PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Ep. 19: What Now?

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

We discuss baseball's postponement as the result of the coronavirus, and what it will mean for the D-backs and the league as a whole. 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.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 19 of the Rattle Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Jesse Friedman, along with Jeff Weiser, my co-host here on the Rattle podcast. And Jeff, as of several weeks ago, I think we would have looked at a podcast episode on March 24th as a huge fun event, previewing, opening day, just two days away, diamondbacks against the Atlanta Braves, all sorts of excitement surrounding a team that we, believe in in a lot of ways this season and are excited to see what happens. Unfortunately, Mother Nature has had other ideas in store for us here in the U.S.

and across the world as a whole with this coronavirus situation. I know I'm currently in quarantine in Mesa, Arizona. I'm going to be staying with my brother and sister-in-law here for a couple weeks. I got kicked out of college. We all had to disband from school out in Southern California, so I'm back out here. in Arizona. I know, Jeff, you mentioned just a few days ago that Portland was recently added to all of the many cities around the country who have been placed on a shelter in place situation where you're not really supposed to leave your house for anything. Big cities are turning into

ghost towns when I was driving around L.A. the other day. It was glorious. There was no traffic whatsoever, which was absolutely amazing. And yet also very, very sad, just given what is what is going on. around our country right now in this situation. So before we jump into any baseball, we just want to acknowledge that this is a difficult situation for us, and I'm sure for many of you at home listening, but we just wanted to, you know, get out there and talk a little bit of baseball and give you guys something to listen to while you sit at home and maybe don't have a whole lot else going on. Yeah, absolutely.

This has been a really strange time. I think for everyone and, you know, baseball is sort of our lens for. for viewing some of this, but it's been really odd. I travel a lot for work, and I had a trip here about a week ago. It was my last trip. I flew in and out of San Jose, and my trip down was a full airplane, a busy airport, business as usual. And then in the couple days that I was in the Bay Area, that was when a lot of the news broke. and it was really interesting watching all that happened from afar,

watch MLB opening day get pushed back, watch the NBA season get postponed. And by Friday, when I went to come home, there were like 35 people on my airplane, the San Jose airport, the Portland airport, were just about completely empty. Yeah. Yeah, it's all moved really, really quickly.

But yeah, it's been a really odd time, And there's just so much that we don't know about what's going to happen with, you know, all facets of life. But, you know, that does for us in this instance include baseball. And I think, you know, we'll take some time today to kind of, you know, think about and prognosticate kind of what we think might happen as we're trying to stay abreast in the news. But also just acknowledging that, you know, no one really does know what's going to happen with this whole thing. So strap in and just, you know, roll along with us, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think both of us are very thankful that at least for our personal lives, we are, you know, you and I are both healthy, which is, of course, a big blessing, obviously, you know, there are people in our lives who have been affected by this in some significant ways. And like I said before, some people listening as well. So we certainly want to give you all a shout out in this difficult time is obviously this is, you know, about more than just baseball. This is, you know, a global pandemic. This is not exactly something you expect to see.

every day. And certainly it has had a big effect on a lot, a lot of people. But we're going to hopefully give you a little outlet here for the next 20 minutes or so and talk about some baseball, try to get away from the noise here just a little bit. We will start at least talking about things somewhere related to the virus just in that the virus has caused baseball to officially delay the season by two weeks. I believe that's the standing that we're at as of right now. So opening day, which, as I mentioned, is scheduled for two days from now. The Diamondbacks against the Braves, that will not be happening. It's been delayed by at least two weeks.

And frankly, as we were talking before we hopped on the air, Jeff, I think it probably is unlikely that we see Major League Baseball played any time before May and maybe even more realistically any time before June. Jeff, I'm curious what your take is on exactly, you know, what a reasonable day might look like where we can expect to see baseball again. yeah i think if i were you know if i were betting and sort of laying my bet down i would probably look for something you know probably more like june first um seems a little more tangible to me right now um i know that's a really long time from now that that feels like an eternity i don't know

how we're supposed to write about this game for another two plus months with no baseball happening um but um yeah i do think that i do think that I think that it's going to be something along those lines. I wouldn't be totally shocked if they continue to sort of post, you know, updates in between and maybe, you know, maybe it starts with like May 1st with the caveat that they reserve the right to push it back further based on, you know, testing figures and how trends are developing. But I'm, you know, if I get baseball before June 1st, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

but to me that sort of seems like the the natural progression because let's think right so like all these guys have been sent home complexes and facilities in Arizona and Florida have been closed you know I would assume you know guys are staying in shape and and continuing to do what they can do to stay you know relatively sharp and relatively ready but there is going to need to be some ramp up time before games get played I mean yeah this is not the sand lot you're not just going to say hey next 30rd Thursday there's a game, you know, be there by seven when the game starts. So I am really interested actually to see how that whole process starts because there's going to need to be

some lead-up time. Yeah, I think I listened to a really, really good interview the other day that Steve Perthume did Diamondback's play-by-play voice on Fox Sports, Arizona. He hopped on a radio show here in Arizona and talked about this whole situation. I think it was about a week or so ago and he talked about how, especially for pitchers in this situation, it's almost impossible to know what your throwing program should look like. How many days should you be taking off? Should you be taking days off? Should you be pretending that this is spring training business as usual trying to ramp up for a season that may or may not start within the next month or two? And the issue for pitchers is they're used to working on these very defined schedules with

you know, specific pitch counts or inning counts or whatever that looks like. And now all of that structure has just been completely taken away. And suddenly, if you're a pitcher, you don't really know when that opening day, you know, marker is. And so you don't really know when you have to be at your full capacity as far as, you know, the load that you can take on as a pitcher. And so I think that whole situation, like you said, there's going to need to be some ramp up time for pitchers in particular to be able to ramp up and get to the point that they need to.

I think another interesting point that you had mentioned that I think you got from Enosaris is that pitchers may be at a little bit more of a health risk in this whole situation because you know, these throwing programs are designed to keep them in the utmost health possible. And the moment that you get rid of all this stuff and I think in a lot of situations, pitchers are probably kind of being left to themselves with what they do in this situation. I don't think teams are probably giving super specific restrictions on what they can and can't do. And suddenly you wind up wondering if maybe some of these pitchers are being put at risk by this whole situation.

And you might see, you know, an extra Tommy John surgery or two where, you know, some different injuries happen during the season as a result of that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the pitcher's arm, I mean, all you have to. to do is like see them throw in slow motion one time to know that the human arm is not supposed to move like that. So I definitely feel like they're going to be, you know, and I think Eno's research has showed like they're going to be at a, they're going to be at a predisposition for injury, you know, based on coming back. And it's just, it's been turned into such a process to avoid injury

that we're going to see, you know, like maximum. effort, maximum velocity with the absence of some of that structure to lead into it. So I'm sure at this point, teams have definitely communicated with their players about what they would like them to continue doing. The hard part is accountability. I mean, no one knows what's happening. Do you have some over-eager, you know, bubble roster candidates who decide, like, no, I'm not going to take it easy.

I'm going to go for it because I really want to make the team or, you know, does someone, you know, kind of go rogue in that sense? or do they just follow orders? Like there's just no way to know at this point what's going to happen with that. But I do think it's something that we have to be aware of. You know, some of the options I've seen about what happens with the schedule where it goes from here are thoughts around like, well, you know, do double headers just become like a normal thing? Are there a lot of double headers in an attempt to make up games? And that comes with a whole host of complications as we talk about pitchers, right?

If your starter only goes four or five innings in game one, you've got another game going. You know, having the 26th roster spot could be helpful. You might find yourself short on relievers by the end of the week after a bunch of, you know, a bunch of double headers or something like that. So do you push a starter longer because your bullpen isn't rested? Or do we see for this season, do we see Major League Baseball go to like a 28-man roster, but you could maybe only have 25 players active on a certain. day.

Like, how do we manage, you know, potentially trying to cram more games into less time to make up for things? There's a lot to be sorted out in that regard as we think about trying to make up games and how it, you know, ultimately that will have an impact on player health. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's also this question of, you know, as you mentioned, how do we fit more games into a small amount of time? But I think realistically, if you start the season on June 1st,

you might not be able to get all the baseball in for the regular season that you need to by, you know, the end of September, beginning of October when the playoffs would normally start. I think it's, it seems likely that if indeed the baseball season begins, which we certainly hope it will, you're probably going to see the regular season drag on at least a little bit longer just to give teams a little bit of extra time to get some extra games in. But from my standpoint, Jeff, like the fascinating question of all of the, of this. You know, we've seen shortened seasons in the past. I think back in the 90s, there was a lockout situation, I believe, in 95, where they played 140-ish game, something like that. Don't quote me on that. That's before I was born. But regardless, we have not seen, you know, a 110 game major league baseball season played in recent history. And if you talk about, you know, delaying the season to June 1st, you're missing out on about 60 games. And I certainly hope they're not

trying to plug, you know, 40 out of those games into the span of four months with double headers, I guess, as you mentioned, that might be one option. I'm guessing they're going to have to extend this season. But the question is, what is the number? Like, how many games do you need to play before you can call a major league season viable? Is that 120 games? Is it 110 games? Heck, could we have an 80 game season that still counts for something?

Like, where do you think that cutoff is? I actually tried to look this up recently, and someone may know the actual figure, but I look through the 2019 official MLB rules, which if you're really bored during this quarantine time, you can look through the 198 page document or whatever it is and freshen up your understanding of the rules. but I could not find a definitive listing for how many games need to be played by a team or by each team or even an aggregate to legitimize an entire season. So I've heard suggestions that it's around 100, 110 something to that effect. I'm not completely sure. I didn't see an actual figure. For me, you know, I look at it is, you know, if you're going to miss about 60 games, that should leave about 100 games to be pleased. played, you know, anything sort of if they could find a way to make it like 120, I would feel

pretty good about it because the shorter the season gets, the more variable the results are. And to have like real, real, you know, confidence in the results, I think you need a larger sample. And to me, like 120-ish games should be enough to sort of, you know, separate, you know, you know, separate the best teams from the worst teams. I feel like, you know, oftentimes, I mean, it only takes about, you know, 25 or 40 games to do that, but we'd feel probably pretty safe at like 120. So I think that's where I'd kind of like to see it. And you could do that through some, you know, sort of strategic double headers.

And maybe extending the season by a couple of weeks. It seems like we could get about there. Would that feel to you, Jesse, is that like, does that feel too short for you? I actually kind of like that number. I'm among the crowd of people who think that Major League Baseball should shorten the season a little bit anyway. So I think it, yeah, I think it kind of is an interesting test almost of what a shorter baseball season looks like. I think if baseball were to do this, they would probably shorten the season on the back end rather than the front end. So this is not exactly, you know, a complete apples to apples comparison with what I would like to see.

baseball do at some point. But we were having a little fun before we hopped on the air looking at the standings, you know, at certain points throughout the season. And things change. You know, if you don't play the entire season and you cut things off, say, you know, at the end of July or something like that, suddenly, you know, the results of a season are going to be impacted. If you were to do that, it looks like the Cardinals and the Cubs as of July 31st of last

year were tied for first place. The NL Central, Milwaukee was right behind there. The Diamondbacks at that point were three and a half games out of a wildcard spot. They were 54 and 55. And so this is right at about that 110 game mark where even then you see the results of the season being played out differently for sure. And if you go even shorter than that, we were having some fun and looking at like May 31st. And at that point, the results are just crazy. The Philadelphia Phillies were in first place to the NL East with a fairly sizable lead. The Washington Nationals were in fourth place in their division at that point. And of course, ultimately went on to win the World Series,

even though they were 24 and 33 after almost 60 games played through the season. So I think what's interesting about shortening the season is suddenly you kind of open the door for maybe teams that are kind of more on the outskirts of the playoff picture because you don't have the same enormous sample size. Suddenly, I wonder if it opens the door for some of those teams to maybe sneak in a playoff race that they wouldn't be able to stay in for a full 162 game season. I think it really does. I think it would really, you know, sort of compress the spread of wins and losses.

And ultimately, that would impact the playoff races. I think it could make for some really exciting playoff races, which isn't to say they wouldn't already be exciting. I think the division the Diamondbacks are in, you know, kind of feels like a foregone conclusion, but that's not necessarily the norm across baseball. But it might be the norm in the NO West for the time being. But it probably does, you know, you could make an argument that it might be able to a team like the Diamondbacks. I just think that those wild card spots, you know, at a shorter season length will probably be even more hotly contested.

So it could be really wacky. I mean, it could be really, really fun and really, really exciting. And maybe it does become sort of a jumping off point for a slightly shorter season. I mean, I would like to see the regular season, you know, be probably longer than 120 games regularly. But, you know, if that's all we're able to get out of this season, I think that would be enough for me. And I think baseball would still be really, really exciting. One note that I do think doesn't get talked about enough is that in September when rosters expand and we know that teams are pretty familiar with who's in and who's out of the picture by that point.

You know, like records can be distorted pretty wildly as some teams really look to just like let rookies get their feet wet. Philip lineups full of, you know, AAA and bench guys. So with a shortened season, I wonder if they still go that route. and start to do some of that. I know there's already been rule changes around, like, the 40-man roster in September and things of that nature. So it could be interesting just to see, like, all the teams pushing, you know, super hard for it all the way to the end.

And with a shorter, you know, with a shorter season length, I would expect more teams to count themselves as, you know, viable candidates for the postseason. And that could, frankly, be pretty fun. We got an interesting question from at Andrew AJT on Twitter. He asked, should they explore larger MOB rosters to compensate for the likely abridged spring training that we'll see and what teams could benefit the most if they did? I know, Jeff, you mentioned earlier in the show that, you know, maybe moving the roster up to 28 players, but maybe only 25 of them can be used at a time or something along those lines to give these teams a little bit more flexibility in this situation. I'm trying to think of it from a Diamondbacks perspective here of whether they would benefit a significant.

from that sort of a move. I want to say probably not significantly so compared to other teams. I don't think the Diamondbacks are, you know, aching to get a few more guys on this roster that just don't fit. I think most of the guys who would have been left off the 26-man roster or probably left off for a reason. But certainly, you know, you can use an extra few guys just because of the nature of what the season might look like.

And like you mentioned, if we're playing a lot of double-headers, maybe there's more room for guys in the bullpen. I could definitely see the D-backs benefiting from that. But I certainly, I think, you know, the Dodgers are a team with just a lot of upper-level minor league depth would probably benefit a little bit more from that that that team like the Diamondbacks would. I agree. I also think an underrated way to look at this might be that teams with teams that really

are not, you know, part of the, you know, not expected to be part of the race. might benefit from this quite a bit. I recently wrote about the Pittsburgh Pirates. They did their season preview over at Baseball Perspectus. And I think for a team like that, they have a lot of evaluation that will be going on throughout the season as they kind of try to find their new direction. So having additional roster spots could allow them to have players, you know, just kind of gain valuable experience. and allow them to evaluate like the guys that they have in their organization. So those teams might actually benefit from it quite a bit as well.

But I do think there would need to be some kind of, you know, larger roster just to account for the injury situation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's a great point. Those teams that are more in a rebuilding position could probably benefit from just having more guys on the roster. It's almost like September's come a little bit early and teams can kind of try out. players a little bit earlier in the season. Another question that we have from Greg Littleton, he says, does a shortened season help or hurt the Diamondbacks playoff chances assuming MLB uses the normal playoff format?

We touched on that a little bit earlier. I would, I would err on the side of help because I think winning the division is obviously the best, most efficient way to make yourself a playoff run. And I don't know if 120 games. really gives the Diamondbacks that much better of a shot at catching the Dodgers. But we have seen over the last few years. Sometimes the Dodgers get off to a bit of a slower start. And, you know, Dave Roberts will still be tooting his own horn

and talking about how they're still going to be in first place by the end of the year. And by the time we get to 162 games, they are in first place. But I wonder if the Dodgers would maybe have a little bit more pressure on them to really get going right as the season began, whereas right now, you know, if they're just, you know, if they're a 500 team for a month or so at the beginning of a season right now, it just doesn't really seem to hurt them in the long run. So I think it opens the door for the Diamondbacks from a division perspective to maybe at least keep things close and keep things interesting.

From the wild card perspective, like you said, Jeff, I think a shortened season opens the door for just a lot of teams to be in the mix. And so I think that's, that's, you know, maybe helpful in a way because the diamondbacks could, you know, with a smaller sample size could benefit themselves and maybe overperform a little bit. But you could also say the same thing about quite a few other teams in the National League who are expecting to contend this year. So the wild card, I think for me, is a little bit harder to say. I'm totally in agreement. I think this, we have a, that's a really weird circumstance. But I do think that it probably helps the debacks.

odds of winning the division, you know, even if that might be, you know, very low, it improves them. But it does probably hurt their odds for the wild card. So like, do we call it a wash? I'm not sure. It might be of a slight benefit mathematically, but yeah, probably not going to move the needle tremendously in one direction or another. Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. on that. Garrett asked us, do you expect the season to be extended? We kind of touched on this earlier as well. I'm guessing yes. If you start the season on June 1st, I'm guessing that they probably would not be able to fit in as many games as they need to. The question for me is just how long do you go? At a certain point, obviously with baseball in some of the colder weather cities, you run into

an issue if you're playing too deep into November or even December. Some of these cities probably just wouldn't really be viable for playing baseball anymore. You could talk about maybe playing in a neutral environment. Maybe some games get played out here in Arizona or in Southern California or different areas, even if those teams aren't involved. But Jeff, I'm curious what you think. If it is extended, which I'm guessing it probably will be, how long do you think baseball could possibly stretch that out?

Yeah, it gets really difficult in some of the, you know, some of the different climates to try to extend the season. You know, one thing I'm not seeing talked about much, and I think is interesting, is let's say this season starts on June 1st. So if that's how it goes, great. What I don't think that means is that everyone will just play their scheduled opponent on June 1st, and we will continue the season from that point forward. Yeah. That would have huge, like, there would be huge discrepancies and quality of opponents, balances of schedules, et cetera. So baseball is going to have to, and I would assume behind the scenes is already, you know, running a number of scenarios in terms of, you know, reworking the schedule to ensure that they, you know, find as much balance as they can.

All that said, it's really difficult because stadiums often operate, you know, independently or somewhat independently of the team, depending on who owns the stadium. And so, you know, a lot of times, like we've seen this in Arizona, right? I mean, the debacks are out of town, but there's a concert at Chasefield or, you know, something else is happening. So how, you know, some of those things, I mean, there are like, those are contracts. Those are, there are deposits paid. There are financials worked out. We're talking about relatively large sums of money. So how all of that gets sort of, you know, figured out is going to be really tricky.

I mean, the devil's and the details there and how they balance the schedule. allow, you know, is going to be really important. Ultimately, what I think that might mean is that they really are forced to extend the season. So back to Garrett's question. I really do think that they probably will get pushed to, you know, lengthen the season a bit. How far?

I'm not really sure. I mean, I would venture to guess it probably doesn't go that far. Yeah. I think we probably see some more kind of like midweek double headers. And maybe they add like two weeks to the end of the season. That's about all I can really think of. Like even, you know, as soon as the baseball season's over or scheduled to be over, these stadiums also have other deals.

I mean, things like monster trucks come to town and all kinds of stuff. So they can't, you know, this whole thing is like, you know, these stadiums are used in so many ways that you can't just like tack baseball on and expect that to be the end of everything. So I'm going to guess like two weeks and then they kind of go from there. But, you know, I can see them do. like as much as a month. It's just going to be really hard to get games in, you know, in certain climates, you know, in like in the month of October. Garrett also mentioned the possibility of having teams come down to their spring training facilities to play games in those winter months, obviously, you know, if you're if you're in mid-November

or, you know, late October, whatever that looks like toward the end of the season, you could viably play, you know, games down in the Phoenix area. Of course, you could viably play in Florida, those warm weather climates would certainly still be playable at that point. But the question is, you know, do you want to be playing, you know, late season, high energy tight baseball games at spring training facilities that might be, you know, a thousand miles away from where the team's hometown actually is? I think it might be just kind of a strange vibe from my standpoint. And like you said, these even spring training stadiums, I think, can get used for other

things as well and I'm sure there there could be complications with with reserving those for you know a month or two toward the end of the season yes and there are stipulations you know there at least there may be stipulations in the player agreement from the union side about you know accommodations you know some of these kinds of things to consider where it's not as easy as like snap your fingers and just change the schedule you would need the players association perhaps sign off on certain things. Yeah. And with a, you know, pending CBA expiration, you know, coming up, this could be especially

tricky. Tensions are already high. So I think that's tough. The, my initial reaction to, like, playing at spring training facilities is, like, no way. But I would say that under, you know, with the assumption of, like, they're trying to play most of a regular season. I could see it go that route, you know, if, let's say the season. and starts July 1st.

Or, you know, it's like it's really going to be truncated and there really are going to try to like push the season into October, November, you know, and play the World Series at the end of November or something. So if they really, really extend the season and they would probably only do so if the beginning of it gets really, really delayed, then maybe that becomes a possibility. But even then, I think there are logistical and even contractual hurdles that will probably have to be overcome. Yeah, yeah, I'm totally, totally with you on that.

I think another question we may have to at least consider, not that I particularly want to consider this question, but is it at least feasible that the 2020 Major League Baseball season just never happens? And I think we're certainly optimistic at this point that that's not going to be the case, but the coronavirus is a very tricky new thing that obviously medical scientists, are still trying to figure out exactly how this thing works and how it spreads. And there's just so much unknown about this whole situation that I think we have to, in the back of our heads, think about what would it look like if the 2020 season was not

ever played? And like I said before, though, Jeff, hopefully we're hoping and praying that that just doesn't happen. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I certainly hope that's not what takes place. I think that probably by the middle of April, middle to end of April, we'll probably know whether or not that's going to happen or not. You know, we can watch the sort of statistics and, you know, trends related to the coronavirus, both in foreign countries and here at home. And how that, you know, plays out of the next probably two to three weeks is going to be very indicative of how this thing goes.

if we seem to sort of ride the crest and I think everyone's expecting, you know, figures and numbers to probably, you know, continue to rise drastically over the next seven to 14 days. But like, let's say by the middle of April, you know, we're starting to see the curve trend in a downward direction. All right. Well, that's, you know, that's a positive step in terms of playing baseball. It's also a positive step in terms of our society. But I think, you know, if that doesn't take place, we don't see this curve, you know, start to reverse direction, you know, sometime in the next three weeks or so. We start to look pretty perilous at what happens. And, you know, is there a baseball draft?

Do they have an international signing period? Do we have a season at all? I think all of that, you know, starts to probably come into more focus over, you know, probably by the middle of April. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good timeline that we can be looking forward to. Another question in all of this, of course, is, you know, if games are indeed played on June 1st, are any of us allowed to go, right? Like, is Major League Baseball considering the possibility of starting the season, you know, maybe a little bit sooner rather than later, but at the same time not be able to

have fans in the stadium for a month or so after that? from what I'm hearing, Jeff, that seems like a pretty viable consideration at this point. And if I'm giving my gut feeling, I think that's probably what I would say. I think Major League Baseball probably will start back up within probably two or three months. I think right around June 1st is probably on the money. But I'm not confident at this point that there will be fans present on opening day if indeed it does happen around June 1st. Yeah, I mean, I could definitely see that happen.

Yeah, I could definitely see that happen. In the interest of like TV deals and corporate sponsorships and all these things that are associated with the revenues of baseball, they get the games off, they get the games rolling, but fans aren't allowed in or, you know, I don't know how you socially distance folks in a baseball game. There's only, you know, 10 people allow me to section. I don't know.

I don't know how that works. But yeah, I could very much see them starting the season with no fans. And, you know, because, I mean, let's face it, I mean, the economic weight of baseball and the almighty dollar will compel them to get these games going as quickly as possible. But the public, you know, the public safety concern is the balancing, you know, the check and balance on that, you know, scenario. So can you run the games without the additional exposure? You know, perhaps. And so I do think that's viable. It's a viable consideration.

It's something that down the road we may have to come to accept, you know, in the short term, which would just be, you know, really weird. Yeah. And I know the Diamondbacks don't sell out every single home game. But, you know, the faithful get loud and raucous, you know, at times. And it would be really weird to not like, you know, hear the crowd, you and awe. know, a Catelle-Marte home run. I mean, for the Marlins, nothing would really change, right? This is probably true.

Like, that's just business as usual for them. They're used to, you know, someone hitting a 400-foot bomb, and it just kind of clanks in the bleachers, and, you know, someone from two sections over is trying to run as fast as they can to retrieve the baseball. It's just business as usual over there down in Florida. Moving on, though, I think one final thing that I want to touch on here in this episode is the Diamondbacks in particular, and not just Major League Baseball as a whole,

but the Diamondbacks in particular, given the players that they have on this team, what would it look like for them to have a shortened season? Or do they have certain pieces in place that would benefit from having a season shortened? Are there certain players who maybe aren't quite as valuable if the season isn't as long as it normally is? I have a couple names that I'll throw out there to get things started. I think a name we were maybe a little concerned about going into a full season was Luke Weaver, who I believe is not thrown more than about 120 professional innings at all since moving into

the Cardinals organization and coming over to the Diamondbacks. He's never really thrown even close to a full season. And so I think a guy like Luke Weaver would maybe benefit quite a bit from, you know, 110, 120 game season because all of a sudden he's just able to stay, you know, stay in the game. and stay healthy and continue to pitch for probably most of the year, whereas otherwise you kind of wonder if you would have to fizzle out at some point and have an innings cap. For a guy on the other hand, like Madison Bumgarner,

I think a lot of his value comes from the longevity and the fact that you're going to get 210 innings out of him over the course of a season. And from him, it's at this point in his career seems to be more about quantity of innings than maybe the quality of those innings. And suddenly, if, you know, if the season, and is shortened, maybe he becomes a slightly less valuable chip. I would agree with both of those, you know, examples.

Like, those are really good examples. I'll kind of stick. I think the pitching side is just going to be more affected than the position player side of things. Yeah. So maybe your, you know, kind of bubble starter, as we talked about injuries being a particular concern, your sort of, you know, sixth, seventh starter, maybe get pressed into action just because of the injury concern. So maybe that's of some benefit to those players, at least in terms of their ability to log major league innings. Depending on this double-header situation, you know, relievers that can throw more than an inning, that could be very helpful.

So you're thinking of, you know, John DePontz. gets a lot of work in this year, or Alex Young or something of that nature. So that could be the one position player consideration to have is kind of with the catching core. In a shortened season, I mean, I know that it's not the length of games is not necessarily why the Diamondbacks have carried three catchers at times. But, you know, if you really think that you can, you know, there's just going to be like less wear and tear over the course of the season and that being the most physically demanding. position on the diamond, then perhaps, you know, they really do just go with two. And I think

that's kind of where things are going anyways, but that might, you know, really be like the nail in the coffin. And that's maybe, you know, hard news for the guy who's third or fourth on the catching depth chart. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. One last thing, Jeff, this literally just came to my mind. Can you play an all-star game like one month into a season? So I think they're talking about probably not having the All-Star game this year. And they do not have a site for the 2022 All-Star game, I believe. I think 2021 is in Atlanta. So they just push everything back a year, basically?

Yeah, I think 2022 is still open. So it would just, instead of, you know, selecting from candidates, it would just go right back to Dodger Stadium. that's maybe the one good thing about this is we could just put that off a little longer so maybe that's maybe that's it and just the you know one little fun fact is that today is the anniversary of Randy Johnson obliterating a dove with the spring training pitch so if you need to if you need to remember something exciting you know we probably all remember where we were when that happened I think we all We all kind of feel like that dove right now on a day like today.

Pretty much. Poof. I mean, we're hoping that's not what happens to our baseball season, but it may yet. It's too early to tell. We will have to wait and see. But ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us here in this episode 19 of the Rattle Podcast. If you have not done so already, please be sure to give us a follow on Twitter at the

Rottal AZ. We would love to interact with you there and answer any other questions you have about this Diamondbacks team looking forward into what we hope will be a 2020 baseball season that we have to look forward to. In the meantime, wash your hands, stay at home, social distance, all that good stuff, and we will be back here again soon to talk more about the hopefully existing 2020 Arizona Diamondbacks.