract negotiations goes on behind the scenes here. You think all of this trades and new acquisitions and transfer portal stuff and like, you know, hiring free agents is all just stuff that goes on in sports. That shit is going on in this office 24-7. And we had some tough negotiations to go through this morning. We were in the middle of some incredible things happening around here on the PHNXDBACs podcast. So stay tuned right here. But of course, something incredible that's happening around baseball is the Arizona Diamondbacks are finally starting to get recognized a bit for being the wagon that they are.

And we took a look at the power rankings around baseball. We kind of like what we see from some of you, MLB.com. We're still not happy with you. But Jesse actually has his power rankings for Major League Baseball. So we wanted to take a look at those first. So Jesse, tell us a little bit about what you got here. Let's jump in. Let's jump in.

So, hey, the D-BACs are on the list, Derek. They made it. That is the big news right there. We're not the worst. We're not the worst. Far from the worst. Far from the worst. For those of you joining on audio, I'll go ahead and just run through them real quick.

And then I'll highlight a couple of things. So here are my power rankings. We'll start from the bottom of my top 10. D-Baxer number 10, New York Yankees number nine, Minnesota Twins, 8, Orioles 7, Blue J6, Rangers 5. did not expect to be ranking the Texas Rangers is the top five team on May 18th, but here we are.

Houston Astros 4, L.A. Dodgers 3, Braves 2, and the Tampa Bay Rays. I thought about not ranking the Tampa Bay Rays first, Derek, because they haven't played quite their brand of baseball that they had going over those first few weeks here recently. But, you know, they still far in away the best record in the league. So that's my top 10. A lot of American League East teams here in the top.

Top 10, almost all of them, just missing the Red Sox. And the Red Sox didn't miss by that much. That's the scary thing. Obviously, your biggest surprise here, as you said, was the Texas Rangers being up there at number five. But really, if you've watched the Rangers, if you've seen their offensive output this year so far, that's not that far off base. I mean, they've been a very good baseball team. They really have. Yeah, the Texas Rangers, I think when I first made my list, I think I had the Rangers at,

like seven or eight. And then I looked closer at some of the numbers with that baseball team. Derek, they don't even have Jacob de Grom. Like Jacob de Grom has missed significant time. I know. He continues to be out for them. And Nathan E.

Ovaldi somehow looks like a, looks like a Cy Young candidate. I mean, we saw the Rangers a little bit in that series against the devax. Jonah Heim is having a breakout season. Josh Young is having a great year. Aren't they getting Seeger back today? Hasn't he also been missing times?

Yes, that is a great point. They also have played, I believe, basically, the entire season without Cori. I think the entire season without Corey Segar, if I'm not mistaken. And they're still that good. Like with the pieces they're missing, can you imagine how good they'll be when they, when they come back? You know what? What's like the race team? You never know, right?

Like sometimes it might be these guys getting an opportunity. It might be these guys, the young guys that maybe haven't been as good as they've been in the past peaking right now. But it definitely feels like Major League Baseball is filled with a young talent. And right now those power rankings right there between the Orioles, Rangers, a lot of those teams appearing on your top 10 kind of shows that story of the youth movement baseball here a bit. I'm a big run differential guy. I know you are.

As I'm sure people know at this point, at this stage in the season, I just think run differential is really helpful in deciding like, okay, you know, is this team 500 because they deserve to be 500 or are they 500 because they're like the Marlins and, you know, they're minus 45. but they've won every single one by the game that they played and it doesn't feel sustainable. So, yeah, a couple teams where run differential came into play, Clutch Canucks says I'd say snakes over twins, which is a, I don't think that would be egregious at all. No, but would you imagine the twins being where they're at knowing that after acquiring Carlos Correa, that his batting average would be 203 at this point of the season, right?

That's honestly, that's honestly a big thing for me, is that the twins' offense. has been kind of right in the middle. Their offense has not been great this year, but that's with Carlos Correa having done basically nothing. And their starting rotation is pretty insane. They have Sunny Gray, they have Joe Ryan, they have Pablo Lopez, has cooled off a little bit in recent days, but started the year one of the best pitchers in the game.

Their starting rotation has a lot more depth than the Diamondback starting rotation does. And they also have some guy named Joan Duran, who was a one-time Diamondbacks prospect who throws 102 miles an hour is one of the best relievers in the game. So the pitching, the pitching side for the twins is so significantly better than the debacks for me that even though the debacks have the better offense, I'm siding with the twins just by a slight margin for right now.

And pitching is, I mean, like it's the old adage in football, like defense wins football games, right? Yeah. Like at the end of the day, at the end of the year, pitching is really what's going to make you a great baseball team. Offense comes and goes. There's different sources of offense. There's times where, like we've seen with the Diamondbacks, the entire team can be in a slump together.

But if you have great pitching, you can kind of weather the storm when your offense isn't towing the line and doing the work that it needs to do. Yeah, it's a great point. And yeah, I mean, I think the twins, according to Fanagraphs, are like second. Their pitching staff is second in war, which is like that team I have to, I feel like I have to put at least in the top eight. Yeah, I agree. And I mean, you're not, you're not too much different from the, you know, wrestling. of the analysts in baseball, right? There's, the power rankings came out.

We take a look at the Arizona Diamondbacks across the power rankings, and they're honestly, right, where Jesse said, even with some of those publications that tend to not necessarily give the Diamondbacks the credit they deserve. USA Today has them ranked as the ninth best team in baseball.

The athletic has them ranked right where Jesse has them as them as the 10th best team in baseball. ESPN has them ranked 11th. CBS Sports has them ranked 12th. And for some inexplicable reason, MLB.com has them ranked 15th because they just like to leave things. That's pretty crazy. It takes a little bit of boldness to rank a team that's 25 and 19

and has outscored their opponents and is fifth in league and batting average like the debacks are and say that's the fifth. Here's why. Starting rotation. MLB.com still has a lot of questions about starting rotation when it comes to this team and it is fair. It's fair. We are excited about Brandon Fopp being on track, but as it stands, he's had more bad start. So he's had good starts so far.

his major league career. His ERA still starts with an eight. So it's going to, it's going to take a little while for people to believe understandably. But for most part, for the most part, I think we all kind of want to just see him trending in the right direction, which we feel like he is. We feel like we know Brandon Fought is better than what he's displayed so far in his three outings. Let's hope so. Let's hope so. Right. But, you know, again, MLB.com is taking more of a prove-it approach. And honestly, rightfully so. Like we talked about with Drey Jamison and Ryan Nelson so much with this team. Both of those guys were just ridiculously good to start their career last year. And now this season, it's no knock at them, but they've actually kind of leveled out more to what their numbers were expected to be as major league, you know, starters. So hopefully they can, you know, still keep plugging along.

Ryan Nelson's start was very good. maybe not as long as we'd like to see it, but it was a very good start and very encouraging as far as, you know, going forward for him. But it's still the Oakland A's, so we don't want to get too excited about anything. Joan Duran, just for those who don't know, Joan Duran was part of the Eduardo Escobar trade when the Diamondbacks acquired Eduardo Escobar from the twins several years back. So, yeah, I think at the time he was in the lower levels of the miners. He wasn't necessarily viewed as like a top flight prospect, but the stuff was there. And so it was just a question of whether he was going to be able to throw strikes enough and, you know, whether his stuff would tick up even more. And both of those things have happened.

Joan Duran is one of my favorite relief pictures in the game to watch. Which, yeah, as, you know, if you're a Diamondbacks fan hearing that is probably pretty difficult because this team could use the Joan Duran right now, Derek, the back end of the bullpen remains a little bit shaking. I am well aware of that, Jesse. I don't need to be reminded. That's why I'm just ignoring you while you're talking about all this stuff. But I do want to say one thing when we're talking about trades and losing good players. I believe we have Dominic Fletcher because of the Paul Goldschmidt trade. We do.

Is that right? Yes. I'm so glad you brought that up. So I mean, the fucking trade is still alive, folks. And we still might not lose it. That's all I'm saying. We still might not lose this trade. Somehow, yeah, I know.

You're right. Somehow we haven't talked about that on the show yet. Yeah, Dominic Fletcher. The Diamondbacks did not trade for Dominic Fletcher, but they acquired Donald. Dominic Fletcher as part of the Paul Goldschmidt trade. He was in the form of a draft pick. Yeah, the St. Louis Cardinals traded a supplemental or yeah. Yeah, I think it was a competitive balance around draft pick somewhere like in the 70s

in the 2019 draft. That's the year that Diamondbacks had like 800 draft picks in the first 100, which doesn't even make any sense. But yeah, Dominic Fletcher is here and he is part of the Paul Goldschmidt trade. And, you know, who else is still? technically tracks back to the Paul Goldschmidt trade. Derek is Emmanuel Rivera. Yay.

We stand. The Diamondbacks flips a few months of Luke Weaver and turn that into what has so far been a pretty productive third baseman. So the trade is not closed on the Paul Goldschmidt trade just yet. Well, we didn't talk about that. We haven't talked about a lot of things around baseball because honestly, the Diamondbacks have been such an exciting topic for us around here. And they play a lot of.

games. They do play a lot of games. It's like they play every day, you guys. It gets exhausting. But the big story around baseball for some reason is Aaron Judge stealing signs essentially, right? Is that what the narrative is? Is that he stealing signs? Is he, no. What is he doing? What is he doing with his eyes? What Aaron Judge, who is Aaron Judge looking at? That's the big story right now in baseball. And I just, again, we can't help but wonder why. Why is this a story? Why is Aaron Judge looking at his teammates or maybe, you know, people are saying that Aaron Judge was looking down at the catcher. The catcher would have to be eight feet tall

in order for Aaron Judge to be looking sideways at him and to be seeing anything. But apparently there was a lot of discussion about this, about it being. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Like some sort of, I guess, cheating. And like, Jesse and I just found this preposterous yesterday

because I hate to break this to you guys. but sign stealing is legal in baseball, as long as you don't do it with fucking video cameras and buzzers and trash cans. And in fact, you probably can still use the trash cans and get away with it. It's just that other technology shit that you can't use to steal signs.

But like, this has been a part of baseball forever. I don't understand sometimes how this stuff becomes a topic when there's no rules change about this. Aaron Judge isn't doing anything that MLB has ever banned or not allowed people to do. So is it just because he is a very,

prominent person in baseball. He hit all those home runs last year. So now people are constantly questioning or looking for a reason as to how he did it, how he got some sort of competitive edge on, on everybody else in baseball. And I just not even being a Yankees fan, even though I am a reformed Yankees fan. I don't, I don't get it. And I don't, I just don't care. This is not a, this is not something that people should be talking about yet.

Here we are talking about it. I feel like we're a little late to the party. Like every, every baseball podcast has our. spent, you know, they've already done like their 20 minute piece on this incident. They did breaking news podcasts. Oh, yeah. There was all sorts of coverage. For those who don't know, this was an incident, an incident, I think, in Monday's game

between the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees. It was at Roger's Center. I believe it was in Toronto. And it was just this bizarre moment where Aaron Judge is at the plate. He's facing a pitcher whose name is currently alluding me. but he's facing a pitcher who is kind of an up and down guy, not a particularly well-known reliever for the for the Blue Jays. And Aaron Judge, like right as the pitch is about to come,

keeps glancing over towards first base. Is it a little unclear was he looking at the dugout? He's looking at his first base coach. He just keeps glancing over. And after the game, he was asked about this. And Aaron Judge said that there was some chirping happening in the dugout. And so I think there was an ejection. that had happened earlier, and so there were some chirping from some Yankees fans in the dugout.

And so Aaron Judge was, I guess, I don't know, giving them the stare or something, like trying to get them to pipe down or something. That was his explanation, which was clearly bogus. There's no way, why would, like, if you're going to give them to stare down, if you're going to look over it, then, why would you do it in these, in these milliseconds as the pitch is being delivered? That part makes absolutely no sense. And of course, the Houston Astros incident from a few years ago, as you reference, turned everyone into conspiracy theorists, right? Everyone's a conspiracy theorist. Everyone is cheating. What's that wrinkle in his uniform? What's that thing about? That looks like a wire. There's always something going on. And so, you know, people began to speculate. And what has basically become the conclusion, what most people now believe, Ken Rosenthal reported this shortly after the incident.

Pitcher's name is Jay Jackson, by the way, he was on the mound for the last. the Blue Js sent down to AAA shortly after this incident happened. But he basically openly said afterwards that he feels like he was tipping pitches. And so, yeah, basically what happened is he was something he was doing on the mound that the Yankees picked up on, specifically their first base coach picked up on that, who by the last name of Chapman, I can't find his first name, whoever the Yankees first base coach is, he picked up on that and he was basically relaying. to Aaron Judge what the pitch was as it was coming.

Hence Aaron Judge is looking over at first base. But of course, before this news came out, everyone had their theory about what kind of cheating scandal was in play here for the New York Yankees. Aaron Judge made it a thousand times worse by essentially lying about it, right? The one thing that is very refreshing, at least to us at times, is how honest the Diamondbacks players are about things that are happening on the field. And sometimes when we go talk to them in the clubhouse afterwards, they give us a perspective that we didn't even think about, right?

Like they're like, oh, no, this just thing happened and blah, blah, blah, right? And it sounds reasonable and it sounds factual. And it just, it's an easy enough story to believe. Yeah. And Judge saying what he said instantly was like, what? That makes no sense. But he also kind of had to say that because if you're a team and you and you've got something on the opposing pitcher and you know that that pitcher is tipping his pitches, you're not going to say that, right?

Because that's a competitive advantage for you. You can't go on the record after the game saying that. Because then other teams are going to do it. And then not only other teams, but they'll do something to stop him from tipping his pitches. Exactly. But that's the biggest thing you don't want to end. Yeah, the other team is going to be like, oh, we're tipping pitches. Okay, well, let's take a look and see if we can figure out what that was.

That's why as a journalist, I won't really ever ask a question about that. Because even if somebody is tipping pitches, you know they're not going to They're not going to openly admit that. But I'm just saying it would be easy enough to say I was looking at our first base coach. He was giving us. But why would he have been looking at his first base coach unless he was. Because you get signs from your first base coach. That's nothing fucking new in baseball.

Like as the ball is coming to the plate, I don't know about that, Derek. I'm just saying. My point being is that looking at your first base coach is not fucking anything new in baseball. Whether you're in the box, whether the pitch is coming, if you would have just said that, that would have been in. Making up this whole thing about people chirping at you. That's the part where I'm like, Yeah, there's,

he should have come up with a better story. Yeah, we would see that. We would see that. There would be video evidence of them chirping at you. You know what I mean? It's kind of like everything that we see. The clutch connect,

uh, been, uh, down here said John boy's been on the defense force for judge, just for, uh, Herman to be ejected next game. Yeah.

Yeah. Yankees, uh, they're, they're not having a good time right now. But, uh, of course,

uh, the sticky stuff in baseball. That's a whole other thing right now. Yeah. of getting a little bit out of control when it comes to them. Domingo Hermann, the latest, the latest victim. Man, didn't he have a perfect game going before they found that? Or like a no-hitter?

Yeah, well, no, I know it wasn't very long, but still, it was enough for them to be like, hold on, you're not normally this good. It was Travis Chapman, by the way. That's the Yankees first base coach. But, yeah, apparently he picked up on it, and this is a situation where Jay Jackson was openly willing to admit this afterwards, which sort of makes sense from, from his perspective, you might be willing to just come out and say that because at that point, everyone kind of suspected as much.

Are we soft media, Jesse here in Arizona? Like, if we asked something like that and we got a no comment kind of thing, right? I feel like we would just no comment, right? If we asked Tori like, hey, what happened there between Christian Walker and, you know, Tony Peres Chica on that last play? Why was he looking at him? And if Tori was like, yeah, I don't want to elaborate on that, would we push him any further? because I feel like that he couldn't like I feel like Aaron Judge couldn't get away with the New York media accepting him saying no comment on that right like you know what I mean but yeah yeah I do feel like to an extent like if we were to pester like a player on the Diamondbacks about that and he just said I don't I don't I guess we do get that from time to time like they'll be like I was working on something we're like well what are you working on he's like I don't want to disclose that and we're like cool understand like maybe we're just more laid back here I don't know but it might just be easier to deal with us is a really difficult

thing to kind of address, to kind of dance around as a journalist and as a team, like they're, you know, you can't really talk about it. So it's just weird. But, but the thing that I will say, going back to my earlier point about everyone being conspiracy theorists, right? The Houston Astro situation broke, broke baseball fans' minds. It made people forget that things like sign stealing are a totally normal. And I think healthy and kind of fun part of part of the game. I remember listening. I remember watching playoff games and have them talking about it mid-game. They're like, you know, the announcers, the commentators kind of started hypothesizing that they think that, hey, we think that the, you know, angels in this case, like, we think that they might have figured something out

about the pitcher, you know, they'll even start sometimes showing clips of them maybe doing stuff on the base path that might be, you know, like sending signs into the hitter or whatever. And in this case, the Blue Jays, I believe it was the Blue Jays broadcast, Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez, is we're totally on top of this, two very well-seasoned broadcasters. They were totally like, what is Aaron Judge doing with his eyes? Like, what's going on here? And the other part of this is that pitchcom is a part of this game now, which has made sign stealing considerably more difficult, but as also, going back to the conspiracy

theory thing, like, can you hack into pitchcom? Is it possible to intercept the pitchcom frequency? Like, it is. Who knows, right? Yeah, we talked about this a little bit. yesterday, and I don't mean all on the show. Jesse and I just sat around wondering about this, right? Yeah, we literally sat down and, and we're doing internet searches about, like, how you would hack pitchcom if you were, if you, and it doesn't seem like it's really possible.

According to an executive from the company that developed the pitchcom, they basically said that this is like, this is completely, uh, you cannot, you cannot. It's like it's all encrypted. It's all encrypted information and stuff. And it's like a very limited, uh, I think it's a very limited bandwidth. as far as how far it would go. I think like there's something about the pitchcom units and what the catcher is wearing,

like being specifically paired and like nothing else compared it. It's not like a Bluetooth situation or something like that. However, it's using technology. And if it's using technology, it means that the technology can perhaps somehow be hacked into. Technology breeds corruption. That's right.

We love it. We love it around here. We love cheating around here. But yeah, no, I mean, just wait until people are hacking the autumn. ball strike challenge system. You know what I want. I want them to hack the pitchcom and then start sending the wrong pitches into the

catcher. That would be even better than just stealing the information. Right. Cross them up a little bit while you're also stealing the pitches. I don't know. Could you imagine if robo umps were a thing and the team figured out how to hack it? Yes. That would be that like I honestly want that to happen because that would be the greatest baseball

story of all time. I still want the actual robots back there, but you know what it is. Yeah. I don't know. Technology to technology is very corruptible. But more importantly, thank you to the Houston Astros for putting all of these wonderful thoughts on our heads that this could all happen. Before the Houston Astros did what they did, I've never heard of a player wearing a buzzer underneath their jersey before to alert them as to what pitch was coming. But here we are. I thank you guys for being here today in the Ph.NXports YouTube channel. If you haven't subscribed already, subscribe, sign up for notifications.

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That's the lyrics to the song. Make sure. You have to sing it. Walker, Walker, Walker, Walker, Walker, single double, triple walker. There you go. Every Saturday and Wednesday, you can claim your free bonus bet on the house from BetMGM. I just did that yesterday. should too. Fans automatically receive a bonus bet upon logging into their account. And unlike other

betting apps, they don't try to hide this from you. I got an email about it, Jesse. I got a text message and I got a notification in the app. They were trying to give me my free bet and make sure I didn't forget about it. You shouldn't either because your bets do expire after 72 hours. So don't wait. Bonus bets can only be used on any sport wagers. Check out the PHNX, our Cornhole League knockout nights on the first Friday of every month. We will be having those at the BetMGM sports book out at State Farm Stadium. The first Friday of every month, we'll have

food and beverage specials, giveaways, bet MGM prizes, and so much more. We will also be broadcasting this very show from the site. So if you haven't signed up for BetMGM yet, bet MGM app yet, do it now and use bonus code PHNX. There's a few different offers depending on where you live.

But for our Arizona audience, you will get up to $100 in bonus bets on your first wager with BetMGM. Again, make sure you use bonus code P HNX. Sign up before you come to the event. That way you make sure you have the app ready to go and you can already start getting those bonus bets in when you arrive. Check out the show notes for full details and now listen to Shane.

Talk about the disclaimer. Disclamer 21 plus to wager. Visit bet MGM. M.g.m. A week and conditions. U.S. promotional offers not available in Washington, D.C., New York, New York. Gambling problem.

Call 1-800, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wessey, W. Call 877-N.Y. 467-369, New York. Call 100, Next Step, Arizona. 1-800-5-22-4-7-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-0-1-1-2-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. All right, well, today is a very special anniversary for Arizona Diamondbacks fans and baseball fans alike.

Today is the 19-year anniversary of Randy Johnson's perfect game from 2004. Fun day, Jesse. Fun day. That you probably don't remember. You were what? Yeah, I was out at the playground. Three-old years old, four years old at that point. Some, some, I might have been five.

Five. I was five at that point. Yeah, I was, I was drunk, you know, at the game, but well, a big deal. We both live our lives in separate ways, but. You were at, you were at this game? No, I was not at this game. I believe it was in Atlanta. Yeah, I was going to say, I was like, wow, what are the odds?

It was a two nothing, but I did watch it, though. I did watch it live. I remember, I remember calling my friends as things started to progress in that direction, right? Like, this is what we used to do. We didn't have Twitter to jump on and immediately have people to be talking to about this event that was going on live. You had to pick up a phone with a cord on it and call someone and hope they were home and have them answer their phone with a cord on it.

Wild time, Jesse. But it was a two-to-nothing victory over Mike Hampton and the Atlanta Braves, if you remember. Randy Johnson was just a young 40 years old at the time when he threw 117 pitches for 13 strikeouts, no hits, and no locks. it's just i mean this is what separates rani johnson in in so many ways is is not just the incredible numbers all the sly young awards all that it's it's the longevity right it's like this man was a transcendent pitcher at the age of 40 like you just don't you just don't see that kind of thing basically ever in in this sport and looking at his numbers for that season derrick 2004 he made

35 starts devax found a way to finagle a couple couple of extra ones for him, I guess. 245 and two-thirds innings, which is a pretty insane innings count. 290 strikeouts that year and a 2.60 ERA, 0.9 whip, which was, I mean, especially for that time, was just completely unheard of. So, yeah, I continue to be jealous and sort of sad that I wasn't, I wasn't at the age where I could remember things and actually process things when all this. stuff was happening.

The team sucked that year, so it's fine. Yeah, I don't, I don't think. It was the only thing to remember that season. I mean, 2003 was, was worse than 2004, but, right? Or no, no, no, no. I'm getting confused. 2004 was the, yeah, Randy Johnson was the only good thing happening for the 2004. He lost a lot of games two to nothing that year.

Let me tell you. Yeah, well, he was only 16 and 14 despite being, like, that was his record, despite being one of the best pitchers and, you know, finishing second in Sai-on. He had a 2.30 ERA that year, I believe, or maybe that was the next year. I don't know, but he led the league. 260. Yeah. Yeah.

Incredible. The big reason why we're talking about this today is, as you may remember, Zach Gallen hit a bird with a pitch and killed it yesterday. But was it a real bird? While we're doing conspiracy theories. Was it a recording device? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

Was it a sparrow or was it a pigeon? It's very important to know the difference between these two birds. There's plenty of fucking sparrows out there, okay? But the pigeons, they're CIA recording devices. Everybody knows that. But the point is that obviously what we need to go back to and think about here is that in 2001, Randy Johnson destroyed that bird. And the Arizona Diamondbacks went on to win the World Series.

So it's a very simple conclusion to be John. It obviously is a simple conclusion, right? that Zach Gallen is on the same path to win a World Series this year. And then obviously in 2006, he's going to throw a perfect game, right? That's the way that this goes. Yeah, there you go. I mean, he is on pace for a pretty remarkable season. Maybe, maybe not that, but who knows, right?

Who knows? Wackier things have happened. We tweeted this out yesterday, though, and you could take a look for yourself, but Zach Gallen is on pace for some pretty incredible numbers there. Yeah, I mean, this is bonkers. Granted, it's a little, you know, the whole on-paced thing when you're like barely a quarter of the way through the season. It's a little pie in the sky. You're kind of dreaming a little bit.

But it's also really fun, especially right now for a Diamondbacks team, I mean, especially on the offensive side of the game, they have a number of hitters who are on pace to put up pretty gaudy numbers at the end of the season right now. But on the pitching side, no one's better than Zach Gallen. 210 in a third inning. That would be a career high for him in terms of innings. only 29 walks compared to 257 strikeouts. Of course, the 235 ERA, the 0.85 whip. Those are the numbers that he has right now.

He's also on PACEC O'22 and 4, Derek, which is, as we talked about the other day, that's pretty crazy for a guy who couldn't get past four wins. Oh, yeah. Not that long ago. Not too long ago. I think last year was the first time he finally got over that home. Right. Yeah, I mean, Zach Gallen, of course, is an incredible pitcher.

Our friend Jack had to go rain on our parade. with these numbers a little bit and try to be. Yeah, I don't know about some fan graphs projections. It's his job to be a realist, not mine and not yours, all right? Let Jesse bring me down. I don't need two of you bringing me down. To be fair, on pace means on pace. Like, this is the season that Zach Gallen is on pace to have.

Correct. That is objectively the case. It's different than projected, which projected doesn't really move much from what they projected him to have at the beginning of the season, no matter how well he's performing, right? It might move the needle a little bit. It's kind of like maybe what we were seeing with ESPN's power rankings. Like basically the Diamondbacks are like one position up from where they were when I think ESPN started the season. Or maybe we were at 15th when ESPN started the season.

Well, ESPN was a little nicer, right. Oh, no, I'm sorry. MLB.com. You're right. You're right. Absolutely. My apologies, Espin. I would never mean to throw you over the most.

I think MLB.com started the year. They started the year at like 20th, 21st with a deback, something like that. So I mean, 15th is a decent bump. But it probably not enough. Not as much as they deserve. Probably not enough. Yeah. On all transparency, I think we might have messed up a little bit.

And we, I mean I, when it came to this whole bird situation. I've been attacking cities in Florida and entire species of animals this week. And people aren't very happy with me. But I think I think I was a little bit of a hypocrite this week when it came to our last two episodes. Damon, would you mind showing some clips that kind of proof? what I'm talking about here. Like, why, why isn't it meow in the park?

Yeah. Not just bark in the park. Jesse wants somebody to bring a monkey. He wants things to get crazy. Bring, not only your dogs, bring your cats, bring your monkeys.

How do you know? Parrots that maybe you could teach to, like, heckle opposing teams? Doesn't love baseball games if you don't bring your cat to a baseball game. Why not? I mean, they got to get those attendance numbers up somehow, Derek.

Hmm. We were very pro. Pro just all animals coming to the park. Pro bird. Pro birds, pro monkey, pro dog, pro cat. And now let's take a look at yesterday's video clip after Zach Gallen killed a bird with a pitch. I have throwing shade at birds, Jesse, birds,

because birds have no business trespassing inside of baseball stadiums. And I have no sympathy for this bird getting in the middle of this, you know, ball that Zach Gallen threw. It's not Zach Gallen's fault. He was out there just doing his job. If I ran out on the field and got in between, Zach and his catcher and got hit in the head. Whose fault is that?

Mine or Zach Allen? I don't know. I don't know what to say there. So I guess we'll just let those videos view the time. I tend to be a bit of a hypocrite time. It's fine. Just a little bit. I'm used to it.

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Alec Thomas was sent down to Reno. He was option to the Reno Aces. And, you know, there was a lot of positive things said about Alec Thomas. Tori Lovolo commented on how important he was to the team, how important his defense was, and mostly that they just feel like he needs to get, you know, get some at bats and get his swing right. Yeah, yeah.

And Alec Thomas has made changes from day one with the, with the Reno Aces. We have a number of screenshots here that we can share that sort of illustrate what has happened with Alec Thomas's swing. Are you able to pull that up? You able to pull that up, Damon? So here is Alec Thomas's first at bat. And he was facing one of the better pitching prospects in the game, a lefty for the Sanford Francisco Giants in their organization, who is the, I think he's the highest ranked left-handed

pitcher in all of minor league baseball as far as his. So yeah, not exactly a soft landing for Alec Thomas. Like, yeah, welcome to AAA. You're facing the toughest. The toughest lefty, arguably in all of minor league baseball. But this, Derek, this is a screenshot of Alec Thomas in his first bat. That's a little leg kick right there. That's a little tiny leg kick. The leg kick is very small. This was not like right at the beach. beginning of the leg kick. This was the highest point of the leg kick. It's more of like him just kind of, it's more of like turning his toe more than, more than anything else. There's hardly any lift whatsoever. Just lifting the heel off the ground a bit. Is this something he's actively trying to get

rid of that leg kick? Like, or do you think he's trying to actively? I know you might not know for sure, but yeah, does it seem like he's trying to eliminate the leg kick from his, from his swing? This is, I mean, this is exactly what Tori Lavello told reporters yesterday when the Diamondbacks made the decision to send Alec Thomas down. He said that there's too much action in his lower half. There's too much movement. This gets a little more interesting though. But before we get to some of the other screenshots, what do you think happened in this first is bat there? Give me a guess. Alec Thomas at the plate. What do you think Alex Thomas did in his first is that in triple-ed-lay? I'm going to say he grounded out softly to the right side. You are absolutely correct. Alex Thomas grounded out

softly to the right side. So not exactly instant results. If we go to the next screenshot, this is a in bat. This is the highest point of his leg kick. I see a little bigger there. Just a little bit, a little bit higher. But I'm seeing, am I seeing his soul of the shoe there?

Like, is he kind of turning his leg almost a little bit where he's like angling it and I can see like the bottom of the shoe? Yeah. Yeah. I think there might be some, some like rotational differences there as well. Pretty subtle though.

Pretty similar to the first time. Sure. Noticably, noticeably diminished from, from what he was doing. Um, uh, with the diamond backs this season. We go to the next one.

This is also, this is against a different lefty now. Oh. Still. There's a gap there. Yeah, maybe a little different. Still mostly similar though, right? Like it's still, it's still just a little bit higher. Yeah, maybe a little bit higher.

No super significant changes. And granted, I'm just picking one pitch from each of bat. So there's probably some variance within each of them. If we go to the next one. Whoa, we're back. The Alec Thomas leg kick is in. You can take the man out of the leg swing, but you can't take the leg swing out of the man. Something like that.

Oh, man. That was incredible. And then if we go to the very last one, similar story. So his first three at bats, leg kick very diminished. His last two at bats, leg kick pretty much exactly as we saw it before. It's just part of his mechanics that he can't really eliminate, but it's not really something that's bringing him any kind of help, right? So my theory is that he was facing lefties in those first three of.

bats. He was facing Riteys in those last two. So there is some arguments we made like you were just saying maybe it's kind of reverting to old habits and just gradually throughout the game. He just kind of found his way back to his old batting stance. Or what I think is probably more likely is the D-backs told him toned down the leg kick against lefties where you're having the most problems. But let it rip against Rite's. Yeah, let it rip against Rite's. So we'll have to continue to monitor this, but I spent entirely too much time scrubbing through Reno Aces footage and trying to take screenshots last night. It was a lot of fun.

But interesting, interesting takeaways here. The end result is that he went 0 for five and none of them really worked. But that's not really what they're looking for, right? Again, that's something when we talk about like Jake McCarthy going down and struggling for his first week even in Reno after he was sent down. And even the struggles that he's kind of currently experiencing, they're working on stuff. And it's kind of like spring training where it's not really the results that they're that are driving them as much as it's trying to fix something that they're doing wrong, trying to fix something in their mechanics.

And honestly, both of these guys are too good as defenders for them to be playing at a AAA level, right? So like it really is just about them getting their swing back on track. And then it's more difficult because the Diamondbacks have to figure out roster-wise where to put all of these guys that they have. And they still have other guys that we are waiting to hear back from Kyle Lewis. We're still waiting to hear about. Cole Sulzer is another name that I think we're still waiting to hear. They'll probably be out for quite a while. Yeah, and then we have Carson Kelly due back in maybe a few weeks,

like maybe by June, Julyish, kind of. Yeah, I talked to Carson a couple days ago, and he said he has been cleared to swing. So he's able to actually swing a bat. He was throwing out to 120 feet, I think. Anything like that? He said it was okay. Okay. But it sounded like sort of a sort of a day-to-day thing as far as actually, you know,

getting into games and going out on a rehab assignment or whatnot. So still have to wait out that situation. It was Kyle Harrison, by the way. It was the name of the lefty who started yesterday for the Sacramento Rivercats in that game. 21-year-old lefty, one of the best young pitching prospects in baseball. So that's kind of why I'm not reading too much into Alec Thomas going, 0 for 5. Sure.

I watch those at bats and Kyle Harrison has really good stuff. And, you know, even the last couple of bats happened against Ritey. So maybe you'd like to see him get a hit there. But nothing alarming. It's just one game. And speaking in other news of players getting hit by pitches, not just Carson Kelly, but Jordan Lawler got hit in the right wrist by pitch in the first inning of the game the other night. Apparently they had x-rays done on Lawler's right hand and they came back negative.

He is currently considered day to day, but not great, obviously. We have both of the guys that we really want to talk about and get excited about currently injured. Drew Jones is still on the IL with a quad injury as well. That's been a long time. I think Josh Barfield said it would be like a couple weeks that he would be out for when it first happened. He was placed on the seven-day IL on April 22nd. So that's almost a full month ago at this point. So I don't know what's going on there, but hopefully Drew Jones can get back.

soon. The one name that we still don't have much information on is Christian Robinson. We know that he kind of currently remains in limbo, but he should be activated soon. Hillsborough would probably be a landing destination. Vysalia is where Christian Robinson will start. And yeah, when the diamond backs, as we talked about a week or two ago at this point, they reinstated him from the restricted list, but they haven't activated him to actually be on the rawhide's roster at this point. So he's not playing in games. But I believe when they, when they reinstated him initially, that opened up a 30 day period that they have to activate him. Okay. So I think that puts us at around May 31st, something like that for Christian Robinson to get back in this time. So I think it's mostly because Christian Robinson

had a hamstring injury in spring training, like right toward the end of spring training that he's kind of been like slowly working his way back from. Josh Barfield told us during the, the press conference at the time the debacks were hoping to send him out on a rehab assignment which would allow them to push off activating him which requires a 40-man roster move because he would he would become part of the 40-man roster and that would that would require them to make a move that maybe they would like to push out a little further if they can i don't know what the status is on that it doesn't appear that i can tell that christian robinson has started a rehab assignment um but either way i think by may 31st i think he pretty much has to play in games is is my

understanding. So hopefully we get to see him out there pretty soon. Yeah, that would be something spectacular because I know a lot of Diamondbacks fans that have kind of tracked the progress of prospects have really just wanted to see this guy get an opportunity to come back and play baseball again. And that looks like that might be kind of true. So that's a great story as far as the organization is concerned. It was so long ago. I mean, it's just so it's weird to have a prospect that you're so excited about. And then four years just passed. And, and it's, and it's, I mean, it's not like Christian Robinson played poorly, right? Like Christian Robinson, the last time he was in the minors,

you know, he'd just been promoted to Kane County, the High A affiliate at the time, and he was kind of struggling there. But his numbers in that 2019 season were really, really good. And so DeBak's fan just kind of have this picture in their heads of like, oh my gosh, like Christian Robinson, at one point, we thought this guy was going to be a star. And, you know, it's going to take him a while to work his way back from that.

But there's still a lot of excitement there. rightfully so. There's a couple of things about that. One, it's crazy how the pandemic feels like the blip now in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Like we just lost this two year period of time that certain like just shit was just weird during that time. We're still like learning how to live life again back normally, you know, post-pandemic. But I still haven't figured it out. I still haven't either. I still have a drawer full of masks that I don't want to get rid of because I think I'm going to need them again. But Christian Robinson definitely had one of those things that could destroy a career happened to him.

And luckily, we are now in a place where we as a society understand mental health better and we understand people having breakdowns and mental health incidents better because there's a good chance that, uh, you know, 10, 15 years ago, this completely ruins Christian Robinson's career. Maybe even ends up in jail and, and that's, that's where he remains, right? Maybe he's more talking about getting out of prison rather than playing baseball again. So I'm just thankful that we're, we're in this place now. May is mental health awareness month.

I still believe and that's something that everybody should just take a moment to think about when it comes to yourself, your loved ones and everybody around you. But I'm just, I'm glad because in my time, I've seen so many young athletes that had the promise of Christian Robinson have their careers completely destroyed, not because their skills as an athlete diminished, but because something outside of the sport ruined their career. Yeah. And that's something that would just be terrible to see happen to this young man. Yeah, that's a great point. I really love how D-BACs fans have just like openly embraced Christian Robinson. And honestly, they're almost a little bit too excited. It's almost like, okay, this guy hasn't played a professional game for about four years.

So you should temper your expectations. And even back in 2019, he was an exciting prospect, but it was also a very high variance prospect. You didn't really, the ceiling was very high. The floor was also pretty low. But I love just on like a more personal level how D-BACs fans, you know, they know that there was this altercation with this cop and that's not a good thing. And it's something that Christian Robinson shouldn't have done. But there's also like this second chance that I think is being freely offered him by basically everyone.

And that's that's exactly the way it should be. The reason why I bring up the pandemic is because it affected a lot of us in a lot of different ways, right? And it's hard to like wrap your mind around how it impacted. None of us were fully in touch with our mental faculties. No, no. No, I spent a lot of time by my. myself in my house just freaking out of the fact that I had nobody to talk to you. Again, hopefully that story has a happy ending for Robinson. Yeah. Looking ahead, the Arizona Diamondbacks have no game

today, which again makes us sad because we don't know what to do with ourselves. I'm going to play Mario Kart. That's why I'm dressed up like this and they'll probably listen to Jack Black sing peaches a thousand times. But here is the upcoming probabilities for the series with the Pirates. again another winnable series starting pitching not that strong outside of keller but keller has had an incredible season so unfortunately that lines up with brandon fought i mean i really i really wish we could get a marquee matchup there of gallon versus keller because that would have been outstanding the battle of 2.3 eras but yeah brandon fought it's going to be once again interesting to see how that guy on his first day of school there in that picture uh comes out in his fourth start we want nothing but the he's so wholesome in that picture I can't stand it. Look at Merrill Kelly.

Merle Kelly looks like a guy I don't want to meet in the back alley, right? Brandon Fott looks like he's going to give me $20 without me even asking him. Zach Allen is, he looks pretty wholesale. Yeah, Zach Gallin. I don't know. He looks like a troublemaker too, but Brandon Fott, that kid's something else. But we're rooting for him and we hope to see him continue the performance that he had in his last start. That's really what we want to see here.

Like can't go out there and expect him to no hit the pirates or anything crazy like that. He's probably going to give up a couple runs and maybe go five in. But that would still be pretty encouraging compared to what we saw in his first two starts. Yeah. This kind of sets up similarly to the Marlins series, I think. I wanted to write it was fought against Lozardo, who was like by far the best pitcher for the Marlins in that series. And then Gallin and Kelly both had pretty favorable pitching matchups, as they often do.

There are some interesting pitchers in here. Contreras is an interesting one for the pirates. He's only 23 years old. So swing and miss stuff has not quite been there for. like the Pirates might have been hoping. He only has 32 strikeouts in 45 innings this year. But last year he was pretty good for them. He had a 379 ERA primarily as a starter for the Pirates.

So yeah, you know, you don't want to take this for granted, even though you got two of your best starting pitchers going in this series because we saw how that went against the Marlins, right? So hopefully the debacks can avoid repeating that. We have a very long wait until our Corbyn-Carroll bobblehead giveaway night at Chase Field. But in the meantime, you can grab up one of these little beautiful pieces of artwork at our friends atofofofofo.com. They're a leading manufacturer of sports and entertainment merchandise with a product line that includes apparel,

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Jesse's tried so hard to figure out what player this is. They just can't accept. He just can't accept. It's just a guy. It's just a guy. He's a left-handed hitter. I mean, that kind of narrows it down. He's going to start fucking pulling up all the Cactus League left-handed hitter.

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Yeah. Jesse pointed out, like, you think those analysts are just there to break down pitches and tendencies. They're there to figure out how to hack the pitchcom system 100%. But that's what we're going to do. You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at Cap underscore Caveman with a K.

This guy's at Jesse N. Friedman. Damon is at Damon dog with a DAWG and a little bark at the end. Our show is at PHNX underscore sports, or excuse, underscore Dbacks, but all roads lead to at PHNX underscore sports. on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We appreciate you guys. Stop and by on behalf of the entire crew here, we thank you for your time. And remember, kids, baseball is fun, but it is so much more fun when you kill a bird with a baseball.