PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - D-backs fry the Fish for second series win

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

On this episode, Derek and Jesse are discussing the D-backs second series win of the season, Humberto Castellanos' bounce-back outing, and who we can and can't trust in the bullpen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

and welcome to another edition of the D-BACs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia. Formerly known, used to be known, once at one time was known as your mayor of PHNX. And I'm joined by this trader over here, the one and only Thunderstick, vice mayor, whatever the hell he's called now. It's Jesse Friedman. Am I still in trouble here? You still don't like me because of the whole Mac becoming the mayor. on Sunday thing you still haven't gotten over that I'm just still not clear on what happened I'm just not I'm not clear on how this happened I'm not clear on how people let it happen I mean the president of the United States goes on vacation right but he doesn't like lose being the president I don't feel like this was just and I'm not a big fan of it but of course it doesn't mean I'm going to give up on it I didn't I didn't become the mayor PHNX by simply rolling over and letting someone else

come in and take over my paperwork that I have to do. So I will fight diligently for this position. I promise you my constituents that I am not going to accept this loss. I will come back. I will demand a recount is what I will demand. I'm not sure if the fact that it's a self-declared position makes it easier or harder for you to get your title back. I'm trying to figure that out. That's the reason why I can win it back really easily.

But of course, the show is brought to you by the fine folks that believe in me over at the Drafking Sportsbook app. Not only are they the official sports betting partner of the mayor of PHNX, but they are the official sports betting partner of the NBA. And right now, new customers can bet $5 on any team to win, and they will get $150 in free bets if they do. So go out there new customers and get your money. Jesse, speaking of winning, the Diamondbacks have done a whole heck of a lot of that lately. already have won the series now with the Miami Marlins with their second five to four victory. Another very close game that should not have been as close as it was.

But we will get to that later. For now, what we're going to do is we're going to get excited about the win because the Diamondbacks, more than anything, had just an issue winning these close games last season. It was really the biggest factor in them having such a terrible season. These one-run games just slipped away from them constantly. They couldn't hold leads. And even in this series, you got to be excited about what the offense did. You got to be excited about what starting pitching did.

But the bullpen really has a lot of question marks still and really has not been able to help them, you know, keep these leads like they should. it's been pretty rough the last the last few days i mean you you think about the sunday game against the st louis cardinals the diamond backs ultimately lost that one seven to five the bullpen gave up five runs in that yeah that one that one was that was a disaster that one was that was a pretty rough go for the bullpen and then um yesterday on on monday we had zach gallin you know pitching a gem he did leave a couple base runners so those those two runs were charged to him when Noe A. Ramirez ultimately allowed them to score.

And then Noeer Ramirez gave up two runs on top of that. And then, of course, today, this game on, as we record here on Tuesday night, we saw a similar story where the Diamondbacks bullpen gave up another four runs in a game that had been scoreless before that, another really, really strong outing today. So it's, yeah, the bullpen has really made Diamondbacks. fans a little. You know what? No, I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you right there because this team has been bad for this long and we are not going to start now. Well, we have time to address the terrible bullpen. We have time for that. But what I want to talk about is how good this team has

been lately. This team now wins the series with the Dodgers. Like you said, the bullpen shits the bed and they blow that game in St. Louis. That was a very winnable game when they were still up by a lot. Yeah. So, you know, a four-game series with the Cardinals, that's a very good team. You take splitting the series in St. Louis as a win, I feel like, but let's be honest, the Diamondbacks could have taken three of four. Now here we are in this series with the Marlins. Arguably the hottest team in baseball coming into this. They lose their seven-game win streak the night before they face the devax against the Mariners, but still a very good team. they've shown how good they can be in this series.

Jazz Chisholm has gone from somebody who I coveted and adored to somebody who I kind of can't stand and in a good way because he was, he is just a catalyst for that team. Like every time he was up at the plate, it felt like something special was going to happen. Even though looking at his numbers overall, he still didn't have like this tremendous series so far. He just is there, he's like the driving force at times behind their offense. He makes incredible plays on the defense. He's, he's a great player, but a great player that you love when he's on your team. And a player, you kind of love to hate a bit when he's not because of all of the aforementioned reasons, right?

But just very, very big at-bats, you know, it felt like it was a marquee matchup every time he was at the plate. Really, though, the Diamondbacks had the power. far in this series. Christian Walker can't stop hitting home runs. He had a very good day at the plate. So that's good to see because I know there's been a lot of question marks around his batting average and things like that. Jesse has taught me to look beyond those figures because those figures are kind of crap. They really mean nothing as far as the current status of what a guy is doing. At least this early in the this early in the season of batting average is a pretty rough thing to look at. I mean, kind of all stats are kind of a wash at this point.

They really are. Like even the fact that Christian Walker leads the league right now at first baseman, leads the league, leads all of MLB for first base basement in, and you'll love this, Jesse, defensive run saved with four. And that's not that many, right? There's a lot of guys with three and two. So, but still, it's one of those situations where Christian Walker has been great defensively, one of the best first baseman in the league.

You know, there's a lot of names you would expect to see in that top position for defensive runs saved, but it's it's Christian Walker, you know, and again, putting some things together at the plate, I feel like this entire team has. Cattell Marte, as you noted, had some incredibly powerful at bats with some very, very, very high exit velocities. And, you know, these guys are just hitting the shit out of the ball. It's just, in cases, it's just been a mount about, you know, like, I don't know, put. putting it all together, launch angle, all that kind of stuff. I just think that we've talked a bit about them being that step away. And it feels now like they're not a step away, that they're arriving there, maybe just a few inches away.

And that's saying that with this offensive output that they've already had so far over this road series and that series against the Dodgers. Derek, you just talked about exit velocities, launch angles, you talked about defensive or unsaved. Who are you? I don't know. What happened to what happened to Derek? I hate this. I hate it here so much.

I will say, though, that you have convinced me a bit about, you know, again, the differences of things. It's why I understand when I was looking at this team, even earlier in the season, that the approaches were so good. even though people would tell me like, are you crazy? He went 0 for 4. And it's like, yeah, it's hard to explain. I can't explain it. But in his 0 for 4, he took like 35 pitches in those four at bats. And, you know, he fouled a bunch of way and he looked good.

And when he when he lined out, it was a very hard hit ball. And like, I get why all of that's important because, man, some of that shit just comes down to luck, six inches one way or six inches another. And that ball goes through for a double. And instead it's, you know, caught by the third baseman. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, at this point in the season,

the difference between, you know, that line drive down the right field line going foul versus landing fair could be like, you know, 40 points in your slugging percentage or something like that. So it all makes a huge difference at this point. But yeah, going back to what we were talking about earlier,

um, this, this Diamondbacks team has, again, just been enjoyable for a lot of people to watch. I think a lot of people are kind of getting back into watching this team. I know you tweeted out from our pH and X Diamondbacks account today that it's okay to be a Diamondbacks fan, which somehow-

I'm feeling sad about being a Diamondbacks fan. This team is not the same as last year. And I don't think it's going to be nearly as much, you know, I don't think it's going to be nearly as much heartbreak. I don't think it's going to be nearly as terrible to watch. It took the Diamondbacks, according to, our friend Michael who sent us a tweet about it till like late August for them to get their sixth one run victory of the year and they're already six and three in one run games this season.

So if there's nothing else that you find encouraging, that that at least is something that I think every D-backs fan should find very encouraging. Absolutely. I mean, these are like the 50-50 games that last year you feel like the Diamondbacks were just on the wrong side of every single time. Right. It just, yeah, it felt like every single time something could go wrong late in the game. It was going wrong.

And give, I mean, you know, we talked about earlier how the bullpen has not been great the last few days, but give him credit for bending and not breaking, right? I mean, if you have five runs to give up and you only give up four, I mean, that's not a great day at the office for the bullpen, but technically they did their job in a sense, right? They still were able to come out. Yeah, they did enough between all of the guys who came in. And so, yeah, the Diamondbacks seem to be doing the little things that it takes in order to win these games. They've scored five runs in each of their last three games, which, I mean, it took a while for us to see this Diamondbacks team score five runs in a game over the first few weeks of the season.

So the offense does appear to be ticking up. Like you said, Cotell-Marty had some really solid, hard contact. today on a few different batted balls. That was great to see. Christian Walker, as you mentioned as well, is also starting to look really good offensively. So, yeah, I mean, you get the offense going. This starting pitching, I don't know how to explain

what's happening with the starting pitching, but it just doesn't stop. I mean, it feels like every single day, the Diamondbacks are pitching a shutout into the fifth or sixth inning. I mean, it's just been like that now for about a week or so with this baseball team. It's crazy. Give me a favor.

Pay attention to when Brent Strom goes out to the mound. I don't know because there's no numbers I have to back this up because I'm sure nobody's tracking it and it's not quantifiable. But I believe that 100% of the time when Brent Strom has gone out to the mound, the result was an out and like an inning that was wrapped up after he went out and visited with the pitcher. There's just something about Brent Strom that not only knows exactly what to say to these guys because of his experience and just because of everything.

But I think it's a respect factor on their part too. Like Brent Strom, I mean, the coaching staff is very nice. And I'm not going to say Brent Strom isn't, but Brentstrom takes his job very seriously. And when I've been around this team, he's always very focused. Whereas everybody else, the players, the coaches, everybody else is kind of just kind of in a light mood early on, pregame hanging out very, you know, just throwing the ball around talking to each other, talking to idiots like me, and, you know, having a,

having a kind of like a different, you know, kind of preparation than Strom. Strom seems to always kind of have his head in this, in this game. And you can tell that there's just something very calming and like informational that comes from him. And I don't know what it is. He could literally go out there and say, stop throwing balls. And like, that's a enough apparently for them to listen to him. I don't know. But he, uh, it, it always feels like when he goes out there, because Caleb Smith was all over the place, like literally all over the place with his pitches. And Brent Strom comes out there and talks to him for a minute and all of a sudden Caleb Smith locks it down, right? Like it's, I don't know. It might just be as easy as him giving

them that confidence to trust their stuff, trust themselves. Maybe it's a piece of advice that he gives them about the bat or that, you know, that helps them guide them in the next to bat and feel, you know, whatever. But Smith is, that's a whole other story to talk about and so is the entire bullpen. But we will be chatting about a lot of things as we write about this team this season. If you're not already a member at GoPHNX, I implore you to become one. So that way you can not miss out on any of this good stuff we have coming this week. Jesse and I both have been working on some articles that have taken us entirely too long to write. but I promise you are going to be worth of time because we really have put some good work into this stuff.

And hopefully you guys find it as enjoyable to read as we did to put together. It's very interesting, both Jesse's piece on Merrill Kelly and my piece on spring training and what an economic disaster. It's been for Arizona and spring training. There's this last couple of years. But of course, you can get that over at go phtnx.com. If you're not already a member, sign up to become one. If you sign up for an annual membership, you'll get yourself a free. free t-shirt over at the PHNX Locker.com.

They're comfortable. They're amazing. There's some incredible designs. I have an entire order on the way myself of the Valley Sickos one, as well as, of course, I already have the PHNX Rattler shirt, which is exactly what you should get with your annual membership free t-shirt coupon that you'll get. I think it's good for hats and everything, too. So check out everything we have to offer over at phtnxlocker.com. Sign up to become a member.

If you're not interested in the annual membership, you can sign up for a month to month membership, you'll get your first month for just 50 cents. And after that, hopefully you like us enough to stick around and become part of the PHNX family. Regardless of the membership you choose, you'll get members-only discounts over at the PHNX Locker.com, as well as access to our members-only discord. So please join us over at the PHNX family. And you know, Jesse, as much as I want to boot them all out, let's talk about which members of the DBACs bullpen we want to make family and which ones we want to just know as work acquaintances because it feels like there are some guys that this deep that this pen really can rely on. And then there's other guys that kind of can go up and down.

I mean, it's not to sure that they don't have their good outings, but it's just hard to trust them in high leverage situations. Kyle Nelson is the biggest name that I want to point to here. it's a name that very few Diamondbacks fans had probably heard of at all before the Diamondbacks picked him up off of waivers. And I mean, I don't think anyone who really follows baseball knew much about Kyle Nelson. He's not exactly a household name. But he's been absolutely terrific for the Diamondbacks this season so far. You just look at some of the numbers. He's sitting at a 2.08 ERA.

his strout rate is like 28% as what rate is at 6%, which is a terrific, terrific difference there between those two numbers. And if you look at some of the other nerdy metrics regarding Kyle Nelson's season so far, everything looks pretty terrific, Derek. We've got expected batting average

is in the 82nd percentile. His hard hit rate against is in the 81st percentile. Basically everything that Kyle Nelson could be doing right, through his first 10 innings or so, he has been doing right. And at this point in the season, it's hard to read too much into any numbers, like we said before, especially numbers in the bullpen because, I mean, you know, that, you know, giving up that three-run homer versus not is the difference between having, you know, a pretty high ERA versus a pretty low ERA at this point in the season.

So there's still quite a bit of time that needs to pass before we read too much into these numbers. but Kyle Nelson has been terrific all the way around for the debacks. Are you ready to get in on my conspiracy theory that Brent Strom had something to do with some of these acquisitions yet or what? Because I feel like the Diamondbacks did that thing where someone shops in the bargain bin but knows exactly what they're looking for and somehow found like things that they turn around and sold for like 10 times the amount that they bought it for on eBay. Not to say that the Diamondbacks are selling these guys off, but just value. wise. It feels like somehow they dug into the free agency market and got names of guys that we weren't very familiar with and guys who didn't have great numbers necessarily stuff to really wow you when you take a look at their past performances and think like, all right, the

diamondbacks really got a solid guy here. But instead, what they did was they got guys that somehow came over and instantly became very high value pitching assets for them. And I'm talking mostly about Kyle Nelson and Zach Davies. Those guys have both been really good. And Zach Davies is another guy that we were just kind of questioning when the Diamondbacks, you know, gave him the major league contract and essentially said, yes, this is going to be our fourth starter. We were kind of thunderstruck a bit there by that decision and especially looking at

his last year with the Cubs, but he has been tremendous for this team as well. Nelson, though, again, he has, he's been. One of the guys out of the bullpen that the Diamondbacks could trust that Tori Lavallo can count on. Another guy has been Joe Mantipli. Joe Mantleply has been absolutely outstanding for this team. Tonight, I was so thrilled when they made the announcement that they were going to Joe Manciply instead of Ian Kennedy. I just didn't really trust Ian Kennedy to come into the game in this closing situation, especially knowing that Jazz Chisholm was going to have another bet.

That's fair. I mean, we saw yesterday Ian Kennedy face jazz chisholm and it seemed like he wanted no part of him whatsoever, which did work out for the diamondbacks. I mean, he was able to get the next guy after that. So all is well, that ends well. But yeah, Joe Mantiply is second save. Diamondbacks have had to go to him a couple times now this season. And I imagine this won't be the last time either as the diamond backs navigate this season and have different relievers available or unavailable at different times or on the injured list. or however things turn out.

Joe Mantiply appears to be a pretty big name for them. And at this point, Derek, it's hard to argue with a 0.00 ERA to start the season. That's what Joe Mantiply is sitting at right now. I don't know how much you get any much better than that. 10 innings, seven hits, no runs, only for strikeouts. He's definitely pitched to contact quite a bit, but guys just aren't hitting him. They're, for whatever reason, opposing hitters are just not picking up the baseball against Joe Manciply right now. And he's been a huge part of the of the deback success over the last week or so.

I've missed guys pitching the contact. And I feel like we're getting more of that. Whereas, like, that's what we got out of Merto Castiano's today. Luis Gonzalez pointed that out that when Castiano's was kind of unafraid of pitching the contact, he was much more successful than when he was kind of dancing around the outside of the bulls. outside of the strike zone and trying to get guys to chase, right? He throws a pitch that's not very hitable for some reason. Today, he was outstanding compared to his last outing against the St. Louis Cardinals,

which is very encouraging. But his numbers, aside from the zero runs he put up, I mean, it's four strikeouts, four hits, like five and two-thirds innings pitch. Nothing insane by any stretch of the imagination, but it's that zero earn runs. the ability for him to go out there in some way and get guys out is always impressive to me. It's not sexy. It's not, it doesn't blow you away with his stuff, but it's effective. And that's honestly, I think the reason why the debacks continue to call on him as a starting pitcher.

This was a guy that before last season was a reliever his entire career. And the diamondbacks have essentially made into a starter. And, you know, it's felt at times like he's wavered. It felt at times like he was, oh, is this going to kind of be his Caleb Smith moment where, you know, he kind of falls out of the favor and the starting rotation. I don't know what it is, by the way, about Caleb Smith that makes this team change direction with him so quickly. But the only thing I can imagine is that a lot of it is attitude-based and how he's perceived

when he's given coaching and at times I think he can be very temperamental, you know, whereas other guys are able to accept coaching and kind of do what they can to improve, right? I just, Caleb Smith right now has a 15.19 ERA, and I don't know how much longer the Diamondbacks are even going to look to him as a reliever at this point. I don't want to read like too much into, I mean, I guess you, you've seen more of Caleb Smith in person than I have. My take as a bit of an outsider on this for the moment is that Caleb Smith is still probably a pretty hardworking guy who, you know, is a major league pitcher for a reason. I don't think he's like balking at what DBAX coaches are saying or anything like

that. And that's not. And I'm sorry if that's what it sounded like I meant. I just mean he is a very, very emotional person. And, you know, sometimes when you're angry about your performance or whatever. It's not that you're not accepting the words that, you know, are being told to you, but it's the fact that if he's very demonstrative, he's very. Yeah, yeah. Visibly angry when he's angry. Yeah. You could, you could see it. You could even see it today when you walk off. I'm the exact same way. I cannot hide my emotions. I wear them on my sleeve. Like, if I'm not tweeting about being upset and having people text me like Jesse to make sure I'm okay, It's being with me in person and being able to look at me until there's something wrong with me.

So I completely understand where he's coming from, especially when I play MLB, the show on PlayStation 4. I'm not going to smash the controller, but I want to smash the controller, if that makes that. Have you ever, have you ever, like, destroyed something like that? Like, you were playing some sort of a game, whether it's a video game or like a board game or, I don't know, some sort of game. Were you like actually destroyed something because of how angry you were? Yes. I have thrown a controller against the wall and had it break. But it was like the minute that I like threw it out of my hand,

I regretted it. So it wasn't like where you see those videos of people getting mad at a sporting event or a video game and like they smashed the TV purposefully and they're all like somehow proud of themselves afterwards that they did. No, no, no. I was immediately, uh, I immediately knew. I made a mistake once I launched the controller out of my hand. And it was a PlayStation 4 controller.

And it, those are not cheap. And it's like $60. Yeah. And it's smashed. Like it's smashed. It was not working afterwards. So like that's probably it. When I was younger,

my dad owned a restaurant, not owned, but he was part owner of this restaurant bar here in town. It was called the sagebrush can'tina. in the, I want to say the tempi kind of Scottsdale area. And he, when he moved in, they had like these giant projection screen TVs all over the bar. And they decided to replace those and not have it because they were kind of like tacky even at this period of time. Oh, okay.

Long story short, I ended up with a big screen projection, rear projection TV in my room. and one time during a son's game i i threw the remote control at the tv and it went right to the screen wow that is that is incredible that's my two that's probably my two memories of smashing things i i destroyed a ping pong paddle once i i get i get very competitive when i play ping pong I don't know if you play ping pong Derek, but if you want to see me just like, you want to see me just like in the zone. That's, uh, that's, uh, that's, I can't wait.

We're not going to be a ping pong table at pH and X. Let me tell you. Ooh. I need to see that. Yeah, I need to see that. Right now we have very competitive. I would get no work done in that office if we had a ping pong table in the office. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty bad.

Uh, yeah. Right now we have a, uh, a pretty good, foosball table in there that sees some action. And I tell you. Anthony Totry, that guy's a gamer. He might lose a lot, but he doesn't give up. And I appreciate his gamesmanship. He doesn't quit. But this is the perfect time to say that when you're hanging out with Totry,

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that OG's brands has to offer, go to OGsbrands.com. That's OGEZ brands.com to find OGs near you. and Jesse I don't know man what do we have to say about this diamondbacks team at this point we are one game away from not only their first sweep of the season but we are one game away from the Diamondbacks being at 500

and that just seems that seems nutty to even the guy that picked them to finish 82 and 80 I love that you're longer I love that you're willing to just openly admit that that's great I give it up on it I'm not we have a long season and I'll just plug it the whole time. It reminded me

I was thinking about that earlier today and I thought of Mount 500. Do you remember when that was the thing with this baseball team back in and I couldn't I couldn't remember off the top of my head which season that was. So I googled Diamondbacks

Mount 500 and every single article that I found was from 2015. So it became abundantly clear. 2015 was the season was the it was the Mount 500 year where the diamondbacks would get really close to climbing mount 500, maybe even getting over the hump and being a game over 500. And then they would lose two or three games in a row.

And it felt like they were just kind of doing this back and forth thing throughout the entire season. And of course, I mean, that's what led to them going out and getting Zach Granky and making some big moves because they really thought that they were pretty close at that point. But yeah, I don't know if this diamondbacks team is necessarily in the same spot. Um, this is certainly, uh, this is certainly a performance that is unexpected, right?

Not that many people, uh, were like you and predicted the diamond backs to be around 500 or even a couple of games over 500 as you had them this season. So this is unexpected. It's probably too really to say the diamond backs are going to flirt with 500 throughout the year. Sure. But it's not, it's not impossible. I mean, if, if this starting rotation can, can keep this up to a certain degree, it's probably

bound to fall back at least a little bit, but if the offense can maybe find a way to compensate for that, it's not impossible to see the Diamondbacks doing this kind of dance around 500 throughout most of this season. Well, here's their upcoming schedule, taking a look at things.

They have the one more game against the Marlins. Then they have a three game set back here at home starting on Friday with the Rockies. Happy Mother's Day to all the mother lovers out there. And in the Rocky series, we have Merrill Kelly, Zach Davies, Zach Gowan going in that series. Pretty damn good. Then after that, they welcome the Marlins back,

uh, back or, you know, they face off against Marlins again back at Chase Field. So honestly, I mean, right now sitting at 12 and 13, it's really easy to see this team potentially being, I don't know, Jesse 16 and 15 after these two series. Maybe they're even over Mount 500 after these two series. Maybe they're even over Mount 500 after these two series. It's not to take anything away from Marlins. The Marlins have been very good this season, but the Diamondbacks proved so far that they kind of had their number. I felt like these games were a lot that they ended up being a lot closer than they actually

were, which I don't want to take anything away from the Marlins, but it just feels a bit like they were a little bit closer. And then they have the Cubs coming into town. After that, Jesse and the Cubs have not been very good this season at all. So again, we talked about. out they got through a very difficult period of the season already. And they came through pretty unskathed, right? Like the first week was rough.

We had that opening day was great and then things went to shit, right? But they had some really good series wins over the last, you know, with this win and the win against the Dodgers, splitting the series with the St. Louis Cardinals. It just feels like this team is getting on the right role. It feels like everything's kind of coming together. And it feels like the same kind of thing like we had in what, 2011 with the anytime anywhere. Maybe it's just because Ian Kennedy's here.

I don't know. But this. I think that 2007 was 2007, I think was anybody anytime. But 2011 was kind of this a similar vibe. It was, you know, it was Ryan Roberts. It was a bunch of castoffs and things, right? Yeah. A lot of guys that were expected to be as good as they ended up being collectively as a group.

And I think the Diamondbacks have. have a good chance to maybe be that. I know even at, they're still dead last in the NL West, right? But who knows what happens after they come in here and face off against the Rockies, right? And I mean, right now, I don't think that winning the NL West at all is needs to be our vision, the fans vision, the team's vision at all. It just needs to be about being competitive, taking it one series at a time. It's that one and O mentality that the debacks have on the back of those shirts that they were. before the game. It's winning today and focusing on today and trying to be one and oh today. You can't worry about last season and you can't worry about the rest of this season. All you can really worry about is today's game. I mean, they could come in here on a 10 game winning streak and it still doesn't matter. They'd still need to focus on today's game. And that's what that whole

one and oh mentality is. We should all have a one and oh mentality, Jesse, every single one of us. We should all try to go out there and try to not put so much anxiety in our lives as to looking beyond more than just being the best we can be today. Right. Sure. Yeah. It's a good. No, no. No.

I'm trying to get you hyped up. I'm trying to get you guys pump. Let's go. So I'm getting you. Sun's got a big series. We got to think about this in every single way, right? Every single way. That was just like a rare like Derek wisdom drop.

Like that doesn't happen very often on the show. That was, let me, let me tell you. There's a lot of things I've realized I've made mistakes about. And honestly, even I get in my own head at times. But we definitely need to do everything we can to try to be better, right? Learn from, learn from yesterday, learn from the losses. The debacks had plenty of them last season to learn from, right? They don't want to go back to that.

This is a different team, though. completely different guys on this team stepping up and performing Jordan Loeplo. Cooper Hummel has been outstanding, continues to be. They have a bunch of guys right now that are doing the exact thing that Tori Lavello was looking for guys to do last year. Give them an opportunity, come into the game, try to help this team win a ball game in some way, shape, or form defensively, offensively, it doesn't matter. I mean, there's still a lot of things to tighten up.

I'm sure this team would not. I'm sure Tori Lavello wasn't thrilled about getting tossed from today's game, which by the way, T-love, shout out. We didn't talk about that. Yeah. I mean, that was, that play by Jazz was

just a giant mistake on the umpires part, right? To be honest, I know the runs ended up scoring, but it ended up helping the Diamondbacks out, even though they called it the double because it kept at least one run from scoring that probably would have,

had that gone down the line the way it did. it was just a really dumb situation. And I don't know how to feel because on one hand, if an umpire just points in the wrong direction by accident, he should be able to say I made a mistake and it was actually fair. But I feel a lot of umpires just stick to that shit because they called it that way. And they're like, well, I pointed in the wrong direction. So now it's a foul ball, right?

Like I almost, I'm almost glad they made the right call, but we still don't know if they did. We didn't have any good angles, Jesse, of that shot at all. Yeah, right. Views of where that ball landed. I know that they showed, they showed it plenty of times on the broadcast, but they still didn't have like that super good,

zoomed in view that that could show that the ball landed fair. Jazz came into second base and was laughing and talking to Nick Ahmed. And at one point he was showing Nick Ahmed, like with his arms, how far it was. Like so he was like he he he just even though he look like a giant you know cry baby in the way that he reacted and his his demeanor in that situation. It's probably because he had one of the best views at that ball and he knew 100% that it landed fair. The umpire even knew it, but he just apparently called the wrong direction, which I don't know how

that happened. I guess like that's that's possible, right? I mean, I mean, human beings make those sorts of mistakes. I don't want to say that's possible. I do it with you all the time. I never know which side you're on to point on on this broadcast. I figured it out, but I'm never good at that. Well, it's like it's backwards, right?

Because you're on like the front facing camera. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, it's all backwards. But anyway, yeah, it was a bizarre, an absolutely bizarre play. You don't really see umpires can kind of change their minds once they get. whether like that's kind of a weird thing. It just makes you feel like when they make an egregious error that they just stick with it even though they know they were wrong. Right.

Like that's that's that's almost what this felt like this was going to happen. And then though when they reversed the call, it caused Tori Lovolo to lose his goddamn mind. And yeah, it almost it honestly always good. Yeah, the hat throw. Honestly, I caught a glimpse of of Tori when he was arguing with the umpires. And I don't want to say Tori was like acting. but you could kind of tell he was out there with a purpose.

He wanted to get taught from this game. Absolutely. You wanted to get his guys fired up. He wanted to get tossed. And watching him like throw the cap on the ground, it's like, okay. Pretty good.

Yeah. We know this man is a lot of F words, Jesse. I counted six F words, I think. Wow. Yeah. He was trying to get thrown. That's a lot for Tori.

But yeah, you could tell that he was out. there on a mission and that was really his goal i didn't even really notice them throwing him out as much no i actually thought they didn't because he just yeah he went back to the dugout there was no big like there was no big yeah like you're out of here like there was no yeah on the on the tv broad came out they were pulled yeah banister came out to pull free us and that's when i knew that lovela was gone at that point yeah it was like okay this is not normal it makes me wonder uh if it was Bannister's call to go to Mantiply in the ninth instead of going to Ian Kennedy,

which I feel like Lovolo might have done, but I don't know. It's hard to, I mean, Ian Kennedy, I think. So he pitched yesterday. Yeah, he pitched yesterday. I want to say he's pitched in four out of five, at least three out of four, which is kind of a big, I think if he had gone today, it would have been four out of five, which is a little bit more than you really want to do with one of your better back end relievers. So I think he was probably unavailable as my guess, but, but yeah, not impossible. I mean, Jeff Bannister obviously

had the game in his hands after that play with Toray Lavello happened. So, yeah, I mean, it's kind of nice when your, when your bench coach is, you know, a former manager of the year. It works, it works out pretty well. I told you. I told you, Jesse, I knew this would come into the head. I knew it. I knew it would all come into play perfectly. That's what they got them there for. So Tori could go get thrown out and then they still had a coach. It's brilliant. It's a brilliant move. There you know. staff they've put together. But of course, one thing that you need to do is go realize that the diamondbacks aren't the only solid coaching staff in the valley. The Phoenix Suns by far have the best coach. It's where I get some of my wisdom, Jesse. I try to coach you up. You know,

I call you up, call you up, not call you out. Call me up. Yeah. out to Monty Williams and the Sons. They give me life. And there's some ridiculous people today with opinions about the Mavericks and it's inconsequential. Yeah, Nick Wright. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

That cloud. That cloud. Oh, my God. Don't even get me started on Nick Wright. Oh. But anyway, don't be wrong like Nick Wright. Be right like us and go to the NBA official sports betting partner,

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And thank you guys so much for joining us. Thank you to the Arizona Diamondbacks for stepping up on this road trip. They've been very good. Going into that little, at one point, like there was an impressive stat about like, they've hit a lot of home runs, man. And I mean, that's something else that they were not doing last year. You know, we talked about the passivity versus patience period that they had there for a while. And now all of a sudden we're seeing some great power out of this guy.

So we've given our flowers to Brent Strom and we've given our flowers to, of course, our friend Jeff Bannister, but let's give some flowers to Joe Mather for what he's done for this team, for them hitting, and for all the people that wanted him fired after a month. of this team existing or him being a coach with this team. So shout out to all the coaches for what they are doing. We're going to have a piece on that over at go p hnx.com. So stay tuned for that. Make sure you sign up that way you're ready for it when it drops. We thank you guys so much for checking out the show. Of course, you can follow us on Twitter. I am at cap underscore caveman with a k. Jesse is at Jesse and Friedman. Our show is at pH and X underscore Dbacks. But of course,

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So thank you guys again so much for checking out the show. On behalf of Jesse and myself, we appreciate your time. And remember, kids, baseball is fun. But baseball is so much more fun when the Arizona Diamondbacks win games.