PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Bring on the Dodgers

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

On this episode, Derek and Jesse are discussing the D-backs two-game sweep of the Kansas City Royals, how the offense has picked up the starting pitching, and what we expect to see from Mark Melancon by the end of the year. 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.

and welcome to another edition of the PHNX DBAX podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia. I am your mayor, PHNX, and I'm joined by my vice mayor, the one and only thunderstick Jesse Friedman. The diamond backs are an above 500 baseball team, Derek. I have no idea what is going on with this team, Jesse, but it has been incredibly fun to watch. And more than anything, games, like games. themselves, I don't know. The fact that this team seems to be able to win in so many different ways

and never really be out of these games has made this season already exponentially more fun to watch than it was last year. But we'll get to that as well, so much other stuff we have to talk about. Before we move on, I wanted to let everybody know this show is brought to you by the fine folks at the Draft King Sportsbook app. Go download the Draft King Sportsbook app now. use our code of PHNX and you will get $150 in free bets for making a $5 bet on any NBA team to win their game in the third round of the NBA playoffs. That is once again a $5 bet for new customers to bet on any team to win and you will get $150 in free bets if they do.

Before we move on and talk about sports and things that distract us from how terrible sometimes life can be. I wouldn't feel right without addressing the shooting in Texas that we all saw happen and how there are parents of at least 19 children from yesterday who will not have their children coming, children coming home to them. It's absolutely awful. And as, again, as a parent, I can't. It's my worst nightmare, not only for myself, but for any parent to have to experience.

I'm at a loss for words as far as what we need to do in this country in order to ensure things like this don't happen. But my heart goes out to every single person affected by this tragedy. And I just, again, Jesse, I can't imagine something like this happening. and I'm just heartbroken. It's really, yeah, I mean, obviously this is something that happens in the U.S. far, far too often. I think that's something that everyone can agree on. And yeah, you know, just seeing, you know, seeing some of the pictures of the kids come out, you know, just like the last family photo or whatever it was. It's just, it's really, really, it really hits home once you actually see, you know, what the,

kids actually look like you have their names you see what they look like and you know it just brings it to life that much more and and like you said yeah i mean those parents they didn't have those kids coming home to them um on on uh tuesday night and and yeah it's you know it's happened far far too often in the u.s and like you said it's hard to know um well maybe it's not hard i guess depending on who you talk to uh you know what can be done from here in order to avoid things like this but but it's it's clear It's hard to know if anything will be done. It's hard to know if this will be just another tragedy that we become numb to and move on from. Right.

I think that's the worst part is we do. We're so reactionary in this country to bad things happening, right? You know, we have a stoplight that a lot of accidents happen at, a lot of fatalities, and we change the lights. We change the way the lanes are in that intersection. We do something about it. This goes the same with anything in life where we come across something that is causing pain. It's causing deaths. It's causing, you know, all of this suffering to happen.

And it seems like we don't do anything about it when it comes to gun violence. I hate the fact that in today's day and age, we can't have open conversations about it without things like that becoming political because it really does, doesn't become. political for me. It simply becomes a thing of looking at what other countries in the world, countries that have been around longer than we have, have done with guns and weapons and the way it's improved things for them. And, you know, again, you're not going to, you're not going to completely be free of bad people doing bad things, unfortunately, right? But the way that that these mass shootings happen lately so, so often, so frequently. Yeah.

You know, is really the thing that is just unbelievable. And honestly, it's unacceptable. You know, we, we just, we need to do something about it. Yeah. I wish I could say I apologize for starting the podcast off on such a downer, but it's the reality of the situation. and unfortunately it's a discussion we need to have more often and not just move on. Sports is a way for us to distract ourselves from things like this.

I'm sure there's a lot of people that are upset about this that are probably going to turn to sports in order to just kind of use it as a way to forget. And I hope that even if we use it as a way to distract ourselves, we don't forget. We cannot forget about this type of thing. and we can't stop trying to make sure that it doesn't ever happen again. These are innocent people, man, doing, doing the things that people shouldn't have to be scared to do. Shopping in a supermarket, going to church, going school.

This is awful. I mean, there used to be, even for terrible people, somewhat of a code of conduct, you know, areas where you know, even if you were the worst kind of human being, you still wouldn't think of violating certain areas, you know, it's almost like as stupid as it sounds like the unwritten rules of baseball. We kind of had like, hey, you know, these, even if you're going to commit a terrible tragedy, let's kind of keep innocent people out of it. And that's, yeah, over the last 10 years, that's gone out of the window in this country. So let's just, let's try to do something about it to not not forget.

But moving on, we'll try our best to talk about our favorite baseball team. And that's what we can do now because they've been pretty good, Jesse. The Arizona Diamondbacks complete the two-game sweep of the Kansas City Royals. And they did it in a pretty und Diamondbacks-like fashion, I would say, this season. The one thing I've been very impressed about this team is, we, said in the past when they were struggling early in the season that all the components weren't working right, right? Like all the, all the gears weren't turning in the right direction at the right time for this team. Now, it seems like even if one gear isn't working well, some other

gears work better to overcompensate, right? We're seeing offense now picking this team up. We're seeing this team be able to generate offense in a way that they weren't able to early in the season. More importantly, the starting pitching hasn't been great as of late like it was earlier, and the offense has been able to overcome some deficits and bring this team back from being down after starting pitching wasn't solid. I mean, Zach Gallen entered this start, having allowed five earned runs all season in seven starts, I think it was. Correct. And then in his eighth start, he allowed six runs. So it's crazy how this

baseball is crazy. Baseball is crazy. And against the Kansas City Royals, no less, which is probably the lightest hitting team he's faced all years. So pretty odd how things worked out here. But yeah, the bullpen picked him up for the most part. I guess Joe Manciply gave up a two-run single that allowed his, the two guys he left on base to score. but I mean that was just a chopper up the middle there's not really a whole lot anyone can do about that so

so yeah the bullpen was really good in this one three and two thirds in these two hits one walk three strikeouts no runs no real drama which was which was good to see Ian Kennedy and Mark Malanson we haven't been able to say this much too many times this year but you know scoreless eighth and a scoreless ninth that was that was really good to see I thought Mark Malanson's stuff looked a little bit better in this game Yeah, he was hitting 93 and his cutter was moving. It was moving. Yeah, it was.

And I think his curveball placement is still, that might be one last thing that hasn't quite come back for him yet. It seems like he's leaving the curve ball up a little bit more than he wants to. He probably wants to. It's kind of like he can either throw it pretty square down the middle of the strike zone or he can bury it in the dirt. But he hasn't had a. whole lot of like the middle ground where it's like just below the bottom of the zone right um and the

pitch shape i'm the pitch shape isn't great when it comes to his curveball because when they're showing it on you know on replay like you said you can really see it not breaking as much as it should and it's not breaking out of the zone you know like if right if a if a player was sitting on his curveball that that last night would have been a dangerous pitch because it was right right landed pretty in the zone. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's spot on. But yeah, I mean, the, the offense just, just, I mean, there's just this never say die mentality where if the diamond backs are down by two runs, three runs, it doesn't really matter. I think, I think fans have this sense that like, they're, they're in the game. I mean, they're always in the game, it feels like. I mean, I guess if

you bury them by eight or ten runs early on, maybe, maybe that's enough to shut the door. but I mean, yeah, you know, a 6-3, 6-3 deficit, and then Jordan Looplo comes off the bench against Taylor Clark, former Diamondback, of course, who was on the mound for that moment. And yeah, Jordan Looplo did what he's done a lot this year. I mean, Jordan Looplo is hitting a buck 75 this year. He hasn't had that great of a season, but the man has had some dramatic home runs, some dramatic late game extra base hits. and that's just another one.

And then, you know, Dalton Varsho gets on base and Pavin Smith, it's a two-run shot. And suddenly the Diamondbacks, you know, turn a 6-3 deficit into an 8-6 lead. And Zach Allen's off the hook and the bullpen took care of the rest. The nice part about that was, and no offense to him as a person, because I liked him very much when he was here. But seeing Taylor Clark come in the game and kind of having that feeling that things could go to the Diamondbacks way because we are very familiar with Taylor Clark. And unfortunately for Clark, it went the way that things have gone for him in the past

when he was a member of the Diamondbacks. So it was nice to be on this side of that. And I agree with what you're saying. The bullpen was worked exactly like it should. I think the only, the probably only part of the bullpen that I was surprised about was they brought Joe Mantiply in to try to get Zach Gallen out relatively unscathed.

not unscathed, but get out of the inning that he was in. I think it was the sixth. And Joe Mantiply gave up a hit and a couple of runs that weren't charged to him still. But, you know, again, not a very Joe Mantiply like outing, but you can't expect these relievers to come out and get everybody out of every jam all the time without giving a run up. The beautiful part about it is that the Diamondbacks ended up, like you said, being able to overcome that deficit, still come back late. and win the game.

The Diamondbacks have been very impressive when it comes to home runs, by the way, Jesse. The Diamondbacks, 34 home runs since May 1st lead the National League. Wow. That's almost scary because it's like, okay, is that, you know, the Diamondbacks have been pretty good in that, in that stretch. Does that mean that this whole thing is not particularly sustainable if the Diamondbacks are leading the league in homers in order. We're always looking for that, right?

And it was what we were looking for with starting pitching. And unfortunately, starting pitching did come back to Earth like we kind of thought it might. We knew it wasn't going to stay at a point where Zat Gowan was going to have a 1.14 ERA all season long, right? Yeah. He came into this game, Zach Gowan, speaking of which, he was one of two pitchers in Major League Baseball this season with fewer than three hits allowed in five plus starts this season. Wow. So this game fell apart and that that's all over now. But the bigger point is that when even when Zach,

gallon wasn't sharp the diamond back's offense and the bullpen was able to pick them up and uh you know bring them to this point and it was it's just incredible to see because again i know that we've been very excited about this team's potential this year but now sitting at they are one game over 500 here at 45 games into the season jessie they're they're at 23 games they've almost already reached half of their win total from last season, right? When they get to 30, they'll be over halfway point. And honestly, they could have 30 by June 5th, you know, so I don't know what's going on with this team.

It's just fun to watch. And of course, we're writing about this team. We're covering this team all season long. We hope you guys enjoy it. And we hope you join us over at go phtnx.com. Jesse has an amazing article dropping today on our friend Joe Mansell. who we had on the show this week. Make sure to check that out as well as all of the other amazing writing from our

folks here at PHNX because they do some incredible things. If you haven't signed up for a membership already, you can sign up for an annual membership and you will get a free t-shirt from the PHNX Locker.com. You can't see the one I'm wearing right now, but it is glorious. And of course, it's my favorite shirt. So you can get it over at go-PHNX.com for that membership. And then you'll get your free t-shirt of your choosing at

phtmx locker.com. You can also get a month-to-month option, which will give you your first month for just 50 cents. No free t-shirt on that one, but you will get the option to have members-only discounts. All members get members-only discounts over at the phnx locker.com. All members get access to our members-only discord, as well as, again, the wonderful writing from our team at Go-PHNX. So if you haven't had a chance to do so, please check us up, check us out and sign up for a membership. if you're interested. We'd love to have you here as part of our family. Going back to the Diamondbacks and what they were able to do,

we talked about pouncing on some of these teams, and again, not to take anything away from Zach Granky and the Kansas City Royals, because it's very fun to play Zach Granky, of all people. Zach Granky was striking people out with a 70-mile-an-hour pitch the other day. It was wild. It was amazing. Zach Granky is the, I mean, now he really is the quintessential example of not having his stuff anymore, but still being effective as a pitcher, even though he wasn't great. He gave up a whole bunch of runs and the Diamondbacks sweep the series.

It was fun to see Zach Granky out there. It was. It was. Yeah. And I think a lot of fans enjoyed seeing Zach Granky pitched not particularly well in his return to Chase. field. The diamond backs were pretty much all over him from the pretty yeah, they were pretty much all over him from the beginning. I think he only lasted three and two thirds and his pitch count was was super, super high. So, uh, all in all, it wasn't a, wasn't a great outing for him. But, uh, there were a lot of former

diamondbacks in this series. I hadn't realized how many former diamond backs the royals have. We saw Branky, we saw Matt Peacock. We saw Yowell Pymps, who was a reliever for the diamondbacks a couple years ago. Taylor Clark. We even saw Gabe Spire pitch in the game yesterday, who for people who don't know, I know I'm bringing back, I might make people have nightmares by saying this, but the Diamondbacks acquired Gabe Spire along with Shelby Miller

back in 2015. And then they traded Gabe Spire back to the Royals, I guess not back, but they traded him to the Royals for John Jay in 2018. when the debacks were trying to push in their chips at that trade deadline. So, yeah, Spires moved around a lot despite being in, I'm not sure if this is rookie season or he certainly hasn't been in the big leagues for very long. But, yeah, a lot of former diamondbacks in the series.

And I don't know if any of them were really all that impressive at the end of the day. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if those were the roster moves you wanted to make, taking guys from a team like the debacks that had a very bad bullpen and adding them to your pen. Definitely not the rest of the be in my eyes. I mean, Spire wasn't a, he wasn't a major leaguer at the time, but I don't think he was particularly highly touted prospect at the time either, but you probably weren't going to get much if you're the Royals when you're trading a guy like John Jay. So it wasn't, you know, not a whole lot of value going either direction there.

Speaking of the bullpen, here's something a little fascinating. Ian Kennedy, Joe Mantiply, Noah Ramirez lead the National League with 20 games each. along with Scott E. Frost from the Chicago Cubs. I'm pretty sure I'm mispronouncing his name. I think it's Ephros. I want to say. Yeah, the Fros sounds more correct. But yeah, the Diamondbacks are now five and one in their last six games and nine and four in their last 12.

They had a little bit of history the other day. They tied a major league record when playing the Royals for the most combined first inning home runs in history, along with about, let's see, six other, five other games historically that have happened across Major League Baseball in history to have five home runs in the first inning. That's, yeah, that's, that's totally wild. Yeah. It's interesting that there's never been six combined home runs.

It is. It is. That didn't strike me as, you know, sometimes like an unusual thing will happen in a baseball game and then, you know, someone will do the research and, and expose how unusual that thing was. I didn't expect five, five homer inning to be that not unusual because, I mean, we see, we see multi-home run innings all the time in baseball. That's not, that's not that uncommon. And for, I mean, for, you basically just need both teams to have a big home run inning at once. And that just, I mean, that's not going to happen often, but we've been playing baseball for,

hundreds of years at this point. I mean, for that you have never happened. Back to July 3rd, 1967. It's a Cubs and a Braves game. One of the games dates back to 1977 between the Reds and the Cubs. The Reds and the Cubs have been involved in a lot of these games. 1994, Reds and Braves,

2016, Astros and Orioles. 2021, Braves, and Cubs. So it's like Braves, Cubs, and Reds have been involved in almost three out of the five games. It's crazy. It's still, yeah. Four of the six.

Four of the six. It's wild. And speaking of a lot of home runs, Christian Walker, his seven home runs in May are tied for his most in a month in his entire career. And when we talk about those weird stats, right, he had four home runs consecutively at Dodger Stadium. And again,

he was tied for the most in history. Nobody's ever hit five home runs consecutively at Dodger Stadium. So I found that to be kind of a similar statutes. as the one we were just talking about with the first inning home runs. It's just it doesn't seem like very much, especially considering some guys come in really hot on a series like that. But speaking of the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks start tomorrow another four-game series with them.

Can we please stop playing four-game series against the Dodgers? It's just a personal request of mine. But again, I don't know if we're going to hype it up as much. this time as we did the last one, Jesse, because I feel like that that was the test and they failed. Maybe they're retaking the test now with another four years. Yeah. Yeah.

But the results are still going to be inconclusive to me, regardless of the outcome of this series. The only thing the Diamondbacks really could do that would just shock me and make my eyeballs pop out of my head is sweep the Dodgers. I mean, really. any even if they split the series or win it at this point with the role they're on i'm not not only am i not getting overly excited about a series when you know i'm not i'm not still saying that they're ready to compete with the dodgers it would be great but if they could sweep the dodgers in four games at home and kind of get back some of that you know some of being swept a few weeks ago uh it would i think it would just be huge for this team i don't see it happening but it's the only thing left that could surprise me yeah Yeah, that's fair. I probably wouldn't be, you know,

preparing my reaction to a diamond back sweep just yet. It probably is not going to happen. But, but yeah, I mean, I think you want to win, you want to win one out of the four games. And as bleak as that is to say, as like a goal that really is kind of what you're expecting. I mean, the Dodgers are 29 and 13 this season. They've scored so much.

They've scored way more runs than, any team in baseball. They're on their own. I mean, they've scored 236 runs this year. The next highest team is the New Yorker Mets who have 219. And they're also a very good team that's producing a lot of runs as well. Yeah. And then on the flip side, the Dodgers have allowed 134 runs, which is way less than any team in baseball except for, I guess the Yankees are at 140. So that would be, that would be the closest next team. But, but I mean, they're the best, they score the most runs, Derek,

and they allow fewer runs than everyone else. I mean, it's, it's absurd what the Dodgers are doing. And to all the Dodgers fans who I have the unfortunate privilege of following on Twitter, they're always, they're always complaining about, you know, I don't think this Dodgers team has it.

They look like the Dodgers evolved. You know, they're not fundamentally sound and, It's hard. It's a bit of riches is really what it is, right? Even, even as a journalist, it's just, it's just embarrassing to see a, to see a, a fan base so unaware of what it is that they're watching. I mean, I know, you know, maybe they've had their, their issues defensively at times they've made their little mistakes. But, I mean, come on, when you're 29 and 13 and plus 102 after 42 games, plus 100 and two, they are plus

1002. Yeah, the next the next best run differential in baseball is plus 66. And after that, the runback's at for run differential. They're a minus 16. So they're still. They're almost there. It doesn't feel like they should be minus like that, right?

They've had some big blowout losses, though, I think. Yeah, they've had a few big blowout losses and almost all of their wins have been by one or two runs. One or two runs. Yeah, absolutely. That's crazy to me. It really is. At least they're 20, at least they're 23 and 22. And we'll take that. But you're right, Jesse, expectations change so quickly depending on your team, right? We've talked about the expectations just making your head spin with this team this season because we don't know this team's identity yet, right?

Like, honestly, it's not to say we've, we've talked about this team being fun to watch endlessly, right? Surprising, overachieving all of these words, we still have no idea what and who this team is, right? The starting pitching has been so all over the map. Bullpen has been getting better and more consistent, but it was easily an Achilles heel early on. And you just still don't know if you're going to get seven home runs in a game or nothing out of this offense, right? The one thing that Dodgers have going for them is that everything is working for them.

And if, you know, like Walker Bueller didn't have a great outing against the Diamondbacks, but the offense picked him up, and the Diamondbacks still end up losing against a guy that doesn't have his best stuff on a single day, right? That's the part about the Dodgers. But expectations change so rapidly, Jesse. I mean, I think about the Phoenix Suns and how quickly this team went from being, you know, a 19 win team to being the best team in the NBA. And now we as fans, we're not satisfied with them just winning games.

we're not satisfied with them being the number one team. And as far as their record goes at the end of the year, we wanted a championship. And anything less than a Phoenix Suns championship for us was a failure. And that's the point I think Dodgers fans are at where they've been the best team in baseball. They've had the best record. They've won the National League West. None of that matters to them because those victories are things that they've been able to get regularly and consistently. the thing they haven't been able to get is that World Series.

They have that one World Series title in this last 12 years span where they've been one of the best teams, if not the best team in baseball. And it's unsatisfying for them. And I get it because we said looking back on how good the Dodgers have been in that time frame, they should probably have three World Series. It feels like. I mean, the math doesn't even seem to check out on how many times they've lost, not to mention the One World Series that they have has that damn asterisk by it because of

it being, you know, a lot of people's mom. minds because of it being the season. At least in the minds of Diamondbacks fans, it's right. I don't know. I don't know. In the minds of a lot of people's fan, a lot of people mind Madison Bumgarder didn't throw a no hitter last year, Jesse, but I know he did.

Anyway, but the Diamondbacks definitely aren't, let's, let's do this. Let's all go out and get some OGs gummies and get ready for this series to start on Thursday because I think we're going to need them. Stop by your local dispensary, grab some amazing scratch made THC gummies from our friends at OGs and just put them in a safe spot, a safe drawer where no one else can get to them. You know where they're at.

And just in case, because this four-game series kicks off with Humberto Castiano's on the mound, not exactly the Diamondback's strongest foot going out there against the Dodgers, but we'll see what we can do. Go to your dispensary, though. Get yourself some OGs, gummies. They have them in a variety of dosages. You can get a 10 milligram dose. you can get a three milligram micro dose.

You know, remember, remember what Derek says. You can't untake it. So once you buy your ticket, you're taking the ride. Try to go slow, figure out your dosage, and then enjoy yourself some of, you know, maybe the best sleep that you've ever had in your life. They have a variety of wonderful flavors like blackberries and cream, watermelon, orange sycule, orange cream sickle, excuse me, as well as fruit punch and all sorts of wonderful varieties. I really like the Peña clotta, by the way.

They're delicious. They're perfect if you're in the mood for an uplifting setiva or a chill indica. If you're interested in trying the amazingly delicious variety of flavors that OG's brands has to offer, go to OGsbrands.com. That's OGEZ brands.com to find OGs near you. And I think we might be able to do some OG's performances to forget maybe this weekend after this series. But I am being way too negative right now when it comes to the Diamondbacks because they deserve better. The Diamondbacks have overachives going into yesterday's game, Jesse, the Diamond.

And the time and backs had achieved perfect balance. 44 games into the season, they were 22 and 22 and 11, 11, 11 on the road and 11, 11 at home. You love to see it. You love to see it. There you go. Yeah. I'm a math teacher. I love me a good palindrome, Derek.

Sure. It was a great day yesterday. But I will say this, right? Like, honestly, even as just kind of a joke, it is a great example of how balanced this team has been, right? And I say balanced because you got this tipping scale where it's like all the sudden the starting pitching starts to go down and then like there's some weight added over here to the offense that kind of evens the scales out and tips the right direction for the it really that's so true. The timing has been perfect. Like the offense woke up sort of just in time

for the, you know, to be able to overcome what's happened to the starting pitching, which is, you know, it's certainly taken a step back over the last few weeks, but the offense has responded. And, you know, scoring six, seven, eight runs, it feels like with regularity at this point. So I want to mention quickly, I think you talked about Peralta earlier and how he has eight home runs on the season now. He had seven all of last year. It's also the situation for Christian Walker, who had, I believe has 11 home runs this season compared to 10 all of last season. So we're talking about, I mean, it's May 25th, Derek, and two of the Diamondbacks, you know, main offensive pieces have already hit more home runs this year than they did last year. And let's talk about some of the other pieces, really, that the Diamondbacks have acquired from other teams really working out too.

You talk about those guys. I know he doesn't have the best batting average, but Jordan Looplo continues to just have really timely hits. I mean, he, that did is clutch. and he, I feel like as long as he is available and can come into this game, either as a pinch hitter or, you know, to start in the outfield, he gives this team a chance to win. He has some great hits. Cotell Marte, by the way, has really come back around too.

I mean, when you talk about consistency, what we wanted to see was Cotel hitting regularly. And Cotel has been excellent. Yesterday, he had his seventh straight game with a hit. get safely in seven straight games. Currently with, I know this is 435 clip, I think he's even higher than that

in those seven games. It's just wild. And Dalton Varsho also hit safely in eight straight games. So the consistency is just there. And Dalton Varsho, don't even get me started. That guy has all the tools, Jesse. He hit a home run. He hit his eighth home run last season and has easily been the Diamondback's

most consistent batter, you know, by far, besides Alan Thomas, which again, you fucking love to see it. It's the young guys doing it for this team. Dalton Varsho now has eight home runs on the season, 268 batting average and 827 OPS. Yeah, I mean, Varsho, he might wind up in the All-Star game somehow. Right. I mean, it'll be interesting to see, obviously, the position-wise, it's a little confusing with him because he's catching so much now. So I don't know, I don't know what that'll, that'll look like, probably getting a little

ahead of ourselves there. But, but, but yeah, I mean, eight homers, 21 RBIs. He's slugging 490. He's slugging almost 500, which is, which is impressive. I mean, for a guy who's, who's played as good of a center field as he has, his throw yesterday to nab. I think it was Whitmerfield. The diamond back's converted a strike him out, throw him out.

That was a huge moment in the game and an excellent throw. I mean, it was on the month. on the money from Dalton Vars show to get him at second base. Ketel Marte, by the way, hitting 252 now. So with two hits yesterday, just again, I mean, we're seeing, we're seeing these guys come back around offensively. We're seeing consistently throughout the lineup. And honestly, I think more than anything,

you talk about all the tools. I feel like the Diamondbacks have displayed that they have the ability to put this all together. I mean, they've had some solid performances out of the pen. They've whittled it down to the point where they know who they can rely on, despite the fact that fans don't want to see Mark Melanson out there in the save situations, but it was his tent save yesterday. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what people have said is accurate in the games that have been not, not saved situations, he's been a disaster. And in the games that have been safe situations, he's been pretty much steady the whole way.

So I still think. Guess what we saw? We saw Joe Mantiply in the ninth inning. We saw Joe Mantiply come in for this team in the ninth inning. I think it was against the Cubs. Regardless, though, it was a non-save situation. Toro Lavello has said in the past that the ninth inning belongs to Mark Malanson. And he even made it sound like it belongs to him regardless of the situation.

If they're trying, unless they're being blown out and there's not really much hope, it sounds like Mark Melanson is going to come in, even in a one-run deficit kind of situation and try to hold this game close, right? Well, maybe that's not the answer. And maybe Wabello's softened a bit on that stance. I've said in the past, I don't like the closer setup man situation

just because I think it ties the hands of the manager to not actually play it, you know, based on the situation, right? Based on maybe a righty-on-righty matchup or lefty-on-lefty match. You know, like one of those kind of matchups, like maybe playing it differently, maybe having a different guy out there who is just really dialed in in the moment, you're going to constantly go to the same two guys for those two innings, right?

Those are two veteran guys that are good to go to. But as we've seen, neither one of them have the best stuff, right? So the Diamondbacks, again, they're just, they're getting, getting what they needed to out of these guys. And it's working for right now. I know. Shit hasn't been great. And I know Mark Melanson hasn't been outstanding. But I think what we're going to see, Jesse, by the end of the season, is Mark

Malanson have a huge pile of saves. And we're going to look back on it similar to the Fernando Rodney year where you constantly felt, you constantly felt uncomfortable. There weren't many games where, you know, he'd go out there to save and you're like, this is a lock now. Rodney's out there. Right? It's the same thing with Melanson.

but I wouldn't be surprised to see Mark Malanson have 40 saves by the end of the season. Yeah, I mean, based on, based on the stuff that I saw him display yesterday, he really is starting to look more like himself. And Mark Malanson at this point, like his usual self is a very, very good closer. I mean, we've seen him be a good closer in this league for a number of years now. And so if he, you know, if he's able to start landing that curveball a little bit more often, where he wants to, if the depth on his cutter that we saw yesterday continues, he's going to settle down. I mean, it's only a matter of time just because of the track record that he has and the fact that we know his pitching arsenal is proven at this point. And when he has those two pitches

working, he is effective. So we need to see more, but I'm with you. I don't think it's out of the question that a Fernando Rodney-esque thing could happen here where Lanson settles down the rest of the way. and maybe eventually we forget about how he started the year. Diamondbacks have Huberto Castiano's going in game one against the Dodgers, Madison Bumgarner in game two, and Merrill Kelly in game three. No starters listed yet for the Dodgers at all in the Diamondbacks are still TBD on their starter for the final game in the series on Sunday. The Diamondbacks pitching rotation, Jesse, is all over the place.

That is one thing I've noticed. Like going back a few series, I mean, the double header against the Dodgers really seemed to be the start of the, not consistency, but having the starting rotation kind of lined up the way you would think. They've been all over the place. They've pulled Madison Bumgarner and pushed him out a couple of starts. They've moved guys around. They kind of keep slipping Tyler Gilbert in at times. Yeah, well, when they have to. and they may have to, again, it kind of depends on, on Zach Davies and, um, yeah, his injury.

Yeah, right. Um, by the way, I don't feel like we would be doing our job, Jesse. If we didn't at some point address the Zach Davies issue. So I'm just going to say there were a lot of awful things thrown Zach Davies way when he got hit in the shit. And if you're unfamiliar with the reason why, it's because Zach Davies had some, a very I guess a case of poor character potentially when it comes to his relationship with what will soon be his ex-wife and the way that they split up and what happened between them. It's a personal matter. I don't feel like it's something that a podcast like this should address.

But I also don't feel like even if you think somebody was an complete asshat in the way they handled their relationship with another human being. I don't know if applauding them getting injured is still move. Two wrongs don't make a right, right? But again, you know, character stuff is stuff athletes have to deal with, right? And when you do things in your personal life that become public, that scrutiny is real. It's part of the reason it's part of being a celebrity and being an athlete in the public eye. Yeah, it is. It is.

Yeah, it's definitely not something that we're going to dwell on here. But it, yeah, if you see those comments floating around Twitter, that that's, that's the reason why. So it's good to at least get that out there. To sum it up, essentially, it sounds like Zach Davies ended his relationship with his, with his wife via text message. And that's obviously not going to fly or be acceptable with a lot of people, right? So, but again, that's what happens. I mean, the diamondbacks in the past, honestly, have had some great guys on.

this team and uh but they've also suffered some character stuff at times so uh but yeah like you said that's uh not not so much as a character thing as much as it is a you took a 110 mile per hour fastball off the shin and i'm hoping that he's uh okay because that's that hurts a lot one time they put me in in little league jesse for some inexplicable reason at shortstop and within like three pitches i'd gotten hit in the shin just like that and i thought my life was over. So I know how badly that can hurt. And that was Little League. I'm sure it wasn't 110 miles an hour off the bat in Little League. But hey, we've talked about a lot of stuff good and bad today. We thank you guys for joining us and sticking around. We appreciate you always

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Eligibility restrictions apply. See draftkings.com slash sportsbook for details. Jesse, that's all I got. We appreciate you guys being here. Thank Jesse again for being here. You can get us on Twitter. I'm at cap underscore caveman with a K. Jesse is at Jesse and Friedman. Our show is at PHNX underscore DBEX, but of course all roads lead to at PHNX underscore sports. and that's on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you're listening to us right now in your favorite audio podcasting app, please subscribe to us if you haven't done so already and leave us a five-star review.

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