PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Down & Out at Chavez Ravine

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

On this episode, Jesse and Derek are discussing what went wrong in the D-back first-ever doubleheader vs the Dodgers, Christian Walker being very good against their NL West rival, and how important one-run victories have been for Arizona. 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 to another edition of the PHNX D-Backs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Monti. Of course, I am your mayor of PHNX, and I am joined by my vice mayor, my friend, my co-host, the one and only Thunderstick Jesse Friedman. Well, Derek, you were right. Diamondbacks did get swept on the Tuesday doubleheader. So I think you also predicted that they would win the Monday game, which did not happen. But here we are three games into this series with the Dodgers and things have been a little bit rough so far. The Diamondbacks have yet to win a game in L.A.

Here's what I will say. Here's my assessment. The Diamondbacks have been put back in their place a little bit. I think we were overachieving. I think the Diamondbacks were doing some fun things to watch, and I think we were all excited about it. But let's be honest, the Dodgers are an extremely good baseball team. And they were not happy about losing that first series to the Diamondbacks.

And it's proved, I feel like they've proved how unhappy they were by at least the dominance in game two of the doubleheader, which we'll talk about here in a minute. But of course, this show is brought to you by the fine folks at the Draft King Sportsbook. Go download the Draft King Sportsbook. I know we don't want to pay attention to NBA basketball anymore. But if you do want to make some money as a new customer, you can bet just $5 on any. NBA team left in the third round of the playoffs. I hated the way I said that myself. Trust me.

I threw up a little bit in my mouth because, yeah, we miss you, the Phoenix Suns already. But there are still plenty of great teams to bet on, and you can bet $150 in free bets by betting $5 on any of those teams. Jesse, yeah, things didn't look good in at least the second game of the double header on Tuesday. But I will say this. We're going to talk about some of the numbers and things. The Diamondbacks at least, with the exception of one of the three games so far,

have kept the games pretty damn close to the point where they had a chance to win the other two games. Take that for what you will, right? If you want to hang your hat on that. The Arizona Diamondbacks have overachieved this season. We've talked about it a bunch. I think it would be a little, I don't know, your expectations have been reset. And I understand people's feelings, especially against the Dodgers.

The Dodgers is the one team I think that people really want to see the Diamondbacks beat. It was very encouraging to see them win the series against the Dodgers at Chase Field. And honestly, what I feel like we saw yesterday was the Dodgers, reasserting their dominance in the NL West and reminding everybody that they're still the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks are still the Diamondbacks. I was mostly sad and if anything in this series by Merrill Kelly's performance in game two. Merrill Kelly really things went off the middle for him and Merrill Kelly could not get things back on track. His command was just all over the place.

I mean, you could tell it pretty much from his first pitch of the game. game. I think he walked the first batter that he faced. And, and yeah, when Merrill Kelly is, is, you know, not dotting his spots. Like he, like we've seen him do so often this season, it's going to be a long day. I mean, his, his stuff is such that, you know, it's better. It's as good as it's ever been. But his stuff still isn't good enough that he can just, you know, throw it right over the middle of the plate and 81 miles an hour down the middle of the plate, which I saw several hits. Several hits. Several hits. that had that little 81, 82 miles an hour, and they were landing dead center, right,

right down Broadway. Yeah. Yeah, he just, he just hung some changeups and hung some curve balls. And it was, it was a rough outing for him all the way around. But yeah, I mean, we've, we've talked a lot about how the, even the starting rotation is probably due to, to regress a little bit. And, you know, hopefully Merrill Kelly kind of took care of that all in one outing, right? his ERA is now is now 3.27, I believe.

So, you know, the regression is, you know, maybe the regression is over now. And Merrill can get back to being the pitcher that he's been throughout most of the season. But yeah, I mean, a rough outing at Dodger Stadium, we know it's a tough place to pitch. We know this lineup that the Dodgers have is off the charts incredible. They've scored almost 200 runs this season in 36 games. Um, it's a really tough lineup. And, and if you're going to have one of those kind of games, it's pretty respectable for it to come against a team like that. Very true.

Well said. Um, but going back to Merrill Kelly, two innings pitched, five hits, eight earn runs, four walks, two strikeouts. The walks, the walks were really the part that killed him. Um, the four walks. I think every single walk ended up scoring. I could be wrong. about that, but it felt like every walk that Kelly was batted in. Maybe not so much in the first inning, but indefinitely in that second inning where

just nothing, nothing seemed to be going well for him at all. But Kelly has proven this season that he can bounce back in games from giving up those runs and getting back on track. So I'm not too worried about him bouncing back on the season. However, you never know, you know, how. quickly a game or an outing like this can actually change a pitcher. They were saying in the game that he didn't have confidence. You could tell in a couple of his pitches to even throw them.

So you could tell that Kelly had lost the confidence in some of his stuff in yesterday's game. But mostly, like you said, that was control issues. And I think the reason why he wasn't going to those pitches was he wasn't able to land them in the strike zone. You know, he just throwing a baseball. very hard. And it's sometimes it's like hitting where you don't even know what's really wrong with why you're not able to do that thing that you're normally able to do pretty well. Merrill Kelly has been damn good this season. This one was, I think, I think this is one worth letting him off the hook for a bit. I'm concerned though going forward and I'm, you know, definitely going to

keep an eye on Merrill Kelly and where his performance is at. I do. want to give a shout out to Caleb Smith, who came in in relief and did an excellent job. Yeah. Caleb Smith, I mean, I know he's been very inconsistent this season, but when you see him going against the Dodgers and throw three innings of one hit baseball, he gave up, I think, one walk, four strikeouts. Caleb Smith has, it's like we talked about before, he has the stuff and his stuff is good. he just doesn't have that consistency yet.

Caleb Smith in the month of May, Caleb Smith has only given up one run in nine and two thirds innings. He's given up just five hits, three walks, 12 strikeouts. He is a 0.93 ERA and a 0.83 whip in the month of May. His ERA was just so bad in April that it's still like six, six point five.

Yeah, his ERA at the end of April was 20.25. So that that's going to take a walk. to come down. But yeah, when it comes to relievers, you don't, you don't necessarily concern yourself with their, uh, their ERA that much at this point in the season. Sure. Absolutely. You know, one, one disastrous outing, one grand slam or something is going to, is going to throw your ERA completely off for a couple months. So yeah, it's been really good to see Caleb Smith, uh, bounce back in May. And, and I think he'll, he'll play a significant role in this bullpen moving forward. I mean, I think the diamond backs need him.

Other than Joe Mansplly, they don't really have any other steady lefties in their bullpen. So he's going to play a big role for sure. I want to apologize to Caleb Smith for constantly calling him a psycho. And this has nothing to do with the way that he looked at me when I walked in the clubhouse one day, making me wonder whether or not he's actually heard me say that. But it's just it's not a very nice thing to say about somebody. I say that about Caleb Smith, though, because he still continues to have an intensity around him that no other player that I really come across does. And I like that.

Yeah. I think I like that about him. And it's kind of like, even if I am calling him a psycho, which I apologize for doing, he's our psycho. And I love him for it. I saw, I think it was Brent Strom and Tori Lovelo during the broadcast talking to him during the, during this outing. And you could just tell that Tori Lavallo was saying some very encouraging things. He looked very happy with him, considering that at this point of the game,

I think it was eight to three. So it wasn't, it was, wasn't by far a close game. Tori Lavallo had nothing to be happy about. But he was very encouraging and looked like he had some very, uh, nice things to say to Caleb because he was really on a role.

And like you said, he has been all month long. It really is about getting, guys back mentally at times to believe in themselves and believe in their stuff at the plate, believing in their ability to hit a baseball, which besides throwing a baseball is one of the goddamn hardest things to do on the planet, right? It's very difficult to do the things that these human beings do at the high level that they do at.

So sometimes when they're not able to have things click, sometimes you just got to take a step back and realize how hard this game is. right? When they can't baseball, neither can we, right? When they can't throw the ball in the strike zone, damn sure we couldn't either, right? It's not, these aren't easy things to do. But I think the expectations,

the levels that people had for this team have rapidly changed, right? I saw people very, very upset about these losses, very passionate. There were a lot of requests to have members of the coaching staff fired, throw guys off the team and all this stuff, right? As emotional as we can get and as high and low as we can get sometimes about a sports team,

I'm actually pretty pleased that people are as passionate about this team. Lethargy is much more dangerous, being, you know, not caring at all about a team, which people seem to do last season, is much different than the feelings I feel people have for the team this season. I think that's accurate. Yeah, I mean, there was definitely a fair amount of the sky's falling energy after these three losses against the Dodgers. And I mean, the Diamondbacks have lost five in a row overall. They lost the last two games in the Cubs series. Three of those games were by one run.

Three in a row were by one run. So which I guess he kind of figured was going to happen at some point. The Diamondbacks have really won a lot of those. 50-50 sort of games. They've won a lot of one-run games this season, and so things are kind of come back into balance there. More than they did up until like September of last season, right? So not only is that a good sign,

but I hate to say this because it does sound a bit like loser talk, and I know people aren't going to like this, but aren't you, don't you take away that they're at least in these baseball games? Last night's game was one of three this season. season. I guess a number of them getting completely blown out of the water where you might as well turn it off in the fifth or sixth inning because it doesn't seem like they're going to mount a comeback. But even in game two, when the Diamondbacks were as down as big as they were, they fought back. They brought it within one and ended up losing the game seven to six. There is something to say about this team not rolling over and dying. There is something to say about how close these games have been, right? I understand people. frustrations with the team losing a game in the ninth that was tied up to that point. I understand the team, I understand fans' frustration with the team losing games to teams like

the Cubs that seem like during that series, no offense to the Cubs at all, but definitely seem like the Diamondback should have at least won the series. I'm not saying, oh, they needed to sweep the Cubs and really do this or that. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like the Dodgers. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Diamondback steal game four today against the Dodgers just because the Dodgers have kind of done what they set out to do, like I said, once again,

reasserting their dominance over the National League West. We'll have some more information about this over at go phnx.com. Obviously, if you haven't signed up to become a member, please do so. Jesse has a wonderful piece coming up on the Diamondbacks closers during the Mycazin era, and he's going to take a deeper dive into that. That way we can really just all be sad about the lack of, back end dominance the diamondbacks have had consistently over the last few years.

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You'll get that shirt of your choosing or a hat of your choosing. for free. If you sign up for that annual membership, if you're not interested in the annual membership option, we do have a month-to-month option, and you can get your first month for just 50 cents. Regardless of your membership status, you will get access to our members-only Discord, as well as members-only discounts over at that phnx locker.com. Sign up today, that way you don't miss our articles this week or any of the wonderful stuff coming out from the PHNX crew. If you're a son's fan, this is the place to be to mourn the loss of the 2020 season. Jesse speaking, though, of last night, the Diamondbacks continue to mash the ball, even in a loss.

Christian Walker, nine old runs on the season, nine career home runs at Chavez Ravine. I offered up the idea to change it to Christian Walker Park. I haven't heard any nose or yeses back yet, but I still think he owns that place. And again, it's a bit frustrating to see Christian Walker really. on track this month, but unfortunately he's not, he doesn't have many guys on base to bat in or to do what he needs to do in order to drive runs in. Diamondback's offense has been pretty stagnant. But again, I say that and they still put up six runs on the Dodgers yesterday. Christian Walker's been incredible. And I mean, early in the season, he was doing this as well in some ways.

all of the batted ball metric said that Christian Walker has had a very, very good season from the very first game of the season, really. And it just took a while for the results to come. He hit a lot of hard lineouts, a lot of hard flyouts, the warning track and whatnot. But things are starting to turn around for him. And I mean, if you look at Christian Walker's page on baseball savant, which is always a fun little thing, They've got all the little knobs that show you what percentile the player falls in in all these different categories.

Christian Walker is in the red on basically everything, including outs above average, stat casts a defensive metric, which has him in the 99th percentile and outs above average. He has played a phenomenal first base this season. And everything else from an offensive standpoint, his hard hit rate, his average exit velocity,

his barrel rate, his chase rate on pitches outside the strike zone. Everything has been near elite for Christian Walker this year. And I think even now, his batting line that he has now, it's starting to look better, but it probably should be even better than it is. He has had an incredible season all the way around. I think one thing that is interesting with Christian Walker is that there is a very dramatic drop-off in fastballs. that he is seeing this year. Throughout pretty much his entire career,

Christian Walker seen about 60% fastballs. And this year, that number has dipped below 50%. And the number of breaking balls that he's seeing has escalated by about 10% to compensate for that. So I think pitchers are aware of what Christian Walker is doing, and they're trying to throw him a little bit more junk right now in order to get him off his game. and certainly didn't work yesterday.

Whatever they were throwing him, Christian Walker was still hitting it. Here's another fun fact. Christian Walker's 11 home runs versus the Dodgers since 2019 are second most in baseball, trailing only Fernando Tatis Jr.'s 13. Wow. So if there's somebody that's,

half of those are Clayton Kershaw, right? Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. For sure. He has 13 career home run. runs against the Dodgers, which are the most he has against any opponent. He has 12 home runs against the Rockies. So Walker's 13 career home runs against the Dodgers are the most in his career. Yeah, I mean, it's nice to have that.

I feel like the Diamondbacks have had people in the past. I remember that just mash the ball against us constantly. Brandon Belt is a name that haunts my night. nightmares watching Brandon Belt hit the ball at Chase Field, Trevor Story. There's just certain guys that like every time they come up to the plate, you didn't want to see them. You just knew something bad was happened. And then of course something bad would ensue. Jazz Chisholm is kind of becoming one of those guys a little bit for the Diamondbacks. I don't want to see Jazz anymore for a little while. I'm glad they're done with the Marlins.

But it's nice to have Christian Walker be that guy, again, the Dodgers for us because the Diamondbacks need it and they need it definitely today in the finale of the series just to salvage something here against, you know, the Dodgers. I know again, and I just want to, I want to go back to tempering our expectations a bit. I know we all got excited. I'm excited. I played the little video about going over Mount 500 as much as I could, but now the Diamondbacks sit at top Mount 500 at 18 and 18 and have the chance to drop back down below 500 for the first time in about two weeks. And that's something I would love to see them avoid. Right now on this road trip, if you want to call it that, yesterday, Diamondbacks did not do very well in the first game of the series. They haven't done well, you know, really in any of these games. But like I said, if you want to look for something to at least hang your hat on for the time being.

I would say that the Diamondbacks are still hanging with the Los Angeles Dodgers, even though they're still not there at that point to be able to really, you know, beat them in a four-game series like this at home. The Dodgers are a tough opponent, and that's something that we definitely can forget from time to time, but they're one of the best teams in baseball, despite the fact that they haven't been that for, a little stretch here. They lost to the pirates. They've lost to some other teams that they probably

shouldn't lose to, but that's baseball baby. That's the reason why the Diamondbacks were named the most improved team so far this season. So it'll see, it'll be interesting to see if they can keep that up. When I read that, Jesse, I definitely checked to see the dosage on the OGs gummies I was taking because it seemed weird. It seemed foreign to me. It didn't seem right. but it seemed euphoric to see the Diamondbacks being named the most improved team in Major League Baseball so far this season. Are you talking about the Fangraphs article? Yeah, the Fangraph article. Yeah, it was interesting.

I think it was a pretty simple calculation they did. They were just like looking at last year's win percentage compared to this year's win percentage and how big the difference was. And yeah, I mean, the Diamondbacks record isn't that great. But when you're coming from a 52-in season, you know, I mean, if you're anything around mediocre, that's a pretty dramatic improvement. We talked about that, right, with the record, like at times when we were saying, like, maybe if they could win like close to be close to 500, but then when you thought about that, you're like, that is a 30-game improvement.

And it seems pretty unlikely. It seems like a pretty tall task to improve. 30 games. But the best way to do that, Jesse, is just to take one step at a time. And your first step is to stop by our local dispenser and grab some amazing scratch-made THD Gummys from our friends at OGs.

That's the first step. You pick out a flavor, I guess this would be the second step, picking out the flavor you like. Third step would be ingesting them and enjoying them. But OG's brands has a wonderful variety of flavors like orange creams, blackberries and cream, watermelon, fruit punch, all sorts of flavors

for you to choose from. They're available in their 10 milligram size or the 3 milligram microdose, and they're perfect if you're in the mood for an uplifting setiva or a chill indica. If you're interested in trying the amazingly delicious variety of flavors that OG's brands has to offer, go to OGsbrands.com. That's OGEEBrands.com to find OGs near you. And I'm not going to stand for people calling them funny gummies in our chat, even though I enjoy that name very much.

It makes me laugh very much, almost as much as I love the name, Krushkin Walker. Krustin Walker, which is what we're really going to try to push going forward here with Christian Walker. But Jesse, again, the Diamondbacks have won a lot of one game runs this season, which is why that record does stand where it's at, why it looks better, so much better than it did last season. The debacks are eight and four in one-run games this season after going 10 and 31 last year. Their eight one-run victories are tied for second most in Major League Baseball with the

Brewers and the Rays, trailing only to Toronto Blue Jays with their 10 one-run victories this season. I think they're, I want to say they're eight and six now following that the doubleheader with the Dodgers, which I guess only one of those games was a one-run game, but at least that's five. Oh, okay. Yeah, they'd be eight and five. Yeah, this does it. Yeah, this would be before yesterday's doubleheaders.

So, yeah, game one was a one-run game. So, yeah, they'd be eight and five now in one-run games. That's a lot of, I mean, that's a lot of, I mean, that's a lot of, one-run games. Regardless of how many they're winning and losing, I mean, 13 one-run games in 38 games. I mean, that means that one out of every three games is really coming down to the wire. If you like across the National League, there's only one other team that has more as many or more one-run games as the Diamondbacks have. And that's the Miami Marlins who they just played. And they played a heck of a lot of one-run games against the Miami Marlins a couple weeks ago. So yeah, the Diamond

They've played teams close on both sides. They've won a lot of close games. They've lost a lot of close games. There have been a few blowouts along the way. A couple of the games against the Marlins weren't close. The D-backs won one and they lost one. And then, of course, this one against the Dodgers last night. That one obviously wasn't close either.

I think there were a couple against the Mets early in the season that were more lopsided. But other than that, the Diamondbacks have consistently been in games, like you said before. And that's something that we couldn't say about this team for a very large portion of last year. They did lose a lot of one-run games, especially early in the season. But there came a point when the Diamondbacks just weren't particularly competitive with their opponent. Right. It just games would get lopsided early. And it was it was tough for fans to watch, I think.

And nobody wants to sit there, you know, through a three-hour baseball game if you're down three or four runs right from the get-go. So they've been a lot more watchable in 2022, and I think a lot more fun to watch for people. At one point, the Diamondbacks were ranked, I think, number one in walks in Major League Baseball. Yeah. Now they're not even ranked number one in our division. The D-Banks rank fourth in the National League,

fourth in the National League with 132 walks, the three teams ahead of them, the Dodgers, the Padres, and the Giants. the National League West, ladies and gentlemen, the National League West. It's literally, you're right. You're right. In all of baseball, the Diamondbacks are fourth and walks, and those are, wow, that's crazy. The teams in front of them are, of course, all the teams in our division except for the Rockies.

The Rockies just didn't get the memo. They're 19. I don't know what they're up to. Chris Bryant had a rehab start in Albuquerque, so he's going to be back soon. So there's another headache that the Diamondbacks are going to have to deal with the in the NOS, but the D-backs are tied for second in the National League now with 25 home runs in 17 road games behind the Giants, or I'm sorry, behind the Phillies. The Phillies have 28 and 17 run games, and I'm not sure if they had one yesterday or not

or if it was a road game, but Diamondbacks close on the heels of the Philadelphia Phillies for the most home runs on the road in the National League. So again, there are a lot of things here. It's kind of like what you said earlier with Christian Walker. There are a lot of things that are very encouraging for this team. There are a lot of metrics that say that the Diamondbacks actually are pretty good baseball team. It's not to say that they aren't. They're just still, there are still some factors that are making them look better than they actually are.

The biggest area, I feel like that's impacting, and we've talked about it all season, is the starting pitching. starting pitching has been incredible. Their ERAs have been mind-boggling. And it's also pretty crazy to have three guys all on the same team, all putting up career best numbers here in their first seven, eight starts of the season, right? But like a lot of things, there's going to be scouting,

there's going to be video on these guys. They're going to pick up on what they're doing. I mean, if you watch this team, you can pick up on what they're doing, right? If you watch Madison Bumgarner start against the Dodgers, he was using his ability to hit the edge, hit the outside edge against batters, and he was really using his accuracy to keep himself in the game.

And Madison Bumgarner did a great job. But if he wasn't locating like he was the other day against the Dodgers, Madison Bumgarner's day would have been much like Meryl Kelly's. Bumgarner right now is relying heavily on that locating. And again, if they're not, they're not going to be successful. It's what Tori Lavello said about Mark Malanson and what we've said about Mark Malanson. His stuff isn't overpowering, but like Bumgardner, if he can locate,

he can literally pick you to death with hitting the edges and hitting the corners. If he's not, he's not going to be effective. So, you know, this pitching staff has put up some amazing numbers, but between the unearned runs behind them and some other factors that we've kind of looked at, we had a feeling that a day like this was coming for Merrill Kelly and there'll probably be a day coming like this for Madison Bumgarner pretty soon as well. I mean, Mad Bum came pretty close to completely unraveling there. And I mean, it wasn't a good start for him all the same. I mean, his numbers in that start were not good. And I mean, it's hard, like we said earlier, it's hard to

pitch in Dodger Stadium. And it's hard to get through that lineup more than one or two times. without getting your head blown off. That's what I felt with Tyler Gilbert. If we want to talk about Madison Bumgarner, Merrill Kelly, their pitching performances, in my opinion, were on them. If you want to talk about me being upset

about Tori Lavello's managerial moves, yes, the Tyler Gilbert start was the one that infuriated me. Tyler Gilbert has... One batter, too many, right? Not only one batter, too many, just one inning. Like, it felt like his time was already up.

It felt like he should have been pulled. and then he comes back out. I think he was over 80 pitches. It wasn't just how high his pitch count was. It was that I think it was the third time and the rotation was coming back up. And Tyler Gilbert had honestly been pretty lucky to get away with what he had gotten away with,

mostly because he was very aggressive against Dodgers pitchers, and his aggressiveness was what was giving him success in that game. But you're going to figure out eventually that the dude's throwing you a fastball on, you know, for the first pitch every single time, and you're going to be looking for it. You're going to be sitting on it. Not a fastball, but I think it was a cutter he was throwing. He was throwing a cutter and a singer primarily.

It happened. It happened the exact way that good teams do. They pick up on what the pitcher is doing. And eventually, maybe not the second time through the lineup, but the third time through the lineup, they're going to figure you out. I was screaming about not pulling him out, prior to that inning.

And then the inning kept going on. He was like close to 100 pitches and he was still being left out there to, I mean, Fenn for himself, I get at times that that's as a manager what you need to do. But if you talk about managing a baseball game a minute, to win it, that's one that I can say was on Tori.

Yeah, I think everyone on the same page that that was, he just left him in. Yeah, probably not a batter too soon, probably a few batters, or too long, probably a few batters too long in that outing. So, yeah, I mean, I think especially with a team like the Dodgers, you really have to be careful about that third time through the order.

I mean, they're a team where you can get through a couple times, but especially with a pitcher like Tyler Gilbert, who's, you know, his stuff isn't overpowering. He's kind of a finesse guy. You got to be pretty careful with that. And I think even with Zach Davies in the series finale here today, I think you also have to be pretty careful about that. Davies has pitched well this year,

but I'm not sure you want this Dodgers lineup getting him, you know, a full third time through the order. Unless he's just, you know, totally cruising through the game, which we'll have to see how things go there. But,

yeah, I mean, this Dodgers lineup, they do their damage that third time through the order. And you have to be really careful about when you pull the plug on guys. Well, the Diamondbacks have some issues still. in the bullpen. So I understand them not turning to the bullpen as often, but they really have to work out who they can rely on there.

I think the most depressing thing about this series has been the Diamondbacks got beat by the Dodgers in every possible way. We've talked about which parts weren't working at different times. All of it wasn't working at times in this series so far against the Dodgers. So hopefully the Diamondbacks can, you know, kind of. I don't know. Get a little bit of redemption in the final game on what is today. Today's Wednesday. I don't even know what day it is of the week, folks.

Very early. But of course, Jesse and I, we're always here. Late nights, early mornings. We're always here to cover this team for you. And we thank you guys so much for joining us. Of course, you can follow us on Twitter. I am at cap underscore caveman with a K. Jesse is at Jesse and Friedman.

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Of course, you can follow us on all of our social media. Go to Draft King's Sportsbook, by the way. If you haven't done so already, I had a heartbreaking bet on yesterday's game. I'm not, I'm ashamed to admit it, but yeah, I bet on the Dodgers. See, just because the Diamondbacks lose doesn't mean you have to lose. Go to the Draft King Sportsbook. Now you can get down on the third round of NBA playoff action. New customers can bet just $5 on any team to win, and you will get $150 in free bets if they do. Turn a small bet into a big payday during the NBA playoffs with the Draft King's

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gambling problem.1-800 next step new customers only minimum $5 deposit required. Eligibility restrictions apply. See draftkings.com slash sportsbook for details. Make sure you sign up at go phnx.com as well for membership, month to month, membership annual membership. We just want you to become a part of our PHNX family. Join us here for all this wonderful baseball coverage. We will be back later today. Today is Wednesday. We'll be back later today for our live episode covering this post-series with the Dodgers. And hopefully, once again, the Diamondbacks can salvage a win here in the finale. But we thank you guys again so much for joining us on behalf of Jesse and myself. We appreciate you, giving us your time.

And remember kids, baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when you don't have to play the Dodgers.