PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Corbin Carroll hurt, Brandon Pfaadt falters in return as Diamondbacks lose series to Rays

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

There wasn’t much that went right for the Arizona Diamondbacks in their series finales loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. Brandon Pfaadt was not good in his return to the majors, Corbin Carroll left the game with shoulder soreness, and the D-backs have lost four of their last six games.SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX Events: Get your tickets to D-backs Takeovers, Knockout Nights & Suns Watch Parties at BetMGM, and MORE here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/phnx-56002330273 Go to https://saturdayneon.com and use code PHNX for 10% off your order today. Free shipping for orders over $200!Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Manscaped: Save 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code “PHNX” at Manscaped.com. BetMGM: Download the BetMGM app and sign-up using bonus code PHNX (betmgm.com/phnx). Place a pre-game, moneyline wager in the amount of at least $10 on any market at standard odds price. You will receive $200 in Bonus Bets instantly regardless of the outcome of your wager! Just make sure you use bonus code PHNX when you sign up!Swing for the Fences: https://promo.betmgm.com/en/promo/sports/swing-for-the-fences 3-Ball Challenge: https://promo.betmgm.com/en/promo/3ballchallengeGambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (CO, DC, IL, IN, LA, MD, MS, NJ, OH, PA, TN, VA, WV, WY). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-327-5050 (MA)21+ to wager. Please Gamble Responsibly. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (KS, NV), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help (MI). Visit BetMGM.com for Terms & Conditions. US promotional offers not available in DC, Nevada, New York or Ontario.Pins & Aces: Check out https://pinsandaces.com and use code PHNX to receive 15% off your first order and get free shipping.Circle K: Text PHNX to 31310 to join the Circle K SMS subscriber club and get BOGO 32 oz Polar Pops! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!OGeez!: Learn more about OGeez! at https://ogeezbrands.com//. Must be 21 years or older to purchase.Four Peaks: Follow them on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. When you shop through links in the description, we may earn affiliate commissions. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome in doing another sad edition of PHNX T-Backs podcast. What a disaster that game was. My name is Derek Montia, formerly known as your mayor of PHNX. This is your Thunderstick. It's Jesse Friedman, and neither one of us are very happy, just like you all today. But the sky is not falling. The Arizona Diamondbacks are not reverting back to the 20th. 2021 team do not fret.

There was just a bad day that was compounded by a lot of factors, including two young players that the Diamondbacks kind of are hanging a bit of their futures on. But of course, the Diamondbacks lost today in kind of terrible fashion. This game was not even close. Brandon fought, made his return to the major leagues, and it was not a good return. It was not, no. And right out of the gate, I thought his stuff looked really good. Probably the best that we've seen Brandon Fott's stuff look is Velo was up a little bit.

He averaged around 95 with the four seamer in the first inning. He got five whiffs. He got whiffs on three different pitches in that inning. He left a sweeper right down the middle to Luke Rayleigh, which did turn into a solo home run. But outside of that, I thought that he looked pretty good in the first inning from a stuff standpoint, just a matter of avoiding the heart of the plate. And the second inning came back out and, you know, pretty effective, gave up a base runner, but struck out two in that inning.

And then he came back out for the third and things just absolutely unraveled on Brandon Fott. He gave up seven consecutive base runners to start the inning. Five runs were scored. It was first and second, nobody out. And Toroilello at that point decided to pull the plug. And the story here for me, Derek, once again, as we've discussed in the past,

is that Brandon Fott is really struggling with command. He has control. He's not walking everyone, although he did have a couple walks in this game today, but he's just not commanding the baseball where it needs to go. You can get away with some stuff in AAA that you're just not going to get away with here in the big leagues. Yeah, that third inning, everything unraveled for Brandon Fought. And the unfortunate part about it is like Jesse said, he did have some good stuff going on early.

But that seventh inning, first seven batters reached for raise, double, walk, triple, hit by pitch, another single, another walk, another single. The wildest part about today's game is I'm sure the rays took their foot off the pedal a little bit, but the bullpen was just somehow excellent considering how much ground they had to cover. But Tori just, I felt like waited a bit long in this case to go get Brandon fought. I don't know what the thought process was. I understand it from one perspective where once he starts to get himself in trouble, especially considering the fact that we know he can throw and be competitive at, you know, be competitive when we've seen him with the Reno Aces, you kind of want to just hope that you get

him over that hump, right? You want to hope that whatever the mental block is, whatever here is scaring him, like just, you know, just get dinged up a little bit, right? Just let those runs score kind of get over it, get yourself locked back in and give your team a chance to win. Fought did not do that today. And the Diamondbacks, as we talked about yesterday, they didn't give him a soft landing. I mean, it's really tough for a guy who made five big league starts earlier in the season and really struggled. You bring him back up and you're giving him the Tampa Bay raise, right? The Diamondbacks could have gone to Tommy Henry in this game if they wanted to. We know they decided not to go that direction because the raise have been really, really good against lefties.

So from a matchup standpoint, that made sense. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's tough. Faud has not really had, I guess he faced the pirates once. They're a bit of a lighter hitting team. But a lot of his starts this year have come against really strong offenses, right? He made his big league debut against the Rangers and then he got the Tampa Bay Rays in this game. So it was a tough position to put him in. Again, I thought this stuff looked pretty good at times. It was just a matter of location. And we have some screenshots that I want to look at to kind of help illustrate this. We'll look at the sweeper first. So these are all of the sweepers that Brandon fought through in this game. This is from the perspective of the

catcher. And you'll notice a couple of things here. Number one, the only pitches below the strike zone that you see here were completely uncompetitive, right? There's two in the lower right-hand corner. Those pitches are way too far away from the strike zone for a hitter to actually think about swinging. But below the strike zone is kind of where the sweepers should end up landing, just not this far outside, right? Yeah, exactly. That's where it probably should be, but not that far down. he had zero sweepers that were in that kind of gray area, that shadow zone where a hitter would actually be likely to swing. And you also see there's a few of them here that are middle middle.

Some of those turned into big hits. One of those is the home run to Luke Rayleigh. I believe there was at least one other hit out of those pitches that you see in the middle. And there were a couple there on the corner. But yeah, the real takeaway here is just that he just wasn't able to drive the sweeper down in the strike zone. We've flipped to the change up. It's kind of a similar story.

Brandon fought not as many changeups. It's not as big of a pitch for him. But it is really important facing left-handed hitters. And you can see here, it's kind of the same story. He's not driving the change-up down below the strike zone. There's a few that I think are good in the lower left-hand corner of the zone. Those are good pitches. But there's two that are way off the outside corner to a lefty that you see here.

Those pitches are just completely uncompetitive. You see one on the outside. corner that's more in the middle part of the zone that pitch is left way too far up in the zone so if you just kind of take a look more closely at especially these secondary pitches you can see that brandon fought just wasn't able to get these pitches where he needed to what about his fastball how was his fastball working his fastball we do have that one too uh he likes to throw his fastball up which you can obviously see here there's only one pitch that's really in the bottom half of the zone so he was able to accomplish that um there are some there were some pretty good ones and in a lot of the wiffs he

was getting early in this game were high four seamers that were very well placed. But you can also see there's some here that catch a little bit too much of the strike zone. And Brandon Fott is the type of guy where, although I think his stuff is good, it's not Spencer Strider stuff, right? It's not ace caliber stuff. He needs to be able to put his pitches where he wants to and he's just making way too many mistakes right now. He also featured a new sinker in this game.

Yes. Why? Why in this game? I don't know what the impetus for this was. I didn't notice this until right before first pitch. But in his last two starts, Brandon fought down in Reno was throwing a sinker, which I believe is a pitch that he messed around with years ago. I'm not aware if he's really used the pitch professionally at all.

He hadn't used it at all at least once he got to the AAA level and beyond. We haven't seen him throw any sinkers up until these past two starts in Reno. And I actually think it's kind of a good idea. fought has a decent four seam fastball. You know, you did see him get some swing and misses in this game, but I'm not sure it's going to play at this level quite like it does in AAA. And, you know, he's got kind of a kind of a side sort of arm slot a little bit. And I think the, you know, the idea of a sinker makes sense for him.

I think it's a pitch that might work pretty well for him just to kind of keep hitters off balance. We saw a few of them in this game. I don't know if it really made a huge difference at the end of the day. But it's interesting that they're trying that. Here's my concern with that. One thing that Tori Lavello brought up the other day about Brandon Fott was his pitch selection. And the fact that, as, as Tori put it, he was just kind of digging into his bag of tools and pulling something out. Almost made it sound like random, like with no actual game plan as to how these pitches were going to connect.

Yeah, like sequence. Yeah, sequences and change a batter's eye level and result in swings and misses, essentially. So the fact that he is kind of adding into. his arsenal a new pitch this close and trying to utilize it. I mean, even if it didn't end up being something that was hugely detrimental or caused him to have a lack of success, it still feels like that's just another thing kind of rattling around in his mind while he's trying to stay focused and pitch. And again, it didn't feel like he had a very good game plan today, even though like Jesse said, his stuff was landing. He did have some good stuff at times.

I think it was just like an execution problem for me. I don't know if the game plan was, I mean, we don't really know exactly what the game plan was because I don't think he really executed it very well. But yeah, I mean, you just saw time and time again, Gabby would set up in a certain location and fought just wasn't able to, you're never going to hit the glove 100% of the time.

We're not asking perfection here. If we were to look at those charts for like a Zach Allen start, it's not like they all would be in an ideal location, but he's just making too many mistakes and the shape of his pitches isn't good enough in order to be able to be effective against majorly hitters in those spots. There's a lot of chatter in the comments about Pave and Smith, obviously. There's always chatter in the comments about Paveen Smith.

I mean, I'm not, there's nothing. I'm not disagreeing with you guys, but Pave and Smith isn't the reason the Diamondbacks lost this game today. And Pave and Smith continues to be a potential, you know, option for them as far as making a roster spot and sending someone down. I'm sure that's coming. I'm sure we won't see Pave and. and Smith stick around too much longer with the roster needs that the Diamondbacks have.

They did make an interesting decision today when Brandon fought was officially added to the roster, which was sending down Justin Martinez, who they just called up and who never actually got a chance to pitch in a game before he was set back down. Right now, the Diamondbacks are really dealing with personnel issues. They're dealing with not having enough arms, not knowing what they're going to do for starting pitching. And honestly, I think someone says, it in the chat, the bullpen is getting taxed and they have to kind of keep that in mind too. So don't be surprised if at times you see moves that don't make sense right now with this team simply because they need to try to swap guys in or out.

And when we say don't make sense, talking about like when Kevin Ginkle was sent down despite the fact that he was doing fairly well for this team, we're still going to see that happen. And of course, that right now the arms are the problem for this team. Like they have too many young arms in the starting rotation and Merrill Kelly can't get back soon enough. But they're going to need to fill his spot in the meantime. So I don't foresee anything changing as far as, you know, the Diamondbacks game playing between now and the All-Star game. They just, they got to get guys out there to give them innings, you know. Yeah, I was looking at how the deback starters line up between now and the All-Star break.

And we'll get into this more later. I think they theoretically could skip Brandon Fott's spot if you even want to, I don't know if I would say necessarily as ownership over this spot at this point. But that next turn in the rotation, yeah, that next turn, they do have an off date coming up after the Angels series. So they could use that off day in order to just roll with a four-man rotation for one turn. But they will need a starter again on July 8th. They can't make it all the way to the All-Star break with only four starters.

So it'll be interesting to see what they do. Do they want to give Brandon fought another shot? It does seem a little harsh to bring a guy up against the Tampa Bay raise. and, you know, obviously he really struggled. But yeah, I don't know if it would be too harsh to send him down immediately or if that's just kind of the move the Diamondbacks have to make at this point. And if you did that, you wouldn't be able to bring him up for that start on July 8th, hypothetically. So that's the big problem.

And at this point, it's just about having arms. Even if they decide not to go with him, it's better to have him up and here until Merrill Kelly returns rather than not having a starter, you know, available. to you. And I know he might not be the best option, right? Like we talked about Drey Jamison. Drey Jamison was excellent today when he went out there in relief. It was. Yeah. You know, you could do. I mean, you could do like a, like a Drey Jameson bullpen game on July 8th if they, if they wanted to. But I mean, I guess on the on the flip side to what you were saying earlier, if the diamondbacks aren't sure that they want to continue with

Brandon fought, you know, they could use that roster spot for something else. So by the way, Justin Martinez is not a starting pitcher and he wasn't on the roster today so they couldn't use it no they couldn't that wasn't uh that i wasn't too surprised by that i think just martinez was kind of brought up as like the extra arm yeah it's like a break in case of emergency yeah they had you know they had an extra roster spot with maryl kelly down for a couple days so you might as well just have a nine-man bullpen in case the worst happens it is unfortunate though for you know a 21 year old who i do think has a future in this game and you know a bright future making it up to the big league at that age and during 102 miles an hour, it's got to be tough for him to come up for a

couple of days and not even get into a game. But we'll probably see him before too long. When you talk about tough things happening to a young player, nothing is tougher to the Arizona Diamondbacks fan base than seeing Corbyn Carroll injured in today's game. He basically left the game after in at bat and he was experiencing what appeared to be some neck and shoulder discomfort after striking out to end the third inning. The Diamondbacks then came on the press box to tell us that it was a shoulder soreness. Was that the official diagnosis? Yeah, right shoulder, shortness.

This is unfortunately the same shoulder that Corbyn Carroll had season-ending surgery on back in 2021. When he, yeah, he did some serious damage on a home run swing. Let's not go there. But he did go out and play right field in the top of the fourth. So I don't know if that's encouraging or anything like that. But it does seem precautionary. It does seem like, again, with Corbyn Carroll, that they're not going to take any chances. Obviously, no risk, no sense risking anything in a game like this that appeared to be a blowout loss anyway.

Yeah. But more importantly, Corbyn Carroll has, in about 10 minutes, probably going to be honored with being named the starter in the All-Star game in Seattle. Yeah. That's the biggest thing that right now I'm personally concerned about is his ability to play in that game. I know that seems petty. I know that seems small compared to like him playing for this team. But this really sucks if it does not only make him miss time for the Diamondbacks, but also keeps him out of the All-Star game.

Yeah, honestly, that would be like almost as crushing as any of this, right? I mean, Corbyn Carroll, obviously so deserving of that opportunity, making a trip back to his hometown is an incredible story. And yeah, we're probably about 10 minutes away, as you said, from officially hearing that Corbyn Carroll is going to start or would start in the All-Star game. Hopefully he gets that opportunity. Mos Schubert, by the way, is a Dodgers fan. And even he is saying, to be honest, Corbyn should have walked right before he even took that swing. The ump blew that call.

And he's not wrong about that. I know the 2-1 pitch was definitely inside. It should have been 3 and 1. It was so far inside. Yeah. I don't remember another miss call on that at bat, but I might be forgetting something. I just hate the fact that now we, here we have the potential that Corbyn Carroll is injured because that's just a terrible icing on the awful cake that was today's baseball game. We do have to give credit where credit to do.

I know we probably shouldn't even give out a king snake today, but we're going to give a king snake to our man, Christian Walker. I'm not going to sing the song today. I'm not in that mood. But he does have a career high 13 game hitting streak and he still is an absolute beast of an individual. individual that honestly the lot of things aren't going well right now for the diamondbacks offensively but it's not christian walker christian walker remains very good at baseball yeah he really does uh one for three in this game uh up to 281 on the year with an 874 ops you could make a case right now i haven't checked goldies numbers in the last couple days but you could make a case that

christian walker deserves an all-star appearance at first base over paul gulshman he has been that good um and goldies had a had a rough few weeks here So, yeah, it's really incredible what he's been able to do. And Cattel was 0 for 3 in this game, but he did draw walks. So his on-based streak did continue in this one. Those two guys, in a lot of ways, Derek, are kind of holding this offense together in recent days, right? Lordis Gerell has really struggled, though he did hit a home run in this game, helped the Diamondbacks avoid being shut out, which is still something that hasn't happened this season.

My hair tingled when it happened, believe it or not. I'm sure it did. But, yeah, outside of that, you know, Pardomo has a lot. hasn't given you much recently. Ale Thomas and Jake McCarthy have been pretty good of late. Thomas had an O for four today. But yeah, there's no question that could tell in Christian Walker,

are the two guys that are kind of keeping this offense moving in recent days. And they didn't have as good a days today, but still good to see Christian Walker with the double in this one. This goes back to a question we had on Mailbag Monday about why Dback's fans are so reactionary. And Marcus in our comments is exactly. a great example of that. It's over already for the Deepak's boys. Let's go ahead and bring out the tarp and wrap things up.

And it's understandable. I understand it. This team has experienced so much heartbreak over the years and so many things going bad for them that it's easier to be a pessimist. And then when things do go bad like today's game, you can chime in and feel validated about the fact that this team still very much is confusing.

Still very much is not. Like we've known up to this point that this team is overperforming. We know that they're outperforming any kind of anybody's idea of what they could do this year. But I still think that they're a very good baseball team. Things get off track for a while, including this Tampa Bay raise team that we came in here. They were not very good coming into the series. And the Diamondbacks honestly had a really good chance. Obviously Scott McGuff blew the game in the second inning or in the second game.

This game, much more of a devastating loss. but the Diamondbacks were very close to taking two out of three here against the best team in the American League. That's kind of been the narrative, right? I mean, just looking. They're just so close to taking the series against these good teams that they don't take the series against. Exactly. I mean, this whole month, right, back from June 2nd to 4th, you had the Atlanta Braves, the debacks lost two out of three. But that third game of that series was the Eddie Rosario Grand Slam, where Miguel Castro just melted down in the ninth inning.

That's a series you very well could have won against a good team. that Philly series, D-BACs lost three out of four. There were two one-run losses in that game. Yeah, there were some narratives there as well. And then the Giant series, right, D-Backs lose two out of three there. But that game on the 24th, that was the game where Corbyn Carroll dropped the pop-up. That alone, theoretically, would have put that game in the D-BAC's favor. And then it's the same story here.

You had a two-nothing lead in the ninth inning against the raise. Scott McGuff blows the save. and what would have been a series win turns into a series loss. There is this emerging narrative of can the diamondbacks beat the good teams? Are they just rolling over the nationals and, you know, the A's and the not as good teams of baseball? They're struggling. They're taking care of business against teams they should, but they're not proving themselves against teams that they need to prove themselves against. But they've been like so close to doing that, right?

Time and time. They're not getting blown out in any of these series. They're just not quite able to get over the high. hump and win it. As the season progresses too, it kind of makes the success they had in April look less impressive because we were very excited about them beating the Dodgers and splitting with the Padres and those teams haven't been very good themselves. You know, like that wasn't a litmus test as much as playing teams like the Braves has been a test and playing teams like these these race. Even when they caught the Phillies, like the Phillies were kind of a good test for them.

And that was like the, I don't know for me, that was the first thing where I was like, yeah, this team, this Diamondbacks team, it definitely has its weaknesses and we are seeing them be exposed here. But that's 81 games, folks. That's the first half of the season. I think that's 82. Is that 82? Yeah, I think 81 was yes. We didn't even acknowledge last night was the halfway point of the season. Thebacks won 48 games in the first half, which that's a 96 win pace. You can, you can live with that. Yeah. When would you have predicted that that would be the case? And again, It might not be the case because they have some very tough opponents right after the All-Star break. They have some very difficult games still ahead of them.

And those tests don't just stop now. So make sure to keep it locked right here. And we will be here with you win or lose. We will be here to cheer with you and talk about beating teams that they have no business beating. And we will be here to judge all of Tori Loblo's decisions after the game. But if you have not already signed up for the BetMGM Sportsbook app, go ahead and do it now. you can get in on the bonus bets. Do not miss out on the bonus bets.

They are going on right now, and bet MGM players will receive a bonus bet upon logging in to their bet MGM sports book every Friday for the next three weeks. Claim period extends through Saturday and Sunday. You got 72 hours to log in to claim and then 72 hours to use your bonus bet after you log in. So log in at any point during the weekend, claim your bonus bet on the house and make yourself some free, risk-free money. If you haven't signed up for bet MGM yet, use bonus code PHNX.

There's a few different offers depending on where you live, but for our Arizona audience, place your first bet offer and receive up to $1,000 back in bonus bets. If it loses with BetMGM. Again, make sure you use bonus code PHNX. Check out the show notes for full details. And now listen to Shane, talk about the disclaimer. Disclaimer, 21 plus to wager, visit betmGM.com for terms and conditions.

U.S. promotional offers not available in Washington, D.C., New York, and Ontario. Gambling problem, call 1,800, Gambler. Colorado, D.C., Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming. Call 8778 Hope N.Y or text Hope N.Y. 467369, New York. Call 1-800 Next Step, Arizona. 1-800-5-2-2-2-7-0-C-0-Gansas, Nevada. 1-800-3-2-7-1-1-7 for Confidential, Michigan. Well, if you're here in the PHNXPort to YouTube channel right now, we thank you for being here.

Make sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. Leave us a thumbs up that always makes us feel great about ourselves. Jesse will absolutely hijack the show unless you guys all give us a thumbs up. We don't need 100%. Yeah, just like we would be waiting around here for a while. But yeah, like I'd be cool with 70%. You know? I don't ask for too much. Look, you just want a passing grade. That's all he wants.

Leave us a thumbs up, of course. And if you haven't signed up for notifications, make sure you do that. That way you don't miss when any of our shows go live. If you were listening on the audio podcasting side, we thank you for being there as well. Subscribe if you haven't done so already and leave us a review. We always appreciate your feedback. Most importantly, go to go phnx.com. grab yourself a diehard membership.

It pays for itself immediately. You will get a free piece of merchandise from the PHNX Locker.com. 20% off all future purchases. You will also get a Mountain Mike's gift certificate. You will get a ranch card from Dobson Ranch Golf Course. You get stuff I'm not even bringing up. All sorts of benefits with our partners, discounts with our partners, exclusive member merchandise,

Jesse's newsletter, full account, access to our Discord lounge. Like so much stuff. Why haven't you signed up yet? Go do it right now. Become part of our PHNX family. And we love you to do so. Exclusive merch. Exclusive merch.

Let's take a look at this series, even though I don't want to. I want to put it behind us. Actually, before we do, we do have an update from Toy Lovolo post game. And according to Tori LaVolo, the concern about Corbyn Carroll is minimal. And that is good to hear. That is good to hear. Yeah. And he also said that it was a precautionary thing, as Nicholas mentioned in the chat.

So, yeah, we kind of suspected, you know, if this really was a serious thing in the moment, the debacks wouldn't have had Corbyn Carroll go out and play right field immediately right you kind of felt like all right the debacks were comfortable throwing him in right field for a half an inning it probably wasn't a serious issue in the moment so no suit no big surprise there and obviously good news for the debacks I don't know if you'll see him in the lineup tomorrow I'd still be very surprised if if that happened I think he'll probably be down for a day or two at least but the debacks appears to have maybe dodged a bullet here and that's not the first time this year Derek right there was the there was the corbin carol knee contusion back in colorado there was the gabby moreno hit by pitch in spring training as well people might have forgotten about that one that turned into nothing so the debacks have their injury luck has been pretty decent this year it really has hopefully it stays that especially with merrill kelly finding out about this blood clot and finding out that it's minimal Ian Kennedy trying to convince him not to let them put them on the IL and just come back as soon as possible.

Like there's some good things there. But I mean, taking a step back, that does bother. Like you say, okay, the Diamondbacks know what they're doing. And I'm not saying they don't. I'm by no means am I saying they don't. But like also, when you heard Merrill Kelly say he took several flights and played in several games with a blood clot, you just know that sometimes they can't, they can't know sometimes. You know what I mean?

That was the thoracic outlet syndrome a few years ago. So interesting. And, of course, that was much more, much more of a high-risk situation. Yes. Considering how close it was to his heart and his other vital organs. But everybody's good. Everybody's fine. Corbyn's fine.

Merrill's fine. Everybody's going to be back. This team's going to be fine. You're going to be fine. We're going to be fine. Let's take a look at the numbers, though, because this series sucked. 25 hits for the Diamondbacks to the 21. They out hit the Tampa Bay Reyes.

I still, the name. Tampa Bay Rays, Jesse, it still bothers me. I still just imagine a guy standing in Tampa, Florida with like a mustache, and it's Ray, and that's their mascot, and that's what the team's damned on. You know, like, that's what I get every time. They should have kept the devil race. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. That does not change if they lost the series or won it. But starting pitching ERA, obviously fairly close.

Relief pitching ERA, very good for both teams there. I mean, much better, obviously, for the race. Another thing we didn't really touch on is today's game was a bowl. pen start for the raise and they absolutely dominated the diamond match. And Yonning Trinoes went like almost you pitched into the ninth inning. He almost went seven in this game.

Yeah, he pitched a whole start even though he didn't start the game. Yeah, a three for 24 with runners in scoring position. That's tough. It's going to be hard to win a series like that. DeBex were 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position in this game two for 10 yesterday. It was terrible. They had their opportunities. They had

eight hits in this game. And with no, like with minimal outs, like one out or zero outs with a guy on second or a guy on third and they just couldn't even get those small runs in, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it was tough. They did hit five home runs in this series. Four of them were on Tuesday, so maybe you would have liked to spread those out a little bit more. Could we not?

I don't know. Starting pitching ERA, yeah, Brandon Fought was very bad. Zach Gallen was okay and Zach Davies was dominant. Just the way that you drew it up coming into this series. I will say this would have been theoretically a Merrill Kelly day, right? Yeah. And the concern with Merrill Kelly going down is that, you know, you're going to replace him with a subpar arm.

And so far, the gap between what the debacks would have had theoretically with Merrill Kelly on the mound versus what they've actually gotten in replacement is very, very, very large. Obviously, this is only one day, but this is a game that maybe feels winnable if Merrill is out there on the mound. I know the debacks only scored one run, but it kind of felt like they had the life just taken out of them a little bit after that after that tough third inning. Yeah, it really was. And I mean, again, it's also the life taken out view against the bullpen start, right? Like, yeah, I don't know. This team, though, was very frustrating to watch today in several different ways, and almost every way. Defensively, they weren't terrible, but, you know,

the big question now is, where do the diamondbacks go from here? with their starting rotation. Do they stay the course with Brandon Fott as part of the starting rotation until they get to the All-Star break? They have three series left between now and then. They have this upcoming series with the Angels. And then who they have after that? After the Angels, they have the Mets and the Pirates.

Yeah. And then they have the All-Star break. So it's coming up fast. The trade deadline cannot come soon enough for this team because we really need to figure. How many times have we said that in the last couple weeks? but they do have some options and those options that they could turn to are probably things they don't want to do

and one of those things that they don't want to do is convert Dre Jameson back to a starter in any way but I don't think they will I don't think it's like they don't want to like they won't at this point not wanting to not doing it they're kind of the same thing right

I mean it's a matter of not doing it not wanting to but they could use him in a different role where it's more of a bullpen start like what we saw the race do today at this point Drey Jameson is sort of like a mop-up long reliever, frankly. I mean, it feels like a lot of the games that he's gotten into recently were games like this one where it's kind of really lobsided one direction or the other.

You're just looking for length. I don't know if he really loves that. I would suspect he probably doesn't. Just given his competitive nature and he's told me how much he would love to pitch in a high leverage role in the bullpen. And that's not exactly what he's doing right now. Yeah. He's pitched pretty well recently.

in that role. But yeah, I think there's there's a case to be made that the diamond back should consider using an opener having a bullpen game of their own. We've seen it work in recent days for other teams. The race won a bullpen game today. The Giants had a pretty solid bullpen game against them in San Francisco. So it can work. And to me, Derek, those are kind of the only there are only the two options that I see for the debacks between now and the all-star break is you keep Brandon fought on the roster. You keep everyone in order and Brandon fought. At least you, you know, you carry him into his next outing and you're going to give him another shot and just see where it takes you. And the other option would be you send down Brandon fought right now, basically after this game.

And then you're able to skip him the next time through as we talked about earlier. And then on July 8th, that would be the next day the debacks would need a starter. And maybe you try to piece together a bullpen day then. And that gets you into the all-star break. Maybe you have Merrill Kelly back. after that point. I mean, they could maybe get creative. They could bring up Slade Shikoni. They could do something a little crazy. But as far as I can tell,

those are kind of the only two clear options that I see at this point. Do you like one of those? No. Much more than the other? I don't know. I don't know. I think we landed on Sikoni and not Shikoni.

Did we? I don't know where we landed. You're the one who was like saying I wasn't announcing it with enough Italian player. Yeah, that's the, Chiconi. You got to get it like, you gotta hit it hard.

No, that's not how it's said. It's just Sikoni. It's much more low key than that. But he hasn't been good at a minor league level. He was good in his last start. His last start. His numbers overall or not.

And they're never good with Reno. So it's hard to take a look at their numbers and judge based on that. But same thing with Amarillo. He had a 4.370 R.A last season, 7.09 this season. Not a great option. I honestly, at this point,

like, I don't know. Brandon Fott. Just put Brandon Fott back out there. I know we don't want to see it. I know it's not great option. I would have probably, I would schedule it in a way

where you could be a bit more proactive next time and if things do fall apart for him, don't let it get to a six run lead. Yeah. Maybe have Dre Jemison slated to go behind him no matter what so that you know if he needs it. You know, you have Jameson there to give you length.

If he doesn't need it, Jameson can still come in and he's going to have to come in at some point and give you at least an inning or two. So I don't know. I think that there could be some better managing as far as, you know, how soon you go out there and get Brandon Fott. But I do feel like Fott needs to struggle, right? I mean, it's what we talked about yesterday that, you know, that Brent Strom gave him this advice about the best pitchers in baseball have struggled.

Yeah, I think it was Tom Glavin and some other guys. You know what I mean? And it's like it's not uncommon for guys that are. very good prospects to struggle when they first arrive on the scene in a major league level. Right. But I don't know. I'm just, I think that there needs to be a point where you're not scared to get hurt anymore. Like Brandon Fott seems right now like he's so trying to be too perfect that once things go wrong for him, it just completely unravels.

I think, yeah, I think to Elise's point, his body language maybe not great, you know, maybe hasn't exactly exuded like air of confidence on the mound and he can maybe look at least a little bit tentative at times and yeah i mean he told us yesterday he feels more comfortable being back up in the big leagues a second time and you know having been through all this before but i mean nothing is going to bring you comfort in the big leagues like actually having success and that's just something that brandon fought hasn't really had yet right yeah if he goes out there if he had gone out there today and giving you even five innings two runs you know something that just kind of keeps you in the game, gives you a chance to win. I think it really could be possible for him to build a lot of confidence from that.

He just hasn't really had an outing like that yet. I guess there was maybe one outing where he was okay in his previous st in the big leagues. But for the most part, it's been start something like this where he's leaving the game early and his base runners on. There might not be anybody out in the game. And building confidence is really important for him. And start like this just isn't really going to lend itself. to that unfortunately.

Yeah, but again, you got to know you can get your ass kicked and survive and come out and fight another day, right? He just needs you to give him a pep talk, Derek. I think that's what the solution is. I'm great at pep talks. I'm great at pep talks. Derek gives me a pep talk every day. Every single day.

Before we do the show. Yeah, before we do the show, I look Jesse in the eyes and I say, listen to me, young man. Your future is so incredibly bright. I know there are days that look like they are dark, but I am here to provide the light for you to see how bright your future is. I'd also give him some maybe some happy balance OGs. Yeah, there we go. That also that also helps. That's probably not the best idea. But I can give you guys a happy balance OGs to get through today's game. And you can find those anywhere in the valley. They have a wide variety of doses and strains, including that special happy balance strain.

They also have a sleep edition gummy and dropping this month. They have their brand new pink lemonade gummies. They are limited edition. They are tangy lemon with a hint of redberry, plenty of sugar, and they're delicious. You can get them anywhere. You get your wonderful edibles. They have all sorts of flavors. Like I said, they have their mixed bags out now with fruits and creams, so much more. So OGs doesn't miss when it comes to flavor and effect. So get your pink lemonade gummies while you can. Check out OGs online at OGsbrands.com. And on Instagram at OGs Brands. You can also find their products at your local dispensary. Must be 21 years or older to purchase and enjoy responsibly.

Check out the official craft beer of the Arizona Diamondbacks. That would be Four Peaks. They have the Redal on Red Ale and all sorts of wonderful choices at their Four Peaks Draft Room at Chase Field. It's located on the sweet level. And of course, you can go there, have some wonderful food. Get a great view of the game. And also get yourself some wonderful Four Peaks beer.

Join us there. We'll be there for our DeVax takeovers before the game. You can check out the events page in our show notes to find dates and tickets. And also, Four Peaks is giving back to teachers. Four Peaks for Teachers is now. Live and it's going on. Nominations are going on until tomorrow. So one more day to get your nominations in. What do the teachers win?

Well, they can win up to $11,000 cash grants and one lucky teacher will win a teacher's lounge renovation provided by Four Peaks. You can go to Four Peaks for Teachers.org to complete the form to enter the chance to win. Nominations are due June 30th. Also for teachers, Teacher Tuesdays are back at the 8th Street Pub. Every Tuesday through July, you bring a valid teacher ID and they will hook you up with four pie. $4 pints of kilt lifter, wow, hazy, and hopnought. So thank you teachers, and I know school's going to be back in session before we know it. So make sure to support a teacher today.

Check out at Four Peaks Brew or at Four Peaks Pub to keep up with the latest at Arizona's hometown brewery. Must be 21 years or older to drink Four Peaks. And please drink responsibly. We have some news there. What's the news that we have, Jason? Corby and Carroll will start in the MLB All-Star game. Let's go, baby. Let's go, Corbyn Carroll.

Congratulations to young Mr. Carroll for making a storybook-like thing happen here with making his first All-Star game. This isn't so bad. Let's go. Maybe we'll dive into this more tomorrow. Like maybe who the starters really should be. But how it turned out in the nationally, Sean Murphy at Catcher, I think that's the right decision. Freddie Freeman at first base. There's a lot of braves and a lot of Dodgers on that list.

is. Luis Arise, he definitely should start at second base. Orlando, Rcia, from Atlanta starting at shortstop. That's fair. No one Airnano at third base. Not so sure there. There wasn't great choices at third base, especially when it came down to the finals. Yeah, third base is rough this year in the National League. And then the outfield is Ronald Cooney, Corby, Carroll, and Mookiee Betts. Let's go. Let's go. At DH, we have won J.D. Martinez. Oh, I love you, J.D. Martinez.

Take you off your high horse there. That's all right. I still have a special place in my heart for J. Martinez as all Arizona Diamondbacks fans do. Great news. Corbyn Carroll, not a serious injury. We'll start in the All-Star game in Seattle where he grew up. That's special. That's magical. I love that shit.

Let's take a look at the probabilities for this series because, again, this series with the Angels going to be fairly important. And the Diamondbacks, honestly, after seeing what we just saw, this is probably the best trio of guys you want going in this series. Am I wrong? Yeah. I mean, I guess it looks pretty good. Tommy Henry against Griffin Canning on Friday.

Tyler Anderson, who was, of course, outstanding with the Dodgers. And the moment he leaves that team, he becomes incredibly pedestrian. He has a 5.54 ERA. So it's him against Ryan Nelson on Saturday. And then Zach Gallen against Reid Detmer's, which is a pretty fun. That's good. Pretty fun pitching matchup on Sunday. I like that. I like that ace matchup right there.

So make sure to stay tuned for that. We will be back here tomorrow. with our 1 p.m. start. We are not doing a postgame tomorrow because no more. Derek's tired of late nights. I'm tired. I'm so exhausted, you guys. I had a flat tire last night.

I had to stop at the side of the road and change it. It was awful. I'm just amazed. I'm not amazed. I'm impressed that you know how to change a tire like all men probably should and I don't. Yeah, there's a lot of things I do, Jesse, that you don't give me credit for. But yes, changing a tire is one of them.

although we don't have any like firm evidence that you actually change this tire no other than me cursing at you in slack last night and saying fuck my life because I was at the side of the road on the freeway changing a goddamn tire but it is what it is I just you know what I don't like I don't anytime I'm in that situation I don't know if you folks do this to yourself it's like I immediately think this is how I'm going to die I'm like this is it on the side of the road changing a tire on the freeway this is dumb of me I shouldn't even be doing this, but anyway, we still have some bragging rights. I know we are still first in the NL West, but that lead is kind of getting close. So let's take a look at the All-City

Network Division where we still have a fairly commanding lead. Cubs let me down when I bet on them, so I'm off the Cubs train now. And then there's also those other two teams way far back, but let's see, this is still pretty nice looking, Jesse. Yeah, it is. It is pretty nice. It's not quite as nice as the NL West, but, or it's much nicer than the NL. I will say as far as the league goes. That's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, there aren't any teams here that are as good as the Diamondbacks, and we've learned that for a while.

We can just stop showing this at this point. We know they're not going to catch up to us, but I think it's maybe a nice, like, a little victory lap for some people after a tough loss, you know? Like, hey, all the All-City network teams. That's exactly what it's on the road down. If you notice that we only look at the All-City Division after tough losses, because Derek really needs a nice way to like fans back. I just want to give you guys, I want to end things on a high note.

I want to end things on a high note. And I don't think that that's that far off. Totry just pisses me off. He just passes by out here. He makes me angry. This guy, though, he doesn't make me angry. I'm very excited. He's going to be going to the All-Star game in Seattle.

Also, to make sure he covers Corbyn Carroll's exciting journey. And also, Jesse kind of used to live there. So he knows the area. This is true. He's going to take a boat to the All-Star game. I can't wait to see that. Honestly, with where I will be saying, it will make way more geographical sense. To kayak.

To see the ballpark. Oh, please don't. I'm going to put a GoPro on you if you kayak there. I need to see it. That is content. That would be incredible content. The problem is, like, how early would I have to leave in the morning? Like, so I don't know.

The All-Star game starts at maybe about 5 o'clock. Is there a lot of kayak traffic? Oh, yeah, there's tons of kayaking. There's kayakers everywhere in that state. No, there's not that many people who kayak in like, it's really cold. Like, Puget Sound, I mean, it's like 55 degrees year round. So you're kind of playing with fire. Yeah.

Or if it's not fire, you're playing with ice. Ice? Like near, not ice. Near ice. It is very, very cold water. But, yeah, I do kind of wonder how long it would take me to kayak to the ballpark. I would probably have to leave, you know, 9 or 10 a.m. in the morning and I have to get there.

at 5 o'clock, but the content would be amazing. We're making it happen. We're making it happen. But we will have a special episode covering the MLB draft on that Sunday. Jesse will be coming to us live from Seattle. Sean and I will be here covering the draft. We'll at least get up. No more of this three-hour stuff, but we'll at least get up to the Arizona Diamondbacks pick,

maybe a little bit beyond. So make sure to join us with that. Our draft live stream last year was a little. It was a little nuts. Yeah, it was a real nuts. There's a lot of talk about changing a tire in the chat. I'm just going to give you your best people. piece of advice. Okay, first thing you want to do, you get, you get the lug nuts loosened

before you put it up on the jack. Okay, that's the first point. All right, we got the lug nuts. Just get them, just get them unstuck. Then you jack it up, right? You need the jack. You need to jack the car high enough for the tire to spin independently. I have jacked up a car before. Then, then right there, that point, you have the emergency break on so that the tire doesn't spin anymore. You get the rest of the lug nuts off. It's easy, peasy, lemon squeeasy, which I probably shouldn't be saying after that caused Zach Gallen to have like one of the worst innings of his entire career, it felt like. But anyway, easy. Make sure you change your own tires or, you know, get AAA because that might be a better option.

Shout out to our friends at Moore Furniture, by the way. If you need furniture for your home, if you need anything to get ready for the All-Star game, for football season coming up, or anything else you need. I think I saw Karen in the chat. She said she's going to a movie tonight. Karen, hook up your house with more furniture and then just make movie night at home because, you know, that's, it's a bit more cost effective, right? Make the house nice. Let's go with some nice big, big couches. They got like theater seats like we kind of have over here.

So check out morefurniture.com for all the options that you can get. Also, don't miss out on their white glove delivery service, which will help you not lift a finger to bring your furniture home and set it up for you. They help furnish our studios and they will absolutely help furnish your home. home. So save big on the best furniture in the valley when you head to more furniture.com. And also check out our friends of Foco for these wonderful little bobbleheads. The Diamondbacks aren't given out enough bobbleheads this year. Folks, we know that. So if you need to fulfill your bobblehead desires, go to Foco. They have little tiny works of art like these ones we have in front of us. It's the best

officially licensed gear for all sports and fandoms. And of course, during baseball season, they have your Aloha shirts, your straw hats, your polos, bags, everything you need for a baseball game. Foco always has our back for Arizona sports and they have yours too. Get the best gear around by visiting Foco.com and using code PHNX. For all non-presale items, use promo code PHNX for 10% off. And like I said, join us again tomorrow. We will be back here at 1 p.m.

We will be talking more about Corbyn Carroll starting in the All-Star game. We'll also be talking a little bit about maybe Bradley Beale's son getting scouted. We might need to scout Bradley Beale's son for the Arizona Diamondbacks. I believe he's four years old, right? Yeah, he's four years old. It's never too early to get out. The MLB draft is, you know, like 10 days away at this point. So the timing of Bradley Beal's son.

Right? The coyotes reached. Oh, yeah. We can reach too. Let's pick up Bradley Beale's kid and add him to the farm system because I think he's going to be a star in the future. But in the meantime, you can follow us for more amazing ideas like this. I met cap underscore K-Ban with a K. Jesse is at Jesse N. Friedman.

The Maniac Behind the Mac, Damon is at Damon, D-A-W-G with a little at the end. Of course, our shows at PHNX underscore D-Backs and All Roads Lead to at PHNX underscore Sports on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We love you guys. We thank you so much for joining us on behalf of this entire crew. We always appreciate your time. And remember, kids, baseball is fun, but today, baseball wasn't very fun.