PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Ep. 18: Does the D-backs' slow Spring Training start mean anything?

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

We discuss the D-backs' slow 2-8 start to spring training, including which players have impressed so far and which haven't. We also talk about PECOTA's underwhelming projection for the 2020 team. 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.

Welcome back into the Rattle Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Jesse Friedman, along with Jeff Weiser, my co-hosts, as we enter episode 18 of the show. And I believe this is now our third show of the new year. And we are here in March. Spring training is officially in full swing. Jeff, it's a good thing that spring training results don't carry over to the regular season because so far things have not looked particularly good for the Diamondbacks.

They enter today as we speak with a record of two and eight. They dropped another one last night to the Kansas City Royals. And Jeff, obviously, you know, spring training results. You certainly, you know, we've seen this Diamondbacks team be really, really good in the past at times when their spring trainings were just absolutely horrible. So I don't think any of us are necessarily too concerned about the two and eight start so far. But I think more would you look at it in terms of spring training is, of the team performance you're looking at, you know, the performance of individual players. And I think those are the things that we're really starting to pay attention to now that some of these guys have gotten some abats under their belt.

We're not looking at a sample size of, you know, three plate appearances anymore for most of these players. Jeff, I'm curious from your standpoint, what are some names that have maybe stuck out to you as guys who have looked good or maybe more likely not so good in this rough start so far for the debacks? Yeah, I mean, it's difficult to get off to a good start when you run up against the buzzsaw that is the Kansas City Royals. Yeah, it has been a slow go, which is fine. I think you nailed it. It's interesting. It's easy to overreact to kind of the slow start or the small samples in games that are frankly meaningless. so this guy is not falling by any means.

Tim LaCastro is still being hit by pitches. True. Everything is okay. Yep. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple, you know, a couple guys that I think, you know, that deserve talking about. But the first one that jumps out to me was last night's starter, Luke Weaver. He's a guy that obviously they're going to count on this year.

He's not going to be able to throw an entire season's worth of innings. You know, the most encouraging thing is that he's out there right now. Yeah. you know after the elbow issues and learning that you know he didn't need Tommy John surgery which was which is encouraging but he was missing his spots last night and often not by a lot but he just it seemed like he had a bit more tempo going he seemed to be maybe a little ramped up and I know the game time was delayed last night and that can you know cause some havoc for starting pitchers so he's a guy that I'm that

I'm kind of, you know, looking at and it's kind of fresh in my mind after last night. But, you know, all in all, as long as he's healthy, I feel pretty comfortable with him. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on that. I think Luke Weaver is a guy who at this point in his career is a proven enough commodity that I don't think he's, you know, coming into spring training looking to earn a spot. I think the spot is probably there for him so long as he's healthy. another guy on the starting rotation who has stuck out to me on on the opposite side someone who's actually looked really good so far has been Zach Gowlin I've really seen just all four

pitches really working for Zach Gowlin and he's a rare pitcher in today's game that actually has four pitches that are that are viable that he can throw at you at any time in any count the velocities look pretty good for him he's been in the 93 to 95 range I believe throughout most of spring training. And all of the hype that has surrounded Zach Gowan over the last few months, even dating all the way back to when he came over in a trade at the trade deadline last year, that hype is still there because this young guy, I think, has the potential to be the Diamondbacks best pitcher this season in their starting rotation.

I know there's, you know, there's Mad Bum coming over. There's Robbie right in a contract year. But if, you know, if 2020 comes and goes and Zach Gowan, was the best pitcher for the Diamondbacks during the regular season. I don't think I would really be all that surprised. I think he is polished enough to get there already. And so far from what I've seen in spring training, I know he gave up a big three-run home run the other day.

But at this point, you're looking less at ERAs and things like that and more just kind of the makeup of pitchers and what it looks like when they're throwing. Are they comfortable? Do their mechanics look good early in spring training? And so far for me, Jeff, Zach Gallinus looked really, really good this spring training. Yeah, I mean, totally nailed it. I mean, the guy's given up one hit and one walk, somehow surrendered three earned runs. Yeah, unfortunate timing with that home run.

Yeah, but he's struck out five, you know, and his whip is like paper thin. So he's another, you know, just a guy that I think is a huge boost for them. you know, and we'll kind of talk about a little later, I think, what he, what he kind of means to the club and how to kind of evaluate his impact. But it is good to see him come out firing. I think, I think he really caught so many people by surprise last year. He just, he has all the tools necessary. It's, it's really unbelievable. And I think about, you know, how far the scouting process has come over the years.

I think about how far, you know, data has come over the years. And the fact that a guy like Zach Gallen can fly under even kind of the prospect radar to just shove in AAA. And all of a sudden people take notice. He gets called up. He's, you know, doing this thing in Miami. He comes to Arizona is even better. I mean, there are still opportunities to find diamonds in the rough. And, you know, through some of the reporting that's happened around the acquisition of Gallen,

It's very encouraging that the Diamondbacks identified him early and really approached Miami with the notion of like, hey, this is a guy we want. What do you want for him? And went back and forth and ultimately settled on the Jazz Chisholm deal. But it's very encouraging that the scouts for the Diamondbacks picked him up well before he was really on the public radar and started that dialogue with Miami. be very early in the process and that really allowed them to come in scoop him up because at this point, I mean, what would he cost if a team wanted to get him from Arizona? Yeah. He would be very expensive, I have to think.

Yeah. Yeah, no doubt, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think young controllable starting pitching is kind of the name of the game. Yeah. Just all across baseball. And obviously, Jazz Chisholm is, you know, a great prospect still. has a bright future out of him in Miami. We certainly hope the best for all for him in his career.

But, but yeah, to your point, I mean, young starting pitching that is controllable, the Diamondbacks have Zach Allen, but through 2024, I believe, or something along those lines. And, you know, he's about as good as they come, you know, as far as, you know, 24-year-old starting pitchers go. He's certainly an exciting one. I want to transition to some maybe more sour. news. Jake Lamb so far this spring training we saw. I know we were talking before we hopped on the air

about his new batting stance. He's kind of cocked the bat back a little bit, kind of opened up the stance, maybe given himself a chance to see the ball coming in a little bit better. Obviously, spring training results aren't everything, but I wouldn't say I've necessarily seen a whole lot of hard contact. I think he's one for 13 so far with the bat since spring training opened up. Jeff, I'm curious what you think of the new stance and what we're expecting or maybe not expecting from Jake Lamb this season. I mean, speaking of not expecting, I wasn't necessarily expecting him to be here. Yeah. So that is where it all starts.

Yeah, that's continued to kind of catch me by surprise. You know, what he's shown this spring is not going to expedite, you know, a trade necessarily. So, you know, he looks like a guy that maybe is primed. sort of hang on to that 26th roster spot, I guess, you know, as they try to get him going. The stance change is interesting to me. You know, they've opened him up. He's, he's now has that sort of open stance and then he sort of steps into the bucket as the pitch comes. You know, I, I, I view that as a technique to help him see the ball better. It just kind of, you know, by opening that front side, he gets a better look at the pitcher.

And, you know, there must have been something they identified there. I could see that being especially useful against left-handed pitching. We know that he already, you know, he struggles with that to such a degree that it makes me curious about even using him against left-handed pitching with any kind of regularity. Yeah. And so if he's going to continue to face righties, you know, 80% of the time, as I would expect, is it really worth tweaking his stance? I'm assuming that the people in charge have done the math.

The coaches, you know, his hitting coach, Jake himself, and they feel like that's a worthwhile trade-off. But it does look awkward. I'll tell you that. It takes a little getting used to him like, who is that guy? He looks like Jake Lamb, but he doesn't look like Jake. So it's interesting. I mean, I think that'll take some time to even out.

And, you know, I'd probably focus on the latter half of spring training to see if that swing change starts to give him some traction. Yeah, elsewhere up and down the lineup, we've been talking about how it's pretty much been Catel Marte or bust for the Diamondbacks from an offensive standpoint so far. And I think that's something that's worth talking about because, you know, spring training for, you know, your biggest name player for a guy who's coming off an all-star season, you know, when Paul Goldschmidt would have a bad spring training, usually, you know, you just kind of brush it off. You don't really care. But I think when your star does, you know, come off their first season that was truly,

truly excellent like Coutel Marte did, and he follows it up with what he's done so far this spring training, just smacking the cover off the ball in all directions. He hit a home run, and literally his first plate appearance. of the spring training of spring training and i loved what he said after he hit the home run they asked him in the in in the post game interview about that home run and he literally just said yeah i hit 32 last year so i wasn't surprised um which you know you don't you don't see that kind of talk out of arizona superstars too often not not something we're used to seeing so i i personally appreciated kattel just kind of going out there and and uh saying words like that but um

But yeah, truly what he's done so far over the spring has been, has looked very much the same as what we saw all of last season. And Jeff, I know you were talking before we started recording that this start, even though it's happening in spring training against, you know, pitchers who are lesser than what we're going to see come opening day and the start of the regular season, it's still encouraging and it gives you some semblance of hope that Ketel Marte has a chance to be just as good this year as he was last year when he hit three times. 29 and hit 32 home runs and all these other things. Yeah, I think as you watch spring training baseball, it's funny because you see a bunch of AAA players and some double A players, bench guys that are that are up there, you know, getting their hacks, getting their looks. And they're like trying to find a groove, you know, they don't look totally comfortable. You know, they're, you know, fouling some balls off and, you know, hitting dribblers.

and then, you know, I myself, you know, I am prone to sort of regressing performance. But then I just watch Catele-Marte step in the box. And I mean, even the foul balls are just pounded. He hits everything so hard, the swing. I mean, he just looks so confident. There's no guessing. There's like, it just, he looks as dialed in as he did last season. And it's really a joy to watch, first and foremost, but the debacks are going to need that.

And to see him come up, you know, hit the ground running is really encouraging. I saw that home run. It was impressive. He looks like the same guy. And so it's very nice when your star player comes up and from day one establishes himself. I mean, he may go through some sort of slump, you know, this spring. by all it means he looks more than capable of continuing to be an impact player it's not that I think he would have rolled out of bed sometime in January and forgotten how to hit but we have a

pretty small sample to work with of him being like an MVP caliber hitter but just the eye test alone suggests that he is ready to you know come out and be that kind of force or at least you know, try to be. And that's really at this point all we can ask for. Elsewhere throughout spring training, I think a few names that have stuck out to me, unfortunately, mostly more so on the negative side than the positive. Josh Rojas did hit a home run yesterday, which was really good to see. He, I believe, is three for 16 so far in the spring. So a bit of a slow start, but good to see the home run yesterday. Rojas is obviously a guy who probably more than just,

just about anyone else on the roster really does have something to fight for. This spring training is, you know, a big, you know, utility role off the bench. A guy that we pegged is probably making the opening day roster. But I think he'll probably have to kick things into gear just a little bit down the stretch here to kind of improve his chances as far as that's concerned. Domingo Laba has looked pretty, pretty solid. I think he's four for 15 so far, OPS of 846. I know he hit a home run.

the other day he hit a double yesterday in the game. So he's another guy who's kind of in the mix with Josh Rojas for that utility roll off the bench. Rojas obviously has a little bit more positional flexibility on his side since he can cover the outfield and basically everywhere on the diamond, whereas Leib was more of a middle end field, maybe third base guy. But that'll be interesting to see how that plays out for sure. I think on the bullpen side of things, I know you were not. super happy with Hector Rondone throwing a two-seem fastball yesterday, middle-in to Michael Franco, which was not great to see.

We've talked before about how he allegedly had planned to kind of lay off the two-seem fastball slash sinker, whatever you want to call it, and kind of lean more on his four-seam fastball and the slider and just kind of be a two-pitch pitcher. But yesterday, he went with the two-seamor. It was not pretty. It went a long, long ways. So hopefully, hopefully Hector Rondone is able to clean things up. I think he's just allowed one run over three innings so far.

Yeah. Nothing too startling as far as he's concerned. Yohan Lopez unfortunately gave up, I believe, four runs it was the other day. His command was just a little bit all over the place with both the fastball and the slider. So I think, I think Jeff with the bullpen as far as that's concerned, obviously the Diamondbacks went out, they got Ron Done, they got Gwere. but the reality is that this bullpen is just a little bit unsettling no matter what how you look at it. And I think guys like Yohan Lopez who maybe you figured were, you know, locks to make it after having a good season last year,

I think he's, you know, starting to show that the Diamondbacks bullpen is maybe not quite as, quite as full proof as we might have hoped. And even guys like Yohan Lopez, who was with the Major League team throughout the entire season last year, is also prone to having issues of his own. So I'm curious, what have you seen from the Diamondbacks bullpen? Are there any other names you want to throw into the mix that you've noticed so far here in the spring? Yeah, definitely.

I'm going to, I'm going to do a brief kickback to the position player's side for just a second. I think it's interesting that the batters with the most at bats this spring, I think this back to the sort of position battle conversation. are guys like Ildamaro Vargas, Trace Thompson, Kevin Crone, Tim LaCastro, Josh Rojas, and Domingo Leba. So if you're talking about who's going to maybe find that, you know, 25th, 26th roster spot, that might be a good clue as to, you know, who's getting that work to sort of show they belong. Yeah. But to your question about the bullpen, I mean, I think you're spot on.

I think we need to once again sort of strap in our seatbelts and prepare for a bit of a while. ride. You know, Archie Bradley and Andrew Chappen have been fine in their, you know, very, very, very limited action. Havi Guerra has been fine in his limited action. You know, that's, that's all well and good. But yeah, Rondone, I, you know, his overall line looks really, really good this spring. But I did see that two steamer and I just sat there and said to myself, that's the pitch. You know, that was discussed that was not going to be thrown. You know, and it's a two seamer that starts, you know,

maybe on the outer half of the plate are kind of middle, and it's elevated, and then it cuts down and in, and you're just putting it right, you know, right in the power zone to a right-handed hitter. And, you know, if you want to throw that pitch against opposite-handed hitting and have it run off the plate away from guys, you know, okay.

But throwing it to same hand. handed hitters is dangerous because it's it's either got to be so far outside and then come back and nip the strike zone or you got to like bust guys hard inside like off the plate with it and if it catches too much of the plate man you are just serving it up on a tea um yeah i'm with you on yon lopez he um you know he was erratic last year um and got away with it uh time and time again that guy you know hard hit balls would get caught or you know you know you know he was die on the warning track and you're just going, oh my goodness, you know, he is living on a hope and a prayer. But it's a live arm and it's a velocity that they don't have a lot of. And so I think

it's really critical that he works something out. Kevin Ginkle, you know, has given up a few runs, but, you know, seems to be okay. I just think the overall collection is going to be once again a little iffy. I think the back end will probably be okay. It's going to be the times when Robbie Ray struggles to get out of the fourth inning and you've got to get relievers through the fifth and the sixth. It's going to be those kinds of situations that are going to be really difficult. The underbelly of just about every major league bullpen is vulnerable.

And so making sure that there's a successful bridge. you know back to the Chathens the Bradleys the Gueras and even Rondone is really important. Can the starter go five or six strong and then hand it over to those guys? If that's the case, I feel pretty good. But in the instance where you need to throw a bullpen game or your starter gets shelled early or even like, you know, Robbie Ray doesn't necessarily get shelved but he throws 110 pitches through four innings, that's when they're going to be vulnerable. And that's what I'm a little bit leery of.

But I think you could make that case about most bullpens in baseball. You know, there's one guy who we didn't necessarily plan on talking about extensively, but I want to bring up. I saw him pitch a couple days ago when I was out at the game on Monday. John DuPontier, I think, is a name. I knew you were going to go there. Yeah, yeah, you probably did. I guess I'm predictable in my own right. But John DuPontier, not that long ago, was going to potentially headline a trade to the Baltimore Orioles for Manny Machado.

That was only like about a year and a half ago when the Diamondbacks were thinking of doing that at the trade deadline. And they didn't want to let him go. They thought that DuPontier was just too good and had too high of a ceiling as a starting pitcher in this league to want to give up on him when he was still kind of at the brink of, of even breaking a major league roster for the first time. And I watched him pitch the other day. His command looked a little bit off. The stuff was good. He had a few strikeouts.

And I'm curious, Jeff, because I think we all know a guy like, you know, maybe Taylor Clark or Taylor Widener. These are guys who probably should not have prominent roles on the Diamondbacks this season. At least I think if you can manage to stay away from them, that's probably a, you know, you know, would bode well for the diamond backs.

We've kind of seen what Taylor Clark is based on what he did last year. And it wasn't always the prettiest thing in the world. But DePontier, you know, was up and down, struggled with injuries last year. I think he's a little bit less proven of a commodity and has more ceiling to tap into than those other guys might have. Where do you see a guy like DuPontier maybe fitting in for the diamond backs this year? I think he's one of the guys that, like, and maybe be that bridge.

Because he's capable of throwing more than an inning at a time. Right. And by keeping him somewhat stretched out, you know, you retain the possibility of, and this is assuming he doesn't, you know, begin his year in Reno or even if he does that he sees extended time, you know, with the diamond backs. By keeping him somewhat stretched out, you know, you can put him back in a starter's role in a pinch if you need to. he can probably get you four innings and then you know sort of hand things over you know i haven't

caught his two starts um but the line looks you know looks reasonable um he's walked three guys in three and two thirds but he's also struck out six so um you know that tells me that the stuff is probably you know pretty sharp um where it ends up might still be a little bit of an issue um but The stuff is good enough to, you know, get those swinging strikes and punch guys out. So I remain kind of high on him. I just think that we haven't seen at the Major League level. We have not seen the best of John DePontier. No.

I think we can all agree on that. And, you know, we may have to continue to wait for it. But I think it's still in there. The talent is there. And when he's right, when he's healthy, I think he can still be really effective. I've talked about it before, but fastball command is paramount for him. His secondaries are okay, but he's not going, if he cannot locate his fastball on both sides of the plate, he's going to have a tough time. I've seen that and starts from him in the past where, you know, he can, you know, he can hit sort of the glove side of the plate, but not the arm side.

And it just causes problems. So he's really vulnerable at times against left-handed, you know, against left-handed batters if he's not able to, you know, locate the ball, you know, especially his fastball where he needs to. So his health is first and foremost. And I think if I think if he can stay healthy, if he can keep the reps, if he can stay in a group, you know, it doesn't have to take, like, extended time off. I mean, imagine going from throwing, you know, just about every day to not throwing for six. weeks then having to start again that sounds really hard so yeah this is good to see him in action but you know just judging from the stat line having not laid eyes on him it seems to suggest that the stuff at least is there yeah yeah and I can I can say from the

eye test that that's a very accurate assessment the stuff looked pretty good the command was was maybe a little iffy form so I think that'll be something to monitor for sure I want to transition into a question that we We got a very interesting question from Greg Littleton. Q says that Bocoda predicts 79 wins for the Diamondbacks in 2020 after winning 85 games in 2019. And with the offseason additions, do you think the D-Ubacks will actually take a step back this season? Or is Bacota underestimating them? I think that's a great question, Greg.

I think it's a question a lot of us are asking ourselves right now. Those Pocoda projections come out and some fans are very happy with them. there's not so much. And I think for the Diamondbacks fan base, a lot of people have been a little bit, a little bit underwhelmed after, you know, Madison Bumgarner came in, the Starling Marte trade was pulled off toward the end of the offseason. There were a lot of reasons for people to be optimistic about this team. And then, you know, a projection like that comes in for them to be, you know, five or six

games worse than they were last year. And suddenly people are left asking questions. I'll start and give my answer and then I'll pitch it over to you, Jeff. Sure. I think it definitely does underestimate the Diamondbacks, but it does it in a way that if you kind of think about the guts of Pocoda and how these projections are coming out, it makes sense why a team like the Diamondbacks would be underestimated.

You look at their best players from a year ago. Cateau-Marty posted just over seven wins above replacement for the first time in his career. And stat systems like Bocoda, are going to look at a guy like Catel Marte and they're not going to see a seven-win player again. They're probably going to see like a four-win player roughly in that neighborhood. That's where most of the projections have been. And it's understandable in a way because Catel-Marty has only ever done that once in his career.

And so from a statistical standpoint, you'd probably expect that he would fall back a little bit and kind of end up somewhere in between where he was last year and where he's been in years prior to that. And the same goes for, you know, maybe a guy like Eduardo Escobar who had a big season last year. A guy like Zach Gallen, who was really, really good in limited time last year. He's not going to get a super lofty projection from a, you know, a system that sees him as a 25-year-old starter who's, who's, you know, hardly pitched in the majors, doesn't really have a super long track record of any kind. And you look up and down the DeBax roster, and there's a lot of guys like that. And so I think given the nature of the Diamondbacks roster and how there's a lot of players who are, you know, have high ceilings that we see, but the projection system doesn't necessarily see that or at least is not going to expect that from them.

And so that's why you end up with, you know, a projection of 79.8 wins for a team that looks much improved in 185 games last year. So I think the Diamondbacks are better than that personally. but when you evaluate where these projections come from, it starts to make a lot more sense why the Diamondbacks would be put at, you know, 79 or 80 wins for this year. Yeah, I totally agree. You nailed it. Let me ask you just, you know, based on your interpretation,

without looking at any numbers, do you feel like Madison Bumgarner or Cotel Marte will have a bigger impact from a wins above replacement standpoint in 2020? Oh, I have to say Cotele-Marty. Right. And so by Pocoda and by Warp, and I obviously work for baseball perspective, so that's what we're relying on here. But Madison Bumgarner is forecast for 3.8 wins above replacement, and Catea is forecast for 3.2. Wow.

In my mind, this shouldn't even be close, right? But I think it highlights exactly what you're talking about. So if we go back through Madison Bumgarner's career, we see a very stable level of performance. Even though he was hurt at times, when he came back, he was still really productive. And so we have this huge body of work to evaluate. And that gives a system like Pocoda a lot of data and stable data to work with. If we go to Catelle-Marté, we see, you know, negative warp, you know, just a little bit. and then, oh my goodness, like, you know, a huge figure.

So that gives the computer system, like, a lot to think about. It obviously weights the 2019 performance more heavily, but only, you know, only by so much. And so I think it's, I think that really pinpoints, you know, and highlights kind of the disparity you're talking about. So we can make our own kind of mental adjustments, you know, and Pocoda can't, you know, necessarily tell who's going to it hurt. It does account for injury time in some ways, like guys that are perpetually hurt will not be forecasted to play 160 games. But it does make it challenging. And so I think we can do our own sort of mental adjustments and probably see that we think the Diamondbacks are going to be better than that. As we were kind of discussing, you know, before we recorded, the difficulty is

that if you adjust the model or you want to say, hey, Catel Marte is a lot better than that. Like, I've seen it with my eyes, I feel like he's way better. We have to go through and do that for like every player in baseball. And those adjustments, you know, we're trying to get away from the sort of manual eye test adjustment, you know, in principle. So take it with a grain of salt, but I think you're right. I think the Diamondbacks are better than an 80 win team. Wow, 3.8 wins above replacement for Madison Bumgarner.

Yeah. And if he hits that mark, like I will be. I would be pleased. Yeah. I will be very pleased because I think if we look at the Diamondbacks rotation, you know, losing Zach Granke, but adding

Madison Bunnarder is a net negative. But then you hope to sort of make up the gap in more innings from Luke Weaver and more innings from Zach Gowan. So maybe that comes out kind of a wash and the rotation is basically just as good as it was

a year ago. In terms of the hitting side, you know, you look at some of the guys like you bring in a Cole Calhoun, you know, you look at some of these different changes that are happening there. And, you know, it's probably a little bit better than it was a year ago, you know, provided health again and, you know, maybe Christian Walker taking another step forward. But you have to hope that Catelle Marte does not take a step back. You know, how does Starling Marte transition? Those are all. questions that we have to have to ask, you know, how does Stephen Boat, you know, handle his role. So those are all things to think about. I think probably on the hitting side, things are maybe slightly better than they were a year ago, maybe not by a ton, but by a little bit. So, you know, if we make that mental adjustment, I mean, I still see them kind of as a, you know, plus or minus a couple wins, like an 85 win team. That's kind of how I feel about it. Like,

where do you think you stand? Yeah, no, I think I'm roughly in the same neighborhood. I will say to the credit of, you know, a system like Pocoda, I think it is telling that that that kind of season we at least have to acknowledge is possible. Like, like the, it is at least possible that could tell Marte really is, you know, maybe not a 3.2 win player, but, you know, maybe he's a 4 win player. Maybe he really does take a step back. And let's face it, if Catelle Marte is a four-win player, he's still a really good player. That's really good. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

There's no shame in being a four-win player year after year. Some of the best players in baseball are, you know, four-win players year after year. That's really, there's really nothing wrong with that at all. And I think up and down the roster, there are other situations like that. You know, maybe Eduardo Escobar is not going to hit 35 home runs again. maybe his age starts to catch up to him a little bit. And we've also talked at length about the starting rotation in how the ceiling is really high.

There's a lot of reasons to be excited about the rotation. But it, you know, is it possible that the Madison Bumgarner is, you know, has a mid-4 ERA and Robbie Ray kind of does what he did last year and has a mid-4 ERA. And, you know, Luke Weaver, there's some serious injury questions there. we're probably not expecting to get more than about 100 innings from him this year, just based on his innings total from last years or from past years and just the injury issues that he's had. Zach Gallen is obviously new.

You can't put too many expectations on a pitcher entering their second year, even as good as we think his tools are. And so, yeah, up and down the roster, I think, you know, if I had to guess, I would certainly put, you know, I would probably stake my prediction right around 85, maybe up to around 87 wins somewhere in that neighborhood. I think the team is a little bit better this year than they were last year. But baseball is a weird sport, man. And year after year, things happen, you know, teams that we thought we were going to make the playoffs suddenly settle back and win 70 games. You know, things like that can happen. And so we don't want to, you know, look at the 2020

Diamondbacks is being immune to that or being, you know, some kind of super Mike Hazen team that because he built it, you know, it's foolproof and, and, you know, these kinds of things couldn't happen to them. I think it's, I think it's possible that the Diamondbacks could win 79 or 80 games. But, but no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that's my expectation based on, you know, what, what's something like Bukota has for them this year. Absolutely. We didn't even touch on Mason Saunders and what he's going to bring to the rotation. That's true.

Yeah, there's really a seventh guy. We haven't even talked about yet in the rotation. No, I think you're, I think you're spot on. It's difficult. And any forecasting system, whether it's Zips, whether it's Bacota, whether it's steamer, there's all this regression that happens. And, you know, it's just really, really tough to go through and project any player in baseball not named Mike Trout to go out and be a seven or eight-win player.

I mean, it just is really, really tough. challenging. And so I think we have to do our own little bit of calculus. In my opinion, that does not invalidate the system. That tells us that the system as a whole, and we know this year over year, the system as a whole does really, really well. Dakota tends to stand above its peers as it's been refined and new components have been added. Harry and Jonathan at baseball Perspectus do incredible work with their modeling. We just know that there are going to be outliers. And there are outliers on both ends of the spectrum. That could be Cotel Marte being worth seven wins instead of three. And that could be Eduardo Escobar being worth zero instead of, you know, what we

might hope is four or something. So it's really, really tricky. There are going to be the pluses and they're going to be the minuses, you hope that your team is full of guys that exceed the expectation and have very few, if any, that are significantly below the bar. And so that's really kind of what you're betting on. Injuries obviously play a huge role here. Yeah. We just don't know, like, we don't know who's going to get through the season. This could tell Marte's back start to bother him again in April. Or does he play like 160 games and just be a monster. Like, those are questions that we don't know.

Those are questions that Pocoda can't answer. And that's why baseball is so fun. Yeah, and I don't want to sound, I don't want to make this sound like, you know, the Debbie Downer episode where we, you know, agree with the Pocoda projections, the Diamondbacks after all these improvements and after some people peg them to be, you know, the winners of the off season or at least one of the few teams that might have won the off season. and they've done a lot of things right over the offseason to prepare them for this season. I think we've both spoken pretty highly about what Mike Hazen and company at the helm of this organization

have done to patch up some of the weak spots. And yeah, going into the season, although we will acknowledge that anything can happen and projection systems are flawed as are our expectations of the team, you really can't put too much hope in just about anything at this point in spring training. But looking at this team heading into this year, there are certainly a lot of reasons to be excited. And I know this is kind of the season of hope, right? When you're in spring training, you know, heck, even the Baltimore Orioles fans right now are trying to stake some hope in the 2020 season, you know, believing that anything can happen.

And so that's what, you know, that's what characterizes this time of year when, you know, no games count yet. The Diamondbacks can be two and eight and we don't care. It doesn't matter yet. And so I think that's a healthy perspective to have at this point in the season. The Diamondback so far have escaped any devastating spring training injuries, which obviously they have a bit of a storied history of those kinds of things popping up right around you generally several days before the season starts.

That's when AJ Pollock went down a few years ago when Stephen Sousa went down a couple years ago, so we certainly hope they can avoid anything like that here in these coming weeks. But yeah, so far, you know, looking into this season, I think there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the Diamondbacks overall. I do too. Two moments on that topic that have already scared me. David Peralta, I'm sure for his last night or one of the nights before, but dove for a ball in the gap and landed a little awkwardly on his wrist.

Oh, yeah. Oh, goodness gracious. I might my my my heart sunk into my stomach um and then last night uh Stephen vote uh ripped one down the line and just buried it in the corner oh ran for the triple yeah it's an easy three bagger right but he's digging and I'm just like Stephen shut it down a second base man don't don't pull a hammy like come on Hey man, he's an APU alum. The man works hard. So just throwing that out there. He must. He must work hard.

And because he legged that triple out and made it look pretty easy. But it still made me nervous. And those things happen. You know, it's baseball. These guys, you know, David Peralta doesn't need to die for that. I mean, he doesn't. But he does because that's a kind of player he is. And Stephen Vote doesn't need to dig for third.

but like it's in his blood like he's not going to give up 90 feet you know he's just not going to do it and yeah plus you know he probably bet someone a hundred bucks in the clubhouse and he'd hit a triple at some point this season so maybe he wanted that hundred bucks but um yeah it's those those little things can happen and we have a long way to go yet i mean baseball's here and they you know they've they've played 10 games and that feels awesome but we're still you know almost three weeks out from the start of the regular season, there's a lot to still transpire. Some of these guys that we've talked about that have had a rough go of things still have time to turn it around.

Yeah. It's probably inevitable that someone's going to get nicked up to some degree. We just hope that it's not, that it's nothing major. But yeah, there's a lot to still sort out. And there's plenty of reasons to be optimistic. I think that's my big takeaway is that, you know, you can take the, projections, you can look at them. But if we do some of our own little calculus and we look at what Mike Hazen's put together, there's no reason to be sour on this team. Yeah, no, absolutely.

I agree. Before we close out here in this episode 18 of the Rattle podcast, I want to give a quick shout out to Jonathan Quayar, who asked us if we had any concerns about Luke Weaver. We kind of touched on that episode or touched on that earlier in the episode, but I wanted to make sure we acknowledge Jonathan. Jonathan, thank you for submitting a question, as always. We appreciate it here on the Rattle Podcast. And with that, that is all that we have here in episode 18. As always, thank you so much for listening. You can find me personally on Twitter at at Jesse and Friedman. You can find Jeff at at Outfield Grass 24. We would both love to interact with you on Twitter. You can also find our page as a whole, as at the Rattle, a Z.

on Twitter and our website is www.the rattle.net. We've had some pretty regular content coming out there. I just released my top five X-Factors for the Diamondbacks in 2020. And then Joshua, one of our other writers, just released a piece talking about just all of the moves that have been made

over the offseason, not just the Diamondbacks, but the Padres and the Dodgers in particular, and how that NL West is kind of being shuffled around based on what all those teams have done. So be sure to check that one out as well. And once again, thank you so much for listening. And we'll be back here. And hopefully just about a week as the season is getting off to a start,

we're going to get back hopefully on our regular schedule here soon with the Rattle. We're going to be talking more soon here about the Arizona Diamondbacks.