PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Christian Walker removed from game after being hit by pitch in Diamondbacks win over Giants

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Spring training games aren’t so fun when your starting first basemen gets hit by a pitch and has to leave the game. We have updates on Christian Walker’s injury, Ryne Nelson shoving without a scouting report, and the results of today’s spring training game. We are also tier ranking the fantasy value of D-backs players. Which Snakes are must-draft options?An ALLCITY Network ProductionSUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX Events: Get your tickets to Suns Takeovers, Coyotes & Suns Watch Parties at BetMGM, and MORE here: https://gophnx.com/events/Arizona Lottery: Visit http://www.AZAdventure.com for more information on how you can take an adventure with the Arizona Lottery and for a chance to win $1 million in cash and Arizona travel prizes! PrizePicks - Download the PrizePicks app today and use code PHNX for a first deposit match up to $100! Pick more. Pick less. It’s that Easy!NASCAR Weekend at Phoenix Raceway: March 8-10! Find more information at https://www.phoenixraceway.com/spring/ on the Shriners Children's 500, and be on the lookout for racing content from PHNX!Desert Financial Credit Union: Open a free checking account online with Desert Financial Credit Union and get $200 in bonuses https://www.desertfinancial.com/200Empire: Schedule a free in-home estimate with Empire Today! Receive a $350 OFF discount when you use the promo code PHNX. Restrictions apply. See https://empiretoday.com/phnx for details.Sign up for Gila River Resorts & Casinos $1,000,000 Big Red’s Showdown! Stay in the game and get rewards; it’s that easy! https://www.gilamilliondollarshowdown.com/Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Circle K:  Join Inner Circle for free by downloading the Circle K app today! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!OGeez!: OGeez! is not your average cannabis-infused gummy. Head over to https://www.ogeezbrands.com to find where you can purchase. Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Four Peaks: Follow on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Someburros: 20% off your order of up to $100 when you use code PHNX at checkout for the whole month of March at https://www.someburros.com/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.

and welcome in to another edition of the PHMX feedback podcast right here on PHMX. My name is Derek Montia. Of course, I'm your mayor of PHMX. This is my vice mayor. You're a thunder today, the one and only Jesse Friedman. And boy, did we have a scare out at Salt Riverfields today. Spring training games are supposed to be fun, Jesse. Christian Walker getting hit in the hand, not so fun.

I don't like that. It's not fun at all. It caused us to go into a whole spiral of what would we do next, what happens next? And things didn't look great when we went into the clubhouse to talk to Christian Walker about it, at least in the moment, just because they declined comment. And, you know, we didn't really hear anything prior to the end of the game about, you know, his status or how the imaging came back in regards to his hand. Yeah. So I guess we should say on the front end, not bury the lead here. Christian Walker, it appears, is fine.

He has a right-hand contusion. That's what the Diamondbacks are calling it. X-rays were negative. It seems like they dodged a bullet here. Everything is okay. But yes, when we were at Chase Field, there were many reasons to believe that this was not trending in a positive direction for the Diamondbacks. After the game, you know, usually Tori Lavello comes up to the podium and speaks within about, I don't know, maybe five, ten minutes after the spring training games end. You guys just kind of want to get out of there.

And he did not come within five or ten minutes today. He did not come within 15 or 20 minutes today. We were all just waiting at the podium and eventually the Diamondbacks told us that Tori's, would not be made available after the game. And Jeff Bannister came out and spoke instead. And he said that he did not have an update on Christian Walker. And, you know, I don't want to read. I would never want to read too much into a situation like that.

It's not like those things don't happen from time to time and mean nothing. But you can kind of put two and two together. Like Christian Walker is a really important player for the Diamondbacks. You know, if, if God forbid some sort of significant injury had popped up, that would feel like the kind of thing that could cause Tor. Lavello to, you know, need to have some meetings or whatnot after the game and kind of be figuring things out. Right.

But yes, fortunately for the Diamondbacks, it looks like everything is going to be okay here. Well, and chances are that imaging and such was going on during that time period, like you said, that we were discussing or that we were waiting. And then Bannister came out. There was no updates from Banny at all on Christian Walker. But we are hearing now that the x-rays were negative. It is a contusion. And that is all very, very good for the Arizona Diamondbacks, because.

as Christian Walker, as you know, is such a huge part of this team. And the Diamondbacks have depth, you know, around the infield. But, I mean, there isn't really someone that can step into the role and play first base nearly as well as the Diamondbacks gold glove first baseman and Walker. Yeah, we were all asking the press box. Like, can Jack Peterson play first base? He played like a few innings there last year. Probably Payvon, right? Yeah, I think Pavan Smith would be the kind of.

Pavin Smith would be the kind of by the book answer for sure. I don't think Tristan English is really, I don't think they'd be ready for it. Yeah, probably probably not Tristan English. I don't think I've been Melendez either. Yeah, it most likely would have been Pavin Smith coming in and getting a decent chunk of playing time alongside maybe Emmanuel Rivera, kind of splitting time at third base and first base. That would sort of open the door for him to make the team, maybe make that a little bit more likely than it was before. But yeah, it doesn't seem like we really. really have to have this conversation.

Christian Walker, who is an enormous part of this Diamondbacks team, is it looks like going to be okay. And I remember this last year, too. This is a spring training thing. Remember last year, Gabby Moreno got hit by a pitch. I think there were maybe multiple occasions of that. Carson Kelly. Carson Kelly, of course, that one did not end quite as well.

That's not what I want to talk about. Yeah, that wound up being a forearm fracture. That was a bigger deal. But yeah, there was a similar instance with Gabby Moreno last year where he took 9. or something in on the hands. And you just, you never want to see that, especially in these games that don't matter. And, you know, guys are only playing like every other day

and for a few innings. So you feel like you should be able to avoid these kind of things, but they just seem to always pop up this time of year. It's the reason why, like, obviously, just like the pitchers, players, position players, they have to ramp up, right? They have to go from, you know, again, that's why we were talking about them doing the most basic fundamental drills in camp to the point of them playing in these games,

even though they're not playing for very long in most scenarios, right? And the reason why is, like Tori said, he doesn't really need to see these guys, and they don't really need a lot of playing time as far as, you know, securing their position or anything like that. He wants to see the younger guys. He wants to see the guys battling for the position. You know, we had Ryan Nelson starting today who absolutely shoved

until any time Jung-Hul-Lee was at the plate. But that's a whole other thing we'll get into here shortly. I think, though, that when it really comes down to it, the Diamondbacks do have, you know, like there's some instances where, like, they have some weaknesses and it can be exposed really quickly when it comes to, you know, an injury occurring like this to one of the guys where we don't have a lot of depth at that position. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the things we've applauded about this Diamondbacks team is that they do have depth.

I think in a lot of different places, they are in better position to, withstand injuries than they've been in a very long time. But there are still certain guys that you just can't, you just cannot replace. And Christian Walker is certainly one of them. They don't have anyone who plays first base, you know, defensively or offensively, who can bring what Christian Walker does. And, you know, there are certainly other guys on that list as well, right? When Gabby Moreno went down with injury last year, he's another guy who's really,

really hard for this team to replace. And, you know, no matter how good your depth is, I don't think any major league team is built to withstand the full gamut. of like, you know, any single player that goes down with injury. We've got it. We've got someone ready to step up who's almost as valuable. That's just not realistic. And, you know, the debacks do have their areas where they're a little more vulnerable.

And first base is certainly one of them. Well, and my point I was getting around to there, especially during spring training, is it does feel when an injury like this happens. Like, why is Christian Walker out there? Why are these guys? Yeah, yeah. And we just start the regular season already. This is dumb.

Let's get on to it. This is ridiculous. But Major League Base, Baseball requires that the Diamondbacks have a certain number of representatives start each spring training game, right? So it's not even like it's an option for Tori Lavallo. Not to say he would even do that, but it's not even an option. Major League Baseball requires you to put those guys out there during spring. So, you know, it's just like anything.

Like you could get injured, not even playing the sport. You could get injured at home in some way. It just, it does make spring training games feel a little unnecessary, especially when they're, you know, the, the, the, Chris Walker isn't playing for anything other than just trying to get himself ready for the regular season, right? Meanwhile, Ryan Nelson, like I said earlier, is absolutely playing for something. And he continues to make the front office's decision very difficult, Tori Lavallo's decision, very difficult when it comes to that fifth spot in the starting rotation because he has been very, very good. And he continued to be very, very good today against the Giants. He really did. Yeah, Ryan Nelson, man, just pitching the heck out of throwing the crud out of the baseball.

as Tori Lavello said about Corbyn the other day. Yeah, I mean, he got 10 whiffs in this game, nine of those on a four-seem fastball that was especially electric in this game. That's kind of always been Ryan Nelson's best pitch, but it was really, really good today. Yeah, 10 whiffs total in this game, as I said, five strikeouts, getting a lot of swing and miss,

continuing to show that he's a different, at least looks like a different pitcher so far in spring training, a guy who's more capable of getting swing and miss, and he has been in the past. And that's a really, really big thing for him. Like, that's more than anything else what Ryan Nelson needs to do. Also thought it was interesting.

He threw only a handful of change-ups and curveballs today, but both of those pitches appear to be significantly higher from a Velo standpoint than they were last year. His curve ball today averaged around 80 miles an hour. Last year was in the mid-70s. His change-up also up a couple of ticks velocity-wise. And that kind of seems to be. trend. It seems like just about every

Diamondbacks pitcher is trying to make their out pitches look more like their fastballs. And a lot of times doing that is to actually add VLO to those secondary pitches. We're also seeing that with Slade Sikoni and him trying to add some VLO to a slider. I guess we'll see him

tomorrow in good year. But yeah, another really good outing for Ryan Nelson. The grandson of the wind, aka Young Hulie, is going to be a problem in the NL. West, Jesse. Because I was talking to some of the Giants reporters and they say they have already feel like what they're seeing out of this guy is the real deal. What we saw out of him today very much appeared to be the real deal. And if things

don't change, he is going to be on the Giants for a long time to come. He's just going to be one of those guys. So it's like the Dodgers, you know, for years to come. We're just, we're just going to have to come to hate some of these very excellent baseball players that play for our rivals in the NL West. Yeah, I mean, he signed a six-year contract. Yeah, I know. He's going to be, he's going to with the Giants for a while for sure. And that was not necessarily a very popular move. I mean, a lot of people looked at that dollar figure and were like you gave him twice as much

as like the industry experts were expecting. Interesting. But yeah, I mean, it's still spring training. We'll have to see it in the regular season. But he certainly looked apart today. A couple of really, really hard hit balls against Ryan Nelson. One of them went over the fence.

And Ryan Nelson didn't, I mean, you don't really go into spring training with, like, scouting reports on guys. You're not really trying to, like, pitch to their weaknesses and whatnot as much as you would in the regular season. Screw your scouting reports. We go on field in spring. Yeah, right.

But yeah, Ryan Nelson had loads of success against everyone in the Giants lineup except for a jungle league. Literally. Literally. Yeah, both hits and the run were because of it. One run, one run, two hits, and they were both because of Lee.

Here's what Ryan Nelson had to say about facing him. I didn't have the scouting report. What did you know about him? Nothing. I know now he's pretty good hitter. were you able to make any other takeaways from two matches against you know i think uh i'll definitely try not to throw him a two one fastball down the middle uh but yeah i mean stuff like that he's like good hitter against a pretty lazy fastball it's probably going to happen i mean what he said there

is not i love that i love that answer like it's not right but uh producer here Faj tonight. We got Faj on the ones and twos. I don't like his verbiage. I don't like his verbiage either. We agree on this. I don't like. You don't like Ryan Nelson saying that? I don't like him saying that. And I mean, maybe it's honesty, right? Maybe this is the problem. Like with Anthony Rendon in his comments. Maybe we just can't accept honesty sometimes.

But it very much feels like a guy who's in competition shouldn't openly be admitting that he threw a lazy fastball. But, I mean, when he's so good, the rest of the day, I guess it doesn't really matter. And then you are saying, like, that's the reason why? You know, got it. Like, I mean, when he says lazy fastball, though, he's not saying like he didn't try hard when he threw it. Yeah, it's not like he grouped one at like 82 down the middle or something. It was a two-one count and he threw a fastball. He's saying it was a bad pitch.

He's saying that it was a bad pitch. Talk me off the ledge, Jesse Friedman. He's just, yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't think this is complicated. He's saying, I mean, he was asked, what are your takeaways from facing Junghuli? And his takeaway was like, yeah, if I throw him a fastball right down the middle, he's probably going to do something with it. and you know these giant supporters are in there you know just trying to get any like little junghuli nugget that they could possibly get and ryan nelson was like no i'm not going to give you that i'm going to tell you that i threw the worst pitch of my life and jung hulie simply took advantage of it

and before that he did say that junk hulies a good hitter you know he still gave him his props but yeah i agree with ryanelson it was a pretty terrible pitch and it is a pitch that he probably wouldn't want to throw to anyone godhog mama agrees with derrick and i yeah lazy fastball's not a good visual. That was maybe a poor choice of words, but I think we all understand what he means by that. It's fine. Keep keep cap for him, Jesse. It's all right. No. I mean, it's just, it's because obviously it feels, and this was the point we were kind of getting to earlier, it feels like Ryan Nelson and Tommy Henry are so close right now. And obviously, Tommy Henry, based on the results, has a little bit of an edge, but not much. You know, it doesn't feel like enough. It's not like Ryan Nelson has been bad enough to say like Tommy Henry has some sort of

big advantage here. It's just, you know, again, these guys are making it difficult on the front office because they both have been very, very good for this team this spring so far. Yeah, I mean, I continue what I said yesterday. And then I think Tommy Henry is going to kind of have to, like if he continues to, if he continues to pitch well, I think the spot is probably his. The spot is his to lose is kind of the way that I'm viewing it. You know, if we look at their stats so far through two spring training outings, if you have that, Jacob. They're, I mean, both have been absolutely phenomenal, right?

I mean, Ryan Nelson, five innings, one hit, four combined hits and walks, 10 strikeouts versus Tommy Henry, five innings, no runs, two combined hits and walks with four strikeouts. You know, there's more swing and miss with Ryan Nelson. He's allowed one more run. But, yeah, I mean, the point is Tommy Henry's been really good. And as long as Tommy Henry is really good, I think the spot is. is probably his. Seth Harper in the chat says Nelson has the scouting report on Lee now.

Yes, he does. Yes, and he has learned not to throw fastballs right down the middle. That's what he's learned so far. That's the main takeaway that he took away from that experience. Christian Walker, not the only Diamondback player that is injured currently. A. U.N. Oswarez was scratched from today's lineup. Tori Lavello said he had left side tightness in his day-to-day. No imaging was required or anything like that.

Just kind of some body soreness, it sounds like. Yeah, weren't you saying you had some left side tightness the other day to you? That's what happens, man. One day you wake up and there's that left side tightness and sometimes it just doesn't ever go away. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean, Tori said that they hadn't done any imaging, at least not as of his pregame interview. And it didn't really sound like they were planning to do imaging. He's just day to day at this point.

So, yeah, we'll continue to monitor the situation. certainly his health is important for this team. But it doesn't sound like anything big right now. All of this just reminds me of how for any team, and this isn't something specific to the Diamondbacks. I mean, maybe the Dodgers are just deep enough. They don't have to worry about this shit. But it does feel like any team is just a few injuries away from it

completely changing their dynamic. It depends on who those injuries are to and how major of a piece they are for the team. But, you know, in just having these two guys, the corners of the infield, you know, potentially missing some time or just thinking about them missing some time during the regular season really leaves you in a position wondering where does Tori Lavallo turn to fill in those gaps, fill in those holes. Like you said, that's where guys, some of that depth that might even become minor league depth will be critical for this team because they need some of those guys that helped them last year during the regular season.

like, you know, Emmanuel Rivera, they'll need them. They'll need them at some point. It's inevitable because, you know, it's hard to keep a team healthy throughout the entire season. Jack Peterson missed some time because him and his wife had a child. They had a child. So congratulations to our boy, Jock. Welcome the newest member of the Arizona Diamondbacks family.

There you go. There you go. And him and Gabby can bond over being new dads. I saw him commenting on Gabby. Gabby had like some pictures just looking extra swaggalicious on Instagram. And then the first comment right there is jock, just talking about, talking about Gabby looking swaggy. Okay. I pitched this this morning.

Let's hear how feasible it is. How do we get Lourdes and Gabby in here to have their own podcast? Oh, like without us, like non-Spanish speaking. It would be absolutely. absolutely electric. Do you think they'd be on board? Yeah. I don't know how we can arrange that.

I don't, I don't know how we can arrange that. I feel like we would need a facilitator of some kind, right? Can we get Alex in here too? Yeah, I'm going to have to, I'm not to interpret. I'm not to start doing duolingo. Yeah, you just those two.

Oh, okay. I don't want you guys on show. No, I know. No, we're just saying to like facilitate, like to make this happen. There's at least one person. You're going to tell me that those two guys are going to sit in a room and need a facilitator?

No. No, no. Yeah, that's probably Can we add Corbyn to that dynamic, though? Does Corbyn speak fluent? No, and that's what's hilarious. That's what would make it really interesting to watch. I don't know, chat.

Would you, would you? Do we watch that show? Like, I am all on board. I am 100% on board with watching a reality show about this Arizona Diamondbacks team in anyway, by the way. I don't care if it's in here. I don't care if it's one that follows them around. I need more footage of this team

because it feels like there's all sorts of funny and weird things. Jock Peterson is going to be an absolute delight this year, at least for me. I like just seeing him in his pink hoodie on his hoverboard. The sub-boy of the hoverboard. I was like, oh, yeah. I love this guy. I'm all for it. But yeah, another show that we could start is Jesse Friedman.

Predicting the future? Predicting the future, St. I don't know. Because this man over here, he doesn't stop working. and sometimes that involves him going back in time and telling himself something like this. This is a tweet from Jesse from May 25th, 2019,

at which he exclaimed, I swear it's going to be 2025 and Pablo Sandoval will still be batting cleanup for the San Francisco Giants. Well, guess what happened today? I was wrong. I was technically wrong. Yeah, a year early.

It's only 2024, which still doesn't close the book on this. He still up to see what happens next year. Could be back. But yeah, Pablo Sandoval hit fifth for the Giants today. And did not look. I was not an especially compelling. He's lost a ton of weight, man.

He looks fantastic. Yes, he looks to be in better shape now than he was back in the day. But I think I would take 2012 Pablo Sandoval at the plate over what I saw today. Seth Harper says, need a devax hard docks. He also said, I hope Jock had a girl and named her Pearl. It was a boy. I don't know the name, but it was a boy. Groundhog Mama says it's his fourth baby.

Wow. Yeah. Got a whole family. Got a whole family over there. Imagine that. I can't because I just had one child to watch while I was on the cruise and that alone was enough for me to have panic attacks at time.

I will say though that Jesse does know the future and he refuses to give me the lottery numbers which that doesn't seem very fair. We thank you guys, of course, for being here in the PHANXports YouTube channel. If you have not subscribed to the channel yet, do so now. Sign up for notifications. That way you don't miss whenever our show goes live.

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There's one up by me at I-17 and Jomax. You can also check the one out in Goodyear where Jesse is spending a lot of time lately. Two trips to Goodyear in three days is two trips too many. Can we get Jesse on the team bus at least? I mean, I feel like that's the only fair. He lives right across the street from Salt River Fields. But of course, let some Burroughs K to your next meal, bigger, small. Order online or find one near you by visiting some boroughs.com.

Also, I stopped by Circle K on my way over here. It was a quick, easy fill-up on a very chaotic, very, a lot of traffic out there. But I still was able to stop in, get some snacks, feel up before the show, get some gas in my car, so I don't have to stop on the way home. And that's because Circle Ks are everywhere in the valley. No matter where you are, there's a Circle K near you. And right now, if you join their Inner Circle program for free by downloading the CircleK app today, you can save 25 cents off per gallon on your first five Phillips and save three cents off per gallon every day after that.

And again, it does stack with their other discounts and rewards like their easy pay option. So make sure save as much as you can on this gas because it's expensive out there, folks. Terms and conditions apply at participating locations. Visit CircleK.com for details. Jesse, you know what time it is. It's not Tuesday, but I wasn't here on Tuesday. And usually on Tuesday, we tier rank on Tuesday. It's tier rank.

As in, I think we did that on one Tuesday like several weeks ago. But it is Thursday, and that does start with a T. And so that qualifies us to do a little tier ranking today. And we are going to tier rank one of my least favorite things in the whole wide world, which is anything about fantasy baseball. Why don't you like fantasy baseball? I do not like fantasy baseball. I've said that on this show multiple times. It's probably not a great thing for a host of a baseball podcast to admit.

It is because, Jesse, I have other things in life that I like to do. I have other interests. I have, you know, I like pro wrestling. I like the Phoenix Suns. I like spending time with my daughter. And you know what I don't have time for? Fantasy baseball. Because if I play fantasy baseball, I don't have time for all that other stuff.

You know, my entire life becomes all about fantasy baseball. And that is because I am a psychopath when it comes to playing fantasy sports. I won our fantasy football league. And that is because I am relentless when it comes to how – you guys have no idea how much I look over the numbers for this show. That pales in comparison to the amount of times I checked the free agent waiver wire during the fantasy football season. So to say I obsess would be an understatement. And that's why it lands me into a lot of trouble with my wife. But we did decide that we should at least give you as much information as we could for you if you enjoy fantasy baseball.

I know this one over here likes it very much. On which Diamondbacks players are worth your time on a fantasy baseball team. So we're going to tier rank them. We got our tier maker here. Jacob's got us all set up. We got all of our Diamondbacks players. Look at those little soldiers all ready to go out there and fight in our little fantasy war. I can't wait for it.

But yeah, we have all the Diamondbacks players. At least the guys we know people are going to be interested in fantasy-wise. Sure. So we decided that we would take a look at where we think they land on our tier maker scale here, going from S to D. Jesse, we got Zach Gallen up there at the top. Sure. Obviously, we're just going to start off with an S tier, right? You're going S?

My first thought. Did you hear the questioning in his, I cannot wait to hear the words that come out of your mouth right now. Derek. Please. Where did Zach Gallen finish in Siong? Young voting. Please, Jacob, I want to hear what he has to say. Jesse, go ahead.

Say the yeah-but that you were about to say. I just, my first thought was I would put Zach Gallen in the eight tier because he is, he is certainly one of the top starting pitchers available. ESPN, I'm looking at their rankings for points leaks. They have Zach Gallen ranked 23rd, and that is a reasonably high ranking. However, I do think that there are some questions about how Zach Gallen will look coming off of throwing, you know, nearly 250 innings and starting like 40 games

between the regular season and the playoffs. I've seen some fantasy baseball discourse already about people maybe staying away or, you know, maybe taking them a little bit, a little bit lower than maybe the otherwise would have. The Diamondbacks do have a clear S to your player on their roster. And that's Corbyn Carroll. And we might as well

just put him up there right now. Yeah, I mean, there's no, you're not going to get a debate out of me on that one either. I think Corby Carroll is clearly S. Zach Gallant for me, I would maybe put it A for the reasons. described but if you want to keep him at us I won't I won't gripe too much that's that's a hard one for me because I think here what we're talking about if you're talking about fantasy players is obviously production and we know that Zach Gallin was very durable has been very durable he's one of those pictures that you almost you know know at least prior to last year you always knew what you were

going to get out of him and I don't say like last year was a bad year for Zach Gallen I just say like yeah from a fantasy perspective you didn't know at one point if you could count on him or even start him for sure for an away game, right? Like, and that's those splits were enough to keep you to say, maybe I don't want to start

Zach Gallen tonight. So maybe Jesse's right. Maybe we busts that gallon down to the A tier to be as realistic as we get. Look, we're not trying to, look, we're not, we're not trying to pat him on the back here. We're not, we're hurting feelings tonight and we're trying to get people's fantasy baseball

teams to where they need to be. You know what's even crazier. What? That I could almost put Merrill in nest here. Oh, yeah, like he's right there too. For consistency sake. Yeah. I mean, Merrill Kelly has been incredibly consistent. At times, he was a better pitcher for this team than Zach Allen even was.

It's just, uh, I mean, I don't want to say he has injury concerns, but the injuries that keep him at times or take him out of games or things that are like, it's weird. It's not like an injury. It's cramping and he's going to continue most likely to have

cramping issues if he's had them already, right? And like the blood clots thing or something that could come back. And there is some concern there. I feel like in order for it to be an S-tier player, it's a superstar that you feel fairly confident is going to be playing every time that their number is called, right? And I mean, Corby and Carroll is obviously going to have his off days, but you're just, if Corbyn Carroll is playing, you're starting him.

There's no doubt in my mind. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I saw a list the other day that Corbyn Carroll ranked, I think, is the third best fantasy player in all of baseball. I think it was Ronald Acuna. Forgetting you the other guy. They might have had Garrett Cole ahead of him or something. But yeah, like Corby and Carroll's fantasy potential is insane because, I mean, 25 homers,

54 stolen bases last year. Yeah, that's crazy. You know, batting average matters in certain leagues for doing like a category is kind of a thing. Batting average, you can count on home runs. RBI certainly runs scored is a big thing for Corbyn Carroll. So there's really nothing that Corbyn Carroll can't give you. He is one of the best fantasy players

that you could possibly have. Are you guys categories guys or points guys? I generally do points, but I will acknowledge that which one you are will definitely have an impact on how you would rank these guys for sure. For sure. Merrill, though, I think I'm putting him in A.

You're putting him at A? All right. I'm okay with that. Now, Eduardo, that's the one that I don't know. I mean, we've seen Eduardo already be incredible this spring, and we've also seen him struggle inexplicably. Yeah, that first Cactus League out didn't exactly inspire confidence, but it also didn't really matter.

Right. But if you are a person that is drafting fantasy guys, where are you taking? What round are you taking an Eduardo Rodriguez in? How long are you letting him sit available, and when would you feel is an appropriate time to snatch him up? I feel like that dictates this tier ranking quite a bit. Yeah, so I'm looking at ESPN's list.

They have Eduardo Rodriguez ranked as the 164th best fantasy player, which is not high. There are many Diamondbacks players ahead of Eduardo Rodriguez on this list. I think a lot of it has to do with his underlying stats from last year in Detroit. We're not particularly strong. I think there are, as we've discussed, a 330ERA, I think is bullish moving forward. And there's also durability concerns there where he's around 150 innings last year the year before. I know he stepped away from the team for a while. That was a big factor.

He's around 100 innings the year before. So yeah, I think knowing the innings you can't necessarily count on too much and you might be looking at more like a 4ERA than a low 3ERA. So yeah, I mean, I think based on this ESPN rating, like I think C is maybe like where they would probably put him. But I'll let you decide, Derek. If you want to put him in the B category, I won't complain. I think C is fair because of the unknown factor. We don't know what he is going to be for the Arizona Diamond Bags. I feel like he could be a sneaky acquisition for somebody potentially in a fantasy baseball league

because he probably is going to drop down pretty low. You probably are going to get him in a later round. But he could have essentially give you the same value as a guy in the first like five rounds potentially. I mean, I know that's probably bullish to say that like you would say, but I think that there's the unknown factor of him being on a competitive team that he feels differently about, working with Brent Strom. What we've already seen out of him has been pretty good. So, I mean, I feel like we just, we don't know enough yet that I wouldn't be confident, you know, taking him any higher than like a C ranking. While Brandon fought, that's another guy that, I mean, we definitely have not seen a big enough. sample size out of to feel confident about him being anywhere close to like an a pitcher i might put

brandon fought right there at c as well yeah i think that's probably reasonable and again like we're you know if we put edwarda rodriguez at c we're not saying inviardro Rodriguez like a bad player or whatever like fantasy baseball generally i mean you know if you have like a 10 team league with a 25 man roster like you're generally dealing with like the best 250 players or something like that So you're really looking at kind of the top half of the league here. So just to make that clear. Brandon Fought on ESPN's list is number 300. They have a top 300 list.

And Brandon Fought is literally the very last one that made their list. So yeah, I think that it's a little bit intriguing because if you're in a bigger league where you would care to have someone like Brandon Fought, there's certainly some potential there to get a whole lot more than, you know, the draft position that you're taking a match. Sure. So yeah, I think C is reasonable. Maybe right there with, with Eduardo Rodriguez. And, you know, it's not going to cost you much to draft him. And you might, you know, if Brandon Fogg comes out and has a 3-8 ERA for 180 innings or whatever,

then that would be a pretty, pretty darn good selection. Did you put him ahead or behind? Like, do you think he's here? Behind them. Yeah, I'd put. Oh, we're like doing order anything. This is the way, excuse me doing it. I don't mind it because there's, there's.

There's some depth to it. Yeah, I know. I'm putting Erod above Brandon Fott because of the track record. I feel like ERAD's proven. Brandon Fott had a really, really incredible two, three-month run. But I feel like we need to see more out of him before we're declaring him to be a guy that a fantasy baseball player would want to, you know, draft early enough and have on their team. And like Jesse was saying, like, that's why we don't have the entire roster here. We just kind of handpicked the guys we thought would be.

considered by fantasy players and we threw them up here. We don't have any bullpen guys really up here except Paul Seawald and Kevin Ginkle. Now, Jesse, where do you rank? How valuable are saves? Because I'm ready to say something crazy.

And that is that I feel like there is a chance that Paul Seawald could lead the National League in saves in 2024. I don't think that's an outrageous. I could see a world where that happens. The Diamondbacks are not really the type of team you'd expect to be blowing teams out necessarily.

Correct. They figure to play a lot of close games. They certainly did down the stretch and in the playoffs. And Paul Seawald was very good in those situations. How valuable is that in fantasy baseball? Yeah. The safe step. Again, it's going to depend on the league.

But in points leagues, like Paul Seawald in the leagues that I played in would totally be someone I'd want on my team. ESPN for their points league ranking, they have him in 118th. So they have him as being more valuable than Eduardo Rodriguez. So I think a B ranking for Paul Ceewell probably makes sense. He's not like that elite tier of closers. You know, he's not a Josh Hater. He's not one of those guys who's going to strike out like 14 guys per nine innings or whatever.

But he's valuable for sure. And you also have the fact that a lot of people in your league might forget about him. Like Paul Seawalt is just kind of one of those guys that he's like he's well respected around the league. But he's kind of not really like a household name. Yeah. Even though he's a very, very good closer and deserves to essentially be a household name. So, yeah, let's start them up there at B. I think that's very fair.

And let's talk about Kevin Ginkle and why Kevin Ginkle's value wouldn't be very high because he's a reliever. Yeah, and this is where fantasy baseball is just going to be valuing players very differently than we would in real life. Kevin Ginkle is arguably the most valuable. He's an pitcher. He's a diamond back side.

He's a five-star man. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, from a fantasy perspective, effective, he's someone who probably wouldn't be highly sought after exactly. They have a top 75 list of just relievers, and he's 64th on their relievers list. That's good to see him there. But he also has the relievers. They don't get a lot of points in fantasy.

So typically you're not going to have any reliever that doesn't have the potential of being a closer or currently is a closer. Now, that's probably where Ginkles value could be is if in some way you, you know, maybe like he gets saves. That's when he becomes. If he gets saved, if for some reason Paul Seawald gets injured or is not available as their closer anymore, Paul Seawald could be tremendously value. But I'm sorry, Kevin Eagle could be tremendously value.

But right now where where he's at, he would probably be a deer, de tier, deer tier, on this list. Yeah, I think that's fair. And so would any reliever. Like there's no reliever really that's going to really move the needle here outside of Paul Seawald. Yeah, it almost doesn't match. matter in most fantasy baseball formats. It almost doesn't matter how good of a reliever you are.

If you're not getting saves, you're just like not really worth taking with how the, how the system works. But yeah, if an opportunity. You could get holds, but holds still wouldn't be worth that many points. In a very niche league, like there are some leagues out there that probably do count holds.

And yeah, Kevin Ginkle could be valuable in that scenario. But yeah, for most leagues, he's someone you'd keep an eye on if, you know, if Seawald were to get hurt or struggle or whatnot, he's certainly someone to keep an eye on. but not someone you're probably looking to draft on day one.

Gabby. This is going to, I'm going to put him an S to you. I'm already angry. I'm already angry about wherever we put him because wherever we put him isn't high enough. No, I mean,

obviously Gabby has a lot still to work on. Gabby is not Corby and Carol. Gabby is not a guy that is going to be, you know, an elite level fantasy player. But, I mean, as far as filling your catching position,

I don't feel like there's a lot of better catchers out there than Gabby Moreno. I mean, I'm definitely putting him in the top 10 as far as catchers go. And I think his production offensively could increase in 2024. I still think we're going to see more power out of him this year. And I mean, that's only because I watched this man fell off a ball and then hit the very next one for a home run. And I can't be told. I will not be told that this man will not have an amazing year with power numbers in 2024.

So I'm looking at catchers on this ESPN top 300 list. They have Rushman as the most valuable catcher. Then they have Will Smith. He's ranked 48th overall. And then they have William Contreras at 72nd. Contreras. Yes, thank you. Wilson Contreras.

They have Kiber Ruiz as the fourth best catcher, 93 overall. That's a little interesting to me. J.T. Romuto is fifth. He's 109th overall. And then it is Gabby Moreno. He's six the most valuable. He's at 122nd overall, really right around Paul C-Wald. I think B is kind of what makes the most sense to me.

Yeah, I know you were going to say B. All right, put him in a B. There is potential for like a really good value play where I don't think Morano probably will get drafted outside the top 100 in pretty much all formats. But there is a world in which Gabby Moreno comes out and hits, you know, 20 homers or something. Yeah. He really carries on what he did in the second half last year. and then you're looking at, you know, maybe him being right up there with Adley Ruchman is the most valuable catcher.

Like I could at least envision a scenario like that. But yeah, he's not, he hasn't quite arrived to that point yet. So I think B is probably fair for right now. Could tell Marte, can we just put him in A? I think we can put him in A. Let's just put him in A. Yeah. I don't think we need to discuss any more than that.

The man has been incredible. Set a major league record in the postseason. And I almost feel like at times that it's like, you know, it's the competitive nature of the rest of the team. Like, Catell's output kind of matches what the team is doing at times. And, like, it's not to say he hasn't had some incredible seasons when the team wasn't doing very well. But, you know, like, I don't know.

I mean, Cattel now at this point in his career, I just felt like you saw him turn it up to another level when the Diamondbacks got to the postseason. And again, kind of like with Brandon fought, I mean, Cattel's a longer track record. I do feel like, like, like what we saw wasn't just like. you know, kind of a fluke period of time. Like we've seen Catelle hit 320. We've seen Cotel be an incredible baseball player. So I think that what we saw in the postseason was just him really turning it on.

And I think that with the way this team is constructed in 24, we could see that all season long. Yeah, Dave Catell is the 45th most valuable player in all of baseball, which is pretty high. I think, I think A is totally fair here. They have him higher than Merrill Kelly, I think, by a pretty decent margin. And he's hitting the cover off the ball right now on spring training. Yeah, yeah. He's hitting 600 in spring training and it like feels sustainable, which I know that's an outrageous thing to say.

But it's like, yeah, no, he probably will hit 600 for all this pre-training. He looks locked in right now for sure. We'll have to see how it translates to the regular season, of course. But the track record is there. When he's healthy, he's really freaking good. And especially at second base. Like there aren't that many second basemen that hit the way that Catel Marte does. He's a valuable guy to target for sure.

These next four guys baffle me because I have no idea fantasy-wise where I want to put them or how much trust I want to put in them, right? You have A. Huanyos-Wares who played 162 regular baseball season games last year. And that doesn't make any sense to me that any player would play all 162 baseball games for their team in a season. And the projections don't look good. Like the forecast for him, you know, zips and things do not love swore. in in 2024 and I'm sure that the factors there are his age and just in general kind of a decline and such but I don't know I think that for the most part when you talk about a guy that is going to play a lot as long as he can stay healthy Suarez is going to play probably 140 games over there at third base

and he is going to hit probably close to 30 home runs so I feel like there's a lot of value there potentially for him he's going to strike out a lot I mean we've even seen that already in spring training, but I do feel like there's value there. And I just don't know what to trust. Do I trust like a gut feeling that he's going to continue the way that he's played for the last five years? Or, I mean, are these forecasts right that he's going to kind of kind of take a downturn in 2024? Yeah, I mean, this is where I think the format of the league matters a lot. Like, if you're in a league where strikeouts count against you, you probably don't want AEOHia Suarez on your team. But if you're in a league that's like categories based, then AEO Eni Oswar is, you know, I mean,

Last year, he was up over 20 homers. He had nearly 100 RBI. You know, the batting average isn't going to be great. But there's still value in having a guy who can give you, you know, 25 homers and 100 RBI or something like that over the course of a season. So it definitely depends on the league. I would maybe put him in the C range. I think he could go as high as B or it could be what Fangraphs think he's going to be

in more of like a D-tier player. Yeah. But he's the kind of player where even if he has like a fairly bad season by his standards. He still could have at least a little bit of fantasy value in a categories league, because as we saw it last year, he still hit over 20 homers and had almost 100 RBI. Yeah, that's a great point. All right. So we have, who do we have there left? We have Christian Walker, Lourdes and Jock Peterson. Who would you like to start with here? I think Walker's probably B for me. Yeah. Defensively, one of the best first baseman in baseball. And that's not going to

be factored in a fantasy environment. It's not. It's not. It's not. But he's still a player that is very much worth that. So outs above average or defensive run saved or anything like that, none of that stuff happens. I mean, maybe like if there is a league out there like that, I want to be part of it. It's the same one. Every possible category.

It's the same one with holds. I mean, like, ESPN is usually what I use. I haven't seen them like, I don't think they even have DRS or OA or any of that stuff thrown in there. But yeah, ESPN has Walker 73rd on its, on its ranking list, which is pretty good.

Like you could maybe make a case for having him in the 8 tier. He's a 30 home run 100 RBI guy on this team. And he's going to have to be in order for this team to be good. But I mean, with those guys hitting in front of him and all of those opportunities for him to drive and runs, I think he's going to be an offensive threat all season long as long as his hand is fine. Right, which it looks like it will be. So there you go.

Thank you. Thank you for guys. I still feel great about this. All right. We got Jock and we got Lourdes. Let's be mean. I'm sure we're going to be mean to one of these guys. Jock, I have no idea, again.

Like, Jock and Lourdes are both kind of like mysteries to me. I know what we got out of Lourdes last year. Can he repeat that? If he can repeat that, then is he a C-level player as far as fast as he goes? Yeah, I mean, like, if you had Lourdes in, like, the first two months last year, and then you dropped him, like that's awesome. Like, it's basically like you had Bryce Harper for two months or something. Just do it when I have purple hair, basically.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Based your fantasy decisions off of Derek's hair for sure. I would probably put Lordis in the C range. You could make a case for him in the B range. I think it's probably between those two. He's at 151st on the player rater over DSPN. I think Jock probably would be in the D category for me

just because he's a platoon player and it's kind of hard to roster platoon players in fantasy baseball because they're just not playing every day. It would depend on the format. There are some leagues where you would, you know, maybe want jock on your team, but kind of the most standard league, not a great fit. Lurness's career numbers tells me he's a B. Say this again?

His career numbers tell me he's a B. Yeah, because the career number says he's close to a 300 hitter and like... There's a consistency factor there. I think that, I think I might buy that argument because he's someone who... He was under, he was very much under his career averages last year. Did you just argue, Jesse, Friedman into giving you just caught him to bump up his grading. You know what?

You're right. I'm not. Don't budge. Don't you dare budge. There's something to be said in fantasy baseball for just kind of knowing what you're getting out of a guy. Even if it's not like that great necessarily. No, but that's it.

Right. Like it's not the support. Like when your when your fantasy player goes out there and scores you the exact number of points that they projected he was going to score. Yeah. It's a win. Right. That's why you put him in the lineup.

Your hope is he. scores more, but that's a win. I feel Lourdes is one of those guys that would consistently deliver on the projected fantasy points. And that's hard to find sometimes because sometimes that's what screws you is the

unknown. So put him in B. put him in B. He's going in D. you did it, Jacob. Yes. All right. Jock can go in D. Jock can go in D. Well, and I think playing time is the consistency thing there for him. Like, it's not to say Jock might not be valuable at times for you, but you're just not going to be able

to play him all the time. He's the kind of guy that gives me nightmares in fantasy baseball because he's the kind of guy that I have to look out for and actually change my lineup. Otherwise, I can just set my lineup for like a week and be good and like everything's cool. If it's a week that locks like on a weekly basis, you probably don't want Jack Peterson because as we kind of project things out now, he might start three games and sit two or whatever. The other factor with him is that he might lose his outfield eligibility if the Diamondbacks don't actually play them in the outfield.

And it's tough to roster guys who are D.H only. They can only fit in that utility spot usually. That's right. So that's another limiting factor. They need to change that about fantasy baseball now. D.H is the rule. D.H is the thing. There should be a D.H. period.

Forget that. Or teams could just give some consideration to all the fantasy baseball players in the universe and just like play players like out of position every now and then. Just so that they become so that those players become eligible. just do us all a favor. Do us a solid, man. Do us a solid. Like we need Jock Peterson at shortstop.

Like not for the whole season. Just like a handful of games. Yeah, two games. Two games. Enough for him to be considered a utility infielder. As a disclaimer. It did not include Jerry Pee because I couldn't listen to Jesse tell me that he's a D-level player. Alex.

Yeah. Yeah. Perdomo and Thomas are just guys that, you know, we can talk up all we want about how they could have great seasons. And Perdomo was an all star and all that. But, you know, people are just. not going to be selecting those guys in at least the majority of formats. My thing about this is like to rank the pitchers up there, to rank Cattel and to rank Corbin up there, that all makes sense.

But this team, their identity is not that there are great fantasy players on this team. It's that this team as a whole is a great team and that, yeah, you don't know sometimes which guy is going to be the hero on any given night and they're all capable of doing it. But when it comes to fantasy, it's about those guys that you know are going to play close to 150 plus games and they're going to be able to deliver, you know, two hits and some RBI almost every single night. Outside of Cattel, outside of Corbyn, the Diamondbacks just aren't that, right? Like, and I mean, it would be great if they were, but I don't feel like that means they're not going to be a successful team. I just feel like their success is based around that, that team

effort and the fact that they have so many different guys that can do it at any point, you know? Yeah, yeah. I had someone the other day who was, uh, well, we talked about. talked the other day on this show when you were out when Patrick was here about what it would take for the Diamondbacks to win 100 games and people were getting angry because I didn't I didn't factor. Well they didn't

they weren't happy because I didn't factor in that the Diamondbacks are connected and dangerous team in my analysis and someone was not happy about that. Let me let me ask you this. Did you did you factor in the variable of team friendship?

Yeah, the variable of friendship. Yeah, I left that out of mine. It's the power of friendship. It's powerful. We were playing around with exponential times three. Wins above replacement numbers, which have no feelings and are completely out of touch with reality. Yeah, those robot numbers. Well, if you want to get more, get in on more of this fun of picking players and getting in on the fantasy aspect of things, you can with our friends of prize picks. Price Picks is really simple to play. You can make your picks and submit your entry in less than 60 seconds. All you have to do is go to prizepicks.com slash PHNX and use code PHNX for a first deposit match up to $100. That's Pricepics.com slash PHNX and use code PHNX.

Pick more, pick less. It's that easy. All you have to do, they'll give you a number of stats. You pick whether these players are going to get more than or less than. And again, it's like this. What is my guy going to do on any given night? Sometimes hard to predict. But when you go in there, you know your Corbyn Carroll's.

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investment options and so much more. Join a credit union that is committed to giving back to the community and to their members. When you open a free checking account right now online, you can get $200 and bonuses. Get started by visiting desertfinancial.com slash 200. Jesse has a wonderful piece over on go-PhNX.com for all of you diehards out there. It is a die-hard exclusive. If you have not got your die-hard membership yet, now would be a great time to do so. That way you don't miss out on this wonderful content.

You also get that free t-shirt from the PHNX Locker.com So much more, including access to our Discord lounge, discounts with our partners, discounts on our events. So go out, get yourself a diehard membership, become part of our family. And that way you can make sure to get all of Jesse's articles, including this one that we helped him out on. We did the writing on this. This isn't really my article. Yeah, he comes around doing all the, we're doing the heavy lifting, and he gets to put his name on it. But we did discuss as a family here at PHNX what improvements we would like.

like to see at Chase Field, as well, some other things, right? Yeah, yeah. I asked five different questions in this story surrounding Chase Field. And, yeah, most of them about, like, what kind of renovations, what kind of changes, would you like to see what kind of development around the ballpark, those kinds of things. And it was, yeah, it was really interesting seeing what all of you guys had to say. I got you on it. I wrangled Espo Max, Bo Brock from P.

The Avengers. Cardinals. Avengers. He has some of his own opinions in here. So yeah, it was fun to just kind of put our brains together. And I made sure when I did this, I shared documents with each of you separately. I didn't want your answers influencing anyone else's answers. So we all thought for ourselves here too.

But like one of the first questions you asked will give you a little sample of this. But we're interested to hear what you guys have to say. So make sure you drop in in the chat your. your responses and what are your thoughts on things you would like to see different in Chase Field like what bothers you what what improvements if the Diamondbacks do get this blank check essentially from Maricopa County and then they throw their own money in on it and can essentially make whatever improvements they they find to be necessary what would you add in ground groundhog mama has the correct answer and that is Panda Express right number

one Panda Express slash Dutch Bros where I could stand in line and get both of those things at the same time let's go but we did talk about like what would you want to cover like our feelings on on chase field what improved what did you want to talk about that sure let's let's go to let's go to what improvements renovations or new features would you would you like to see your answer you mentioned that you like the LED lights and the new sound system you're apparently I'm reading here that you're really big on those things yes and you also pointed out that you want more standing areas and bars similar to what we have at the footprint center. I really like this where I read what you have to say rather than you just saying.

And I'm just sitting here listening. What did I say? What did I write? Yes, I think that definitely. I mean, that just completely changed the footprint center. And I mean, it makes it so that, you know, like when you're at a sporting event, you're usually there with your friends, right? And you don't always get a chance to sit together.

The one beautiful part about all of those areas is, and I just. I see it not just with my friends, but with lots of people. Like, it's an area to congregate. It's an area for you to get together, have a drink, talk for a little while. Baseball games are long. There's plenty of time for you to go and socialize with people. And I think that Steve Kirby damned. I don't care what he has to say about Footprint Center being a club.

I would love a little bit more of a nightclub atmosphere at Chase Field. I would love it to have a little bit more life to it. Even if that involves people enjoying themselves and not necessarily watching the game, but just having a place for them to go and hang out and, you know, like not just stand in line at a concession stand to get a drink, a place where you actually feel like you're at a bar hanging out and chatting. I also want the out-of-town scoreboards back. And I think that there's a really classy way they could do that

where they put up like LED screens, make them look like the old scoreboards, but then have the versatility to, like, have them change when a home run gets hit and stuff like that. Like there's things about that. I know a lot of people brought up the clock, right? They want the clock back. There were a couple of minutes.

Give us a big digital face clock, but have it be like this stupid watch on my wrist where it could change and do shit and like whatever, right? But have it have a clock face on it too because that's part of our short. It has to be a digital clock, not analog because I can't read the analog kind. No, Jesse, no, no, that's not the way this works. We're not doing. It's an analog clock face. What else? What did the other guys have to say?

I need more natural light. I agree with Jesse. Oh, yeah. You just need because you need to feel like you're in a baseball. ball game and it is so hard to do that here because when it's dark during the worst months. I think the problem is just dark. I think the problem is that if you do more natural light on the side where the sun is typically facing the building during that time of day during five o'clock like setting, it's a, it's a nightmare

when it comes in and it hits us in the press box through those windows up there. Like you don't want bigger windows coming. We don't have more sun coming in from that way. As much as you want more light, you don't want it coming in from that way. So as long as maybe it's a different direction, you know, like, because again, they could put it on the east side of the building. And I think that that would allow more light in without having to worry about that sun setting and blasting people in the face. But there are probably some things that we want that they've thought out and there's a reason why they don't do it. You know, obviously air conditioning is a big reason why we don't just have a giant open air park.

You know what I mean? Like that's, yeah. I don't know. One other nugget I will give away for free here. There's a lot of stuff that was said about what kind of changes people would like to see and whatnot. But one of the questions that I asked was, how do you feel about the Diamondbacks not removing seats from the building? That's something that Derek Hall said a couple of weeks ago when I asked, you know, kind of what's part of your plan for a reimagined Chase Field? That's what they're calling it.

And, yeah, Chasefield Reimagined. And Derek Hall specifically said that removing seats is not part of that plan. I asked all of you guys how you felt about that. and in unison, all of us felt that that is a mistake, and the Diamondbacks do need to remove seats from this building. I looked up some of the numbers, and I mean, I myself, I never actually taken the time to look this up. The Diamondbacks, according to, it's an article over at BetMGM, actually,

they have the fifth highest capacity. Their ballpark, Chase Field holds 48,519 people or something like that. Is Yankee Stadium one? I think Yankee Stadium was one. I can pull up the list. here if you want um but for i mean the diamondbacks have not been in the top half of attendance rankings since 2008 my god yankee stadium is not it is oakland coliseum at number one with 56 000 seats in that gigantic useless building yeah i mean i think they i don't think they're like actively

servicing that many seats oh yeah no they are definitely not there's no need to yeah i mean you certainly you fit a lot of people in that building for sure but yeah i just i just think like it's common sense. The diamondbacks do not attract as many fans as would be needed to warrant this size of the building. And that's something Beau brought up when he discussed that building, that that building is two different buildings when it is full versus when it is empty, when it is a quarter full and closed and it's the middle of the summer. It's not a place people want to be. But when you're talking about like April baseball and on opening day and the roof is open and the planes are doing the flyover and there's not an empty seat in the house, that's not an empty seat in the house.

that's like the most electric atmosphere to being in the world, you know? Yeah. And I, Derek Hall brought it up, you know, like the seat, the capacity isn't an issue when they are sold out for the Elton John concert. Right. Of course. It's not. It's not.

It's not. The reality is that it's not sold out ever, right? I mean, I mean. Unless it's a concert or something. I went through. I went through last year. The Diamondbacks had above 45,000 once. And predictably, it was their home opener.

talking in the regular season, obviously in the playoffs, certainly sold out games. For sure. And they were above 40,000, I think five times total. And a lot of those, there's July 4th. There were, you know, I think Father's Day was in there. You know, the kind of marquee giveaway items and whatnot, those will attract more.

But if you're not consistently, like, at least above 40,000, you know, if that's only happening like a couple of times a year, do you, you know, do you really need 48,000? I just think it's not worthwhile because you're making the, You're making the building feel empty in the vast majority of situations. And that's kind of what I keep coming back to. Let's see. Elise says better AC should be priority number one.

I'm already worried about how hot home games are going to be in July and August. It's a great point. I know that they, and that's that AC issue, that's part of the ongoing stadium negotiation with the county because, again, Maricopa County should be the one that's responsible for something like the AC and the plumbing and the electrical. Yet they like a bad landlord want to be like, what? You just come over and bang on it a little bit and it kicks on. It's fine, right? Like they don't actually want to do anything to address some of these problems because until it's actually broken and you literally cannot, you know, plumbing is literally not operational.

Electricity is literally not operational. It doesn't seem like they want to do anything about some of these issues. And air conditioning, Derek Hall did bring up that they were going to add basically like a whole other unit because they do share an air conditioning facility with other buildings, which that's a whole other problem that we could get into. But, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff like that. I think that, you know, again, the building is not unsalvageable. And I think that it's a beautiful place to be.

It's a beautiful location. And there's lots of stuff they can do. They're just limited. It's just limited. And, I mean, again, I know they don't want to reduce the number of seats, but like Elise said, it doesn't feel like congregating areas are very possible without reducing seats or maybe lose. losing out on some eateries, right?

Like you're going to lose some concession stands, something of that sort. Something has to give in order for there to be other areas. Now, I don't feel like what the footprint center did really devalue that building. I don't think it made it like, yeah, you lost some seats, but you make up for it and experiences that people that want to pay premium for sweets and such will make up for. And that's something the Diamondbacks also want to do more is just some sort of sweet options

that are different, maybe some field level suite, something like that of the sort. Like there's just a lot that they want to do and it all depends on how much their budget finally ends up being. I still think these are all just negotiation tactics to try to get as much money as possible to do as much as they can,

but I don't think the diamondbacks are going anywhere. Chase Field reimagined is going to happen. It's going to happen. It's going to happen until 2042. Well, like Derek called said, right? Like they've been already doing improvements on that building for seven straight years. It's like they're not trying to do things.

And again, it's kind of like the roof, right? The roof probably should be something that the county takes care of, right? That's not a cosmetic issue. I mean, at this point, the whole memorandum between them and the county from a few years ago kind of changed how things work a little bit. So we don't have to get down the weeds there too much. But I'm just saying. Yeah, I don't know if you can put that fully on that fully.

No, I'm not. But like, that's one of those things that, again, it's broken, but they've learned how to live with it. Like Eric Hall said, we have a good grasp on the roof. But that is something, again, that people, like, that building will never be back to 100% until that roof can be opened in the middle of a game. And we can hear that wonderful roof opening music play. I still think Corby and Carroll should adopt it at his walk-up song.

That's a whole other thing. Well, of course, you can make some improvements around your home and you don't have to wait from Maricopa County to approve it. Just go to our friends at Empire today. They'll get you set up with all the flooring needs that you have. Whether it's carpet, whether it's hardwood floors, they'll take care of you. They also keep shopping for floors simple with a curated product selection and an easy shop from home philosophy where they will let you pick out everything that you're looking for in your flooring simply from the comfort of your home. Their virtual floor designer is a great way to see how those new floors will look in any space.

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So again, visit AZadventure.com for more information on how you can take an adventure with the Arizona Lottery and for a chance to win $1 million in cash in Arizona travel prizes. Well, we will be back here tomorrow at our normal time, you guys. So if you are not here tonight, what does that mean? What does normal even mean anymore? We don't know. This is our new normal being here late. But we'll be back at 1 p.m. tomorrow to talk about any updates we might have.

We also want to talk about maybe a little MLB realignment and what that might look like should the Major League Baseball expand to 32 teams. In the meantime, you can make sure to keep it locked to us on Twitter. I'm at K-Man with K. This maniac next to me is at Jesse N. Friedman, of course. Father Overlord Jacob. He is at Jacob-Franklin 4 because he is the fourth best Jacob Franklin in known existence. We got to kill those other three. You know, we got to get him up there to number one.

That's the only way we've got to take him up. I've been fourth for the last two and a half years, man. What do I got to do? I mean, Jacob moving up the list on his own is not. That's out of the question. Yeah, we have to take this into our own hands. We have to kill off the three above it. Obviously.

What do they do? Highlander rules. There can be only one. I don't know, but they probably do maybe better thumbnail cards than you. I don't know how it's possible. Your thumbnails are great. Yeah, that is tough to do. But of course, our show is at PHNX underscore Dbacks, but all roads do lead to at PHNX underscore

sports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We appreciate your time. We thank you guys so much for stopping by. We will see you tomorrow at one. and in the meantime, have yourself a wonderful evening. We appreciate you. Remember kids, baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun

when you don't play fantasy baseball.