PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Ep. 32: All-Star Escobar, Mid-Season D-backs MVP Picks, and Bold Predictions for the Second Half

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

We discuss Eduardo Escobar's first selection to the MLB All-Star game, our mid-season MVP picks for the team, a couple of bold second half predictions, and what to expect from recent call-up Stuart Fairchild. 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 in to episode 32 of the Rattle Podcast. As always, my name is Jesse Friedman, along with Jeff Weiser and Jeff, another week of Arizona Diamondbacks baseball in the books. And really the biggest news that came out of this last week was Eduardo Escobar has been named to his first ever All-Star game in his 11th season. Escobar is on pace for, I want to say around like 33 homers, like a little above 100. RBI. So in terms of the home runs and RBI's, things are looking pretty good for him. But I think we all know, Eduardo Escobar is maybe a little bit limited in some other ways. But nonetheless, Jeff, I think obviously Eduardo is a great story and has meant a lot to this

team in his few years since joining the club. So I think we're all excited to see Escobar and the All-Star game, even if, you know, he might be, you know, maybe a little bit out of place in some ways. but Major League Baseball wants someone in there from every team, and he's going to represent the Diamondbacks here in about a week. Yeah, and I know you and I both are really happy for him, just personally, and it's so cool. He's such a fun guy.

Like, you can't not, you know, you can hit on, you know, Eduardo Escobar's game in the season he had last year, but he is objectively just kind of a hilarious person to watch play baseball. It's really pretty great. He is, and his energy is always like on point. He's a piecing. like such a positive dude. And, yeah, I mean, he has, like, one of the better smiles.

Like, I just, I love it when he's happy and sort of, you know, dancing around and feel like good. And also, like, it doesn't hurt that when he, like, gets into one, he could really sting it. Yeah. But I think it's super, super cool. And it's cool that, I mean, he's making an all-star game in his 11th big league season for the first time. I mean, that's a pretty long time to play major league baseball.

Yeah. I mean, the guy has over a thousand games to his name to finally break through and make an all-star team. And, of course, the context and the circumstances, maybe it would be an all-star in many other capacities. But, and I mean, shoot, this may not even be his, you know, his best season. So, still happy for the guy. Still going to root for him. Be fun to be fun to see him in the festivities. and I guess the way this season's gone, maybe we should just knock on wood that he stays healthy until then.

We didn't talk about this, Jeff, but I'm curious what your feelings are. Something I've seen floating around on Diamondback's Twitter lately is, I mean, clearly, this team doesn't deserve an all-star, right, with the way that they've played. And Eduardo Escobar, you know, if you compare his numbers to some of the other guys in contention at third base or, you know, some of the guys who got snubbed in some part because he, is on the roster because he sort of had to be. Some people have said, you know, they need to do away with the rule that every team has to have at least one representative.

Yeah. And just, you know, put the guys there that really deserve to be there. Well, what is your take on that? Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, I'm sure there's an argument to be made that everyone should have, you know, should have an all-star represented. I suppose, I suppose where I come out with this is that. that it's an exhibition.

It doesn't really mean anything. If we want to make the All-Star game, you know, more important or try to up the prestige level, you know, that's one thing. But I think with interleague play and the fact that, you know, this isn't the only time that National League hitters are going to face American League pitchers. Like, this isn't the only time besides the World Series that we're going to see that. So sure. I think that already starts to kind of diminish it. And it, like, just starts to feel more and more sort of.

you know, like a baseball version of, you know, the NFL Pro Bowl or something like that where it's just, it's just supposed to be fun. If we want it to just be fun, I'm fine. Bring someone from every team. Let every, you know, let every team have a representative, you know, do that. But if we want to make it sort of this thing and try to restore some of the historical prestige that the game has had, then if that's the route that decision makers want to go, then I would probably do away with any sort of mandate like that. Just to get the best pure talent on the field. But I mean, look, this guys have already played a lot of games.

A lot of guys are going to need a break. They're guys that are going to bow out as we get closer. And we'll just say, hey, they're not going to participate in whatever capacity. So, I mean, I could kind of go either way with it. But I think as it stands now, I don't have any problem with it. It's just for fun. I think people are just pretty frustrated overall with this Diamondbacks team. And any opportunity to take something.

away from them is a fair game on Twitter right now. But yeah, no, I think that's fair. I think especially since they've done away with having the All-Star game determine home field advantage in the World Series, which is shocking to think that that was the one's a thing and that that game like actually carried quite a bit of weight to it back then. But that is no longer the case. So I'm with you.

I don't think it really matters too much one way or another. But for better or worse, Eduardo Escobar will be in there representing the Diamondbacks should be fun to watch here as we are approaching the All-Star break, only about a few days out here. But with that, Jeff, I want to transition here into sort of our takes on who the team's MVP was over this first half of the season. And you could make an argument that Diamondbacks have not had many really all that valuable players in the first half, but there is a most valuable player that I think we could each reasonably select. And interestingly, neither of us actually selected Eduardo Escobar.

So I'm going to have you go first on this, Jeff. Give us your first half of this disastrous season. Give us your first half MVP for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Yeah, I think I'm going to lean in here and give my fictitious MVP trophy for the first half to Merrill Kelly. I think we're all pretty familiar with. with what Merrill Kelly is as a pitcher and what Merrill Kelly is not. Merrill Kelly is not often dominant in the way that we're used to seeing starting pitchers, frankly, in this day and age, dominate.

You know, we get a lot of Jacob de Grom highlights. We get a lot of showy Otani. That's not Merrill Kelly. And yet at the same time, you know, he's been remarkably solid. He's really logged his innings. He takes the ball every, you know, fifth day and get. you a good effort. And I was digging, uh, digging back sort of into the game log. Um, and looking back to the beginning of May when this like terrible, uh, dreadful, no good, uh, sort of

patterns started to really emerge for the team. And, um, you know, the team has won, uh, 10 games since, uh, the beginning of May. Um, the first one coming on May second and the latest coming last night actually on David Peralta's hit by pitch. And Merrill Kelly has been the starting pitcher in five of those 10 games. In fact, the last four games, the Diamondbacks have won, dating back to June 21st, Merrill Kelly has been the starting pitcher in that game. So Luke Weaver, Madison, Bumgarner, Seth Frankoff, Matt Peacock, and Caleb Smith have each started a single game in which the team has won during that span.

But Merrill Kelly has started the other five. And I don't know, there's something about, you know, I think for the team even just going out and knowing, you know, hey, Merrill's on the Mountain Tonight. Like, we got a real chance here. Let's go get him. And he's been pretty, you know, he's been the most effective. I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't go so far as to say that he's been any sort of incredible. But, you know, both FIP and DRA, I think he's been quite a bit better than his ERA has been. He hasn't been helped out by inherited. runners crossing the plate, some things like that. So he gets the nod for me. He's having a really solid year. He doesn't walk many guys. The strikeouts are okay. He's keeping the ball in the park well enough.

You know, just limiting the damage doing what Merrill Kelly does. That's who Merrill Kelly is. And he's my first half MVP. Yeah, I think that's a great pick. I mean, Merrill Kelly just is sort of a viable major league starting pitcher. And frankly, this team doesn't have very many of those right now. And so, you know, he very much sticks out in the crowd as someone who, you know, actually belongs, you know, on the mound every fifth day.

And as you said, certainly, you know, gives you a chance to win day in day out. And that's something the diamondbacks can't really say confidently for some of the other guys who have had to take, you know, turn after turn through the rotation like we talked about last week. I'm going to go with Josh Rojas for mine. I kind of bounced, yeah, I bounced a few different places at Paven Smith, Rojas, Carson Kelly before he got hurt, even Escobar. You know, I think they're all kind of in a similar spot. But for me, Rojas is just, his versatility has just given the team so much more value than what his just raw, you know, offensive numbers will communicate. I'm stealing this straight out of your handbook here, Jeff.

he played 32 games at second base, 26 in right field, 24 shortstop. He's logged 11 games in left field. He's even logged a game at third base. That is the kind of versatility that really helps a team that has been completely hampered by injuries the entire season. Right. Like that is the skill set that you absolutely need more than pretty much anything else

when you're just trying to put viable MLB, caliber bodies in, you know, in all nine positions every day. And Rojas, I think, has contributed to that more than just about anyone else. And the numbers themselves are not bad. He's not been quite as prolific at the plate of late. I think he's been on a little bit of a skid here the last few weeks. But nonetheless, 251 for his batting average, 321 on base, 427 slugging percentage. His weighted runs created plus is 107.

So he's basically been like a slightly above. average hitter. And for the Diamondbacks and all they've gone through this season and the versatility that I mentioned for me, that was enough to put Joshua Rojas at the top. Yeah, and I think that's totally fair. I mean, that's a good pick. And he was certainly, certainly on my short list. And for the reasons you mentioned, I mean, the versatility is a big thing.

But he always had some of those stretches with the bat that have just been, frankly, like, pretty impressive. Yeah. And like I absolutely have to eat crow here. This spring, I was not buying Josh Rojas. I made the Ildemarovargas comp. Just suggesting that his spring numbers were what Il-Demarro Vargas's spring numbers were a couple years ago. And El-Demarro Vargas has been DFAed, I think, five times now since the start of last spring.

So, yeah, Rojas certainly seems to have some more stick. power. And that's, you know, like you said, it's just been a guy that they can plug in when and where they need with the amount of injuries they've had. I mean, I don't know. I was excited to see Geraldo Perdomo play some shortstop at the beginning of the year. But I was also having seen him in the minors not that long ago, familiar with his game enough to know that at the plate, it was going to be pretty overmatched.

Sure. Having, you know, if we'd had to watch that for like a month and a half or a full month, that would have been way too much. So Josh Rojas was in the right place, the right time. And, you know, I think it's interesting, Jesse, that we've picked two guys. Neither of them are standouts or household names. And both have had kind of like winding careers to get to this point. Like, Rojas is 27 now and didn't debut until he was 25 and has kind of worked his way in.

and Merrill Kelly, I mean, went to Korea and came back. I mean, it's just interesting. Like, this organization has found some really productive players in some sort of non-traditional ways, I guess, with these two. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's fair. And the other thing I would add with Rojas is,

I know you looked up the UZR numbers before we started recording and we won't go through all those numbers now. But he effectively came out as average, slightly above average at every position except for shortstop, or maybe he was a little bit below. So it's not just that, you know, the Diamondbacks are like forcibly making him play all these different positions against his will.

He's actually like, you know, and pretty decent at it. And we've talked about Pavin Smith in a similar role at times where, you know, he's had to, you know, log innings in center field and, you know, play in places where he might not have expected to play here in like his first full season in the majors, but he's sort of gone with it. I think both of those guys have shown pretty well defensively in those opportunities. A few roster moves here to get to from just a couple of days ago.

The Diamondbacks optioned Nick Heath down to Reno. And I guess I'm about to get to the reason for that. A couple days ago, they claimed Jordan Weems off of waivers, who I believe was coming over from the Oakland A's. The Diamondbacks designated left-handed reliever Ryan Booker to make room for him. And so in all in one move, they option Heath down to Reno. They activated Jordan Weems, who is a reliever, logged submitting with the A's last year, wasn't so good this year. Eventually, they moved on from him.

And then they also recalled Stuart Fairchild, who is an outfielder. The Diamondbacks acquired him in the Archie Bradley trade, a name that we've certainly been looking at. Josh Van Meter, of course, is the other guy who came over in that deal. he has been a little bit less than ideal, shall we say, in his stint in the majors that we've seen so far. But Fairchild has really been raking over in Reno here over the last couple of weeks. And Jeff, I think we're both excited to see what he can do in the majors. Yeah, and I think even last week in our last show, he was mentioned as a player who'd probably get a look.

Yeah. And sure enough, you know, here he is. So that happened maybe a little quicker than I was expecting. but happy, happy either way. And I think the, I think what's interesting with Fairchild is that, you know,

he's young enough that you can still kind of have some, you know, have some hope. I think with him that there's, there's, you know, certainly a little more growth left. I mean, he gets 25,

so he's not particularly young, but he also hasn't had much, you know, I think, yeah, this was, this is really his first taste of the majors. So, And it's interesting, just as a bit of an aside, we're having to sort of adjust our expectations for how old players are when they debut right now because of the pandemic.

Sure. You know, he didn't make it up in 2019. And then last year would have been a, you know, perhaps a really difficult year for a guy to make his debut. So here he is debuting as a 25-year-old this season. But I think what's neat about him is he's a pretty dynamic player. He's going to be able to do some things defensively that'll really help the ball club. He's good in the outfield. He's a good outfielder.

But he can hit a little bit too. And I don't think, you know, I don't think we're going to see him hit the same kind of tanks at Chase Field that he was hitting in Reno. But hardly anyone does. And even with a little bit of reduced power, I still think he's going to be kind of a sneaky threat. I think that he can probably put some balls in the gaps, hit some balls hard. and he runs really well. So I think he'll be a pretty exciting guy to get a look at. He's, you know, he's coming off at a remarkably hot stretch.

How much of that can he bring with him, you know, is going to be difficult to assess, you know, until we see him on the field some more. But I think, you know, there's the upside of a, you know, like a fourth outfielder, you know, type here. And for this team, you know, maybe that's a fringy everyday guy, you know, while the roster is kind of being churned over. So I think he deserves some looks for sure. I mean, there's, you know, with a lot of these guys, there's really nothing left to do besides

play them and, you know, let them, let them fail and succeed and fail again and learn those lessons and build, you know, build additional skills. I mean, that's really where, where they're at with so many guys on the roster right now. And Fairchild is certainly one of them. Yeah, looking at his numbers for, for this year and then kind of, the past in his minor league career. It looks like he's played a decent number of innings at all three outfield positions. Yeah.

This year in Reno, nine games in left field, three in center, six and right. It looks like he's only started one game in center. But at least a guy that you can viably throw out there in the lineup in center field. And especially knowing that they option Nick Heath down to Reno to make room for him, I think that's certainly within reason that they might ask him to play some center field at some point. this season. So we'll definitely get a good look at his defense. But yeah, I mean, if there's, you know, an exciting guy to debut in the second half of this season, Stuart Fairchild is really right at the top of the list for me. I think it should be fun to see what he can do. And even though

he's not necessarily, you know, superstar, there's not like big projections around his name. He was a second round draft pick. And he's one of those guys who doesn't seem to have any glaring weaknesses. Like, there's nothing in his game that is, you know, like a real hindrance from him becoming a really good player in the major. So while we're maybe not putting big expectations on him, he's the kind of guy who could, you know, reasonably surprise you and really turn into a pretty good player. So he should be a lot of fun to watch here. The other guy I mentioned there, Jordan Weems, the reliever coming over, claimed off of waivers from the A's. I don't know, frankly a whole lot about Jordan Weems.

He has an 80-grade hairflow for those who are into that. That's my scouting report on Weems. Jeff, do you know anything else about this guy? I know last year he, I think he pitched about 10 or 14 innings and was pretty good. And then this year, four and a third innings and was not so good. And the A's just seemed to move on from him from there for whatever reason. Yeah, I mean, he features a fastball that will sit in the mid-90s. Um, he does also throw, uh, like a, like a two seamer, but not very often. And it's mostly a slider as is, is, uh, key secondary. So, um, that's weems kind of in a nutshell. Um, you know, despite kind of sitting in the mid 90s, he's not a big strikeout guy. Um, he did generate quite a few more strikeouts last season. Then he has this year, but this year's strikeouts have been down, even though the velocity is held, you know, mostly steady. Um, you know, as, as your, uh, sort of bark and been, really. Um, um, as, as your, uh, sort of bark and been, really.

lever type. He may walk a few more guys and you'd like. And he's pretty, pretty flyball oriented. And despite that, I mean, he's been able to keep, you know, which helps him, I guess, keep batting averages down, but he has been touched up just a little bit here in his very, very brief stand in the majors in 2021 for some home runs. So he's the type of dude. I think that, you know, these are just sort of fungible assets at this point. And I think I think the Diamondback is going to have to continue sort of cycling through these guys. I think that we're going to see a lot of this. Yeah.

And we're going to see a lot of sort of, hey, this guy, you know, is vulnerable as, you know, he was passed through waivers. We're going to go ahead and put a claim in on him, scoop him up, see what we can do. Let our coaches work with them, see if there's something we think that we can clean up and give it a go. I mean, there's there's no reason to continue doing some of, you know, pitching some of the guys that have gotten looks. And so I'm not going to be shocked to see them take some flyers on guys. And even, you know, on some of the ones that maybe really don't look major league ready, you know, try to pass them through waivers again and see if they can get them down to Reno where they can work with them a little bit, which is, again, got to be just an absolutely brutal place to try to, you know, work on what's ailing you as a pitcher. But I do think this is going to be a continuing trend in Williams, just the latest. So we'll see if, you know, he can kind of get himself back on track. I mean, he had the makings of a pretty effective reliever just a year ago. Yeah. You know, granted, that was, you know, in a pretty small sample, but something was working. And now something's not working. I think, you know, we've seen this with Stefan Kreiton, right? The exact same situation where he's

gone from, you know, very effective to very ineffective. Weems is a similar boat. And so maybe you see if you can fix something like that. He just turned 28. I actually turned 28 at the end of last season, so he's going to turn 29 later this year. He's not young. Times running out for guys of this age. And so you got to figure he's probably got a lot of motivation to try to tune his game back up.

Yeah, well, last week we talked about Kegan Curtis, the righty that the diamondbacks got from the Yankees and the Tim La Cache. Castro trade, just, you know, guy in AA probably will get a look in the bullpen at some point this year. And, and yeah, Jordan Weem seems to be sort of along the same lines, you know, a guy who doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of promise, has shown flashes, has decent stuff. At this point, Jeff, you got to figure the Diamondbacks with that bullpen, you know, I feel like at some point, I wonder if the Diamondbacks will sort of move away from sort of the free agent game, which is kind of what they've done.

year in, year out, you know, bring in guys like Tyler Clippert and Joaquin Soria this year. Yeah. You know, last year, Junior Gera and Hector Rondone and Brad Boxberger and Fernando Rodney and, you know, the list goes on and on of relievers.

The diamond backs have brought in from free agency on, you know, short-term deals, usually older guys who are sort of at the end of their career. And time and time again, it just hasn't really worked out for the team. And so part of me wonders if maybe the diamondbacks are thinking about transitioning at some point here to maybe, you know, more of these sort of projects with guys like Jordan Weems and Keegan Curtis and, you know, trying to maybe, you know, pick up guys who haven't really had much of a shot in the majors and try to find a diamond

in the rough, you know, rather than going to the free agent market year in, year out and picking up guys who are probably past their prime. Yeah, I mean, they've, and I think, you know, relievers are just such a volatile commodity. to begin with and then it's especially difficult when you're shopping at the bottom of the bin and right you know as they continue to do that it's just been really difficult i mean i think you're right i think there's something to be said for developing some guys into this kind of role um it's not sexy right it's not the thing that you you know want to be known for necessarily is you know churning up you know relief guys that are that are pretty fungible but yeah there's something to be said for it and

And I think it's an area where they could really stand to kind of lean in. They haven't invested much money in the bullpen. They're not buying expensive guys, but even the cheap guys they're buying aren't working. So it seems like, you know, it seems like that strategy just as, as you noted, has just repeatedly failed. And so something to be said for maybe, you know, going through the, going through the scrap heap and just seeing if something sticks, man. I mean, what do you got to lose at this point? That's certainly a good short-term strategy. Well, I think they maybe try to work out their longer-term strategy.

And I think one guy that was just recently promoted, as Ryan Weiss was just promoted from AA to AAA. I think he's been pitching him relief more, and he's a guy that had been a starter. So maybe we see, you know, maybe we see a guy like Ryan Weiss, who was drafted just a couple years ago, I want to say in the fourth rounder thereabout. So, yeah, time to start, you know, maybe converting some of these, uh, fringy, you know, starting pitchers that just aren't going to make it as a starter into relievers and getting them up there and getting their feet wet because the team needs them now and it looks like

they're going to continue to need them in the next couple of years. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to go ahead and, and pause there. I'm going to do another quick ad read here. We're going to take a quick break. And then when we come back on the other side, we're going to, to talk a little bit about the Diamondback's tendency to really struggle to strand guys on base. We're going to get into that a little bit.

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That's code dry heat to feel the sweat. Only at Draft Kings eligibility restrictions apply. See DraftKings.com for details. All right, we are back here after our quick commercial break here in the middle of episode 32. Jeff, here in this back half of the episode to wrap things up, we did some looking into at the Diamondbacks ability to leave guys on base or lack thereof, as the case may be.

We found the Diamondbacks this season have a 67.5% left on base rate, which for those of you who aren't familiar, basically, my understanding is that means that 67.5% of base runners that reach for the opposing team wind up scoring against Diamondbacks pitchers. Jeff, I believe you looked up the average from a year ago, like what the sort of major league average left on base rate was from last season. I want to say you said about 72, 72%, 72% of runners are typically stranded. So yeah, don't come around to score.

Yeah, yeah. So that's about a 5% difference, give or take, from where the Diamondbacks have been this year, which may not sound like a lot, but 67.5% is the worst mark in the majors. The diamond backs do not. They struggle to hold guys on base and keep them from scoring, which probably doesn't come as a huge shock. But Jeff, I know you did a little bit of work into, okay, it's only 5% that doesn't seem like, you know, that far away from like the average number.

But over the course of a long season, that 5% can actually make a pretty big difference. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it was one of those things around like, yeah, 5%. Hmm, I wonder what that's actually worth. And even just to date, right? I mean, the team has played 87 games and just doing some sort of like very rudimentary kind of back of the envelope math. You know, if the team had a league average left on base rate, you're looking at, you know, potentially about 50 runs. maybe 51, 52 runs that would not have scored instead. And so you keep an extra 50 runs off the scoreboard. I mean, that's only through 87 games.

It's just a little over halfway. You project this rate forward. You're looking at nearly 100 runs over the course of the year. You know, that takes the team's ERA, even if we just assume that maybe some of those runs were scored in an unearned fashion if we keep those rates about the same. take the team's ERA from where it stands now at 5.33 down to about 4.77. So that's also, you know, I think a 4.77 team ERA is not particularly good.

But it sounds a good bit better than 5.33. So, yeah, I mean, what's that worth? I mean, timing-wise, you know, it all matters, you know, sequencing and whatnot. you know, when those things happen and which runner's score and which ones don't, you know, is this in the ninth inning or is this in the second inning? You know, so, so that's certainly something that's really, you know, nearly impossible to factor in. But I think it's safe to say that keeping an extra 50 runs off the, off the old scoreboard so far this season. I don't think any of us would complain about that.

No, no. I mean, yeah, the diamond backs on the season are minus 125, which is not a great. differential for, you know, slightly past halfway through the year. But yeah, I mean, 50 runs is meaningful. If you can change, you know, minus 125 into minus 75, I mean, you know, that probably buys you another, you know, five or 10 wins, I would think. So that's, yeah, that's a significant number in itself that we were looking at. And yeah, I think you said it would put the Diamondbacks team ERA as they would essentially

go from being the second worst pitching staff, the fifth worst. Yeah. if I remember what you said. So yeah, so certainly, yeah, so certainly not, you know, a great pitching staff, even if, you know, they were able to bring that number up to league average and strand a few more guys. But nonetheless, certainly, you know, a big improvement. And it's not particularly surprising that even if that was league average, that the team

ERA is still pretty high because obviously a big factor is not allowing base runners in the first place, which this team is also struggled to do. But, but yeah, sort of an interesting. interesting thing to look at and just kind of a stat we picked out. Yeah. And I think, you know, if I even just kind of look at like Pythagorean expectations of wins and kind of look at a team that maybe is in a similar boat, you know, like the tigers have, you know, a run differential that is about what the Diamondbacks would be that

kept those, you know, 50, 51, 52 runs off the board. Sure. You know, and they're expected to, you know, have 36 wins so far in the season. The Diamondbacks right now only have 24. Wow. When the Diamondbacks really expected wins and losses are 32 and 55, so they're significantly underperforming that thanks to their terrible record in one-run ball games. Right. But, you know, it's like maybe that's worth three or four wins.

So I think we might be able to extrapolate that and say that, yeah, okay, an extra 50 runs, you know, left on the bases, you know, that's probably worth three or four wins right now. And, you know, it's a team that could certainly use them. Um, you know, they would take any extra Ws they could get right now. Um, but then we go back to kind of the conversation we were having right before the break, you know, around, around Jordan Weems and, um, Keegan Curtis and the guys coming in. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that I think they're really looking to shore up. And I mean, these are, um, this is sort of low hanging fruit, if you will, like, uh, to be

better than virtually dead last or dead last, um, should not be that tall of an order. So I think they're going to, you know, as we said before, just kind of keep, you know, grasping at that and trying to make any move they can in a positive direction that way because this seems to be, you know, clearly the one of the things that's just absolutely like plaguing them on a nightly basis. Do you think, Jeff, I'm curious, do you think how much luck is there baked into left on base? Obviously, like how good your bullpen is, like there's some genuine talent involved with, you know, if you're bringing. in guys out of your bullpen who are just not ideal, then, you know, certainly some of the starters, you know, are not going to be able to strain as many runners because if they come out in the middle of an inning,

you know, those guys they leave on are probably scoring. But I imagine there's some level of luck baked into that maybe. Yeah, there's certainly luck. I mean, also defense matters, you know, who you have, you know, who you have positioned where. It's, I mean, we talked about it, you know, with Josh Rojas, right? But, I mean, if it's, you know, you're trying to strand a runner. Maybe there's a runner on third with two outs and a ball gets hit into the hole.

Do you want Josh Rojas going for that ball or do you want Nick Ahmed going for that ball? And so that matters too. But there is an amount of luck here that is just virtually impossible to strip out. You know, so many plays in baseball, especially somehow in these key moments, always seem to be like bang, bang plays that go to replay. So you're at times even almost like in an inconclusive call, you're hoping that the umpire ruled it in your favor so that there isn't enough video evidence to overturn the call. That's how close the margin for error is here.

And that's how much luck that you're right, that there can be really baked in, you know, weather matters, where you're playing, the ballpark matters, all those kinds of things. So, um, but I think when you're, you know, when you're dead last, uh, you know, um, I, I think, you know, perhaps, uh, luck matters to, to maybe, maybe you're not dead last. Maybe you're second to last. Maybe you're third to last. Uh, but you're, you're still way down there. Um, so I don't think that's a point you're making, but, um, I don't want anyone to walk away from this thinking that luck is what's really helped them back. I think we'd be remiss for being that gracious with the reason why they've struggled so bad

at allowing runners onto the base paths in the first place, then letting them come around and score. Right. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. All right. Well, let's go ahead and finish this episode off.

We're going to do something kind of fun here. We're going to make bold predictions here for the second half of the Diamondback season. and how bold what we're saying is, I guess we'll let our audience to decide, or we'll leave our audience to decide. But I'm going to go ahead and get us started here because the guy I'm selecting is kind of related to our left-on-based conversation. So here we go, Jeff. I think that Madison Bumgarner, you all give a quick update first.

He threw 55 pitches in an Arizona league game earlier this week. I think he hopefully will be on track to return at some point, maybe late. later this month here in July. I think that by the end of the season, the current horror story that surrounds Madison Bumgarner will look a little bit brighter. I think we are going to look at him

and we are no longer going to be completely mortified by the fact that the Diamondbacks committed, you know, around $60 million to him over the next three years. Maybe we won't love the contract, but I think it's going to look a whole lot less like a liability because I really think that when he comes back,

He's actually going to pitch pretty well. He's going to calm things down in the Diamondbacks rotation. Obviously, the numbers to this point don't look great, a 573 ERA. But I think for him, I think there is certainly an element of bad luck baked in there. His left on base number, the percentage of base runners that he's been able to strain is only 59.7, which is like far in a way the lowest number on the team for guys who have pitched real innings this year. So he is basically at a really pretty ridiculous rate. He is allowed a lot of guys on base to come around and score.

And as you said, you know, there's certainly an element of, you know, the pitcher himself involved in that. But I think there's really an element of luck. I mean, I mean, 59.7% for that number is extremely low. So I think he's a better pitcher than his numbers indicate. And you look at his strikeout numbers this year a little bit up, not necessarily in line. with his career best, but a 24% K rate, 7% walk rate, substantially better numbers than what we saw from him last year. I don't think that his stretch of dominance in the middle of the season there was a complete

aberration. I think there's really something here. And hopefully, my bold prediction is that in the second half of the season, we're going to get to see some glimpses of vintage Madison Bumgarner. And hopefully that'll leave a good taste in our mouths to end the season. Yeah, it's bold and I like it. It's bold and I like it. And I think there's something to be said for, you know, we, I mean, we'd have to rewind the tape quite a while now to go back to sort of his stretch of dominance and, you know, hear what we said about that.

But, you know, there were elements of it that seemed maybe a little fortunate for him. But there were also elements of it that was like, oh, okay. Like he's moving it. It's up. It's down. It's in. It's out. He's commanding, you know, he's commanding his cutter in on the hands of right-handed batters.

So if you want to just stack the lineup with Ritey's, he's going to come in and just jam you. Right. There were starts where he had the curveball working really well. And guys were just, I mean, some of the swings and misses he got on that curveball were pretty silly at times. Yeah. Yeah. So, man, I'm hoping that your boldness is rewarded because they could show. use it. I mean, they could really sure use it. And I think, I think your bold prediction kind of

leads helps support mine, if you will. Sure. Yeah, we'll give it to us, Jeff. What do you got? Yeah, I think. So my bold prediction is that this team's going to win at least 30 more baseball games this year. And I know that's not particularly bold. We would certainly hope that they would win 30 more games. But they only have 75 remaining. And so to go 30, and 45 down the stretch would be a pretty vast improvement over the 24 and 63 mark that they're at right now. And so that would also mean they'd win 32 games in the second half of the season. But yeah, I'm going to go with 30 more wins. And I think the reason why is that I think some of the factors that have been really holding this team back have been,

unfortunately, very front-loaded. I think one of the things that's going to work in their favor is that while I do expect them to sell a little bit, I think that there are a lot of teams that will also become sellers that haven't sold yet. That will help when the Diamondbacks schedule permits them to play some of the lower placed teams in different divisions across baseball. So that'll kind of play in their favor. and I think that that helps them comparatively is that some of the some of the teams haven't sold yet. I also think that there are guys like Madison, Mumgarner, who you spoke of,

Zach Gallen, another one. And Zach Gallen's recent injury being, you know, another blow. But these are guys that are going to need to start racking up innings. Yeah. Because they didn't pitch very much in 2020. And they haven't pitched a whole lot this year. And so if the team would like them to have anything like a semi-normal workload next season, they're going to need to start logging some innings.

You could probably throw Luke Weaver into that batch. And I mean, you know, we've we've had our fits and starts with Luke Weaver, but my goodness, have we also seen enough of some of the other guys? So I think this team's going to get stronger down the stretch, at least in the pitching department. They may lose a bat or two. Eduardo Escobar probably still. still gets traded. It's possible that David Peralta maybe gets traded.

I think it's less likely that Nick Omay gets traded as Drupal-Cabrera could get traded. But I think they can fill some of those holes more easily than they can fill holes in the rotation and the rotation could actually get stronger if guys are healthy enough to take their turns. And then like we still just kind of have Catelle Marte like sitting off on the side. So, you know, you insert one of the better players in the national. league back in the lineup and that's going to cover up a lot of holes so um health related you know but i also think from a from a contextual standpoint i think you know we're going to see some of the

some of the bottom feeders you know continue to sell and weaken themselves and the diamondbacks could be uh if you know health permits actually getting stronger during some of that time and so um you put me on record to say in the win uh 30 of their last 75 games so a 30 and 45 mark from here on out on July 7th. I'm just dumbfounded, Jeff. I'm just trying to process what if you, if you had told me at the beginning of the season that your bold mid-season prediction

was going to be that the Diamondbacks would play like 350 baseball the rest of the year. And we would be proud of that. Oh my goodness. I shuddered to think of how I would have reacted to that. But yeah, I mean, I think that's sort of the of the state of the franchise right now, that unfortunately would be a pretty vast improvement. Help me with the math here, Jeff.

Well, how many wins would that put them at for the whole season? If they go 30 from here out. Yeah, they'd end up with 54 wins, which is incredibly low. Like, that is slam dunk first pick in the draft next year territory. Yeah. Yeah, which, you know, start the Elijah Green lottery now. But it looks like the diamond packs are. You know, we just had, we just had Keena Lamont to talk about this upcoming draft, which is now just a few days away.

But my goodness, they're probably going to be picking first overall in the one in 2022 as well. Wow. Yeah, well, you heard it here first, folks. Our bold prediction, the Diamondbacks are going to finish strong and go 54 and 108 to finish off this 2021 season. It has been a year. It has been a year. Okay, one thing before we say goodbye for this episode. Something I figured out.

So we really haven't talked much about the NL West because frankly, the Diamondbacks have been so far buried for so many weeks, even months now that it really hasn't warranted much of a conversation for us. But as we speak right now, the San Francisco Giants stand in first place, which I think we could do a whole podcast on how on earth that happened. We kind of figured the Giants and Diamondbacks would be in a similar camp entering this season. And that has certainly not been the case. The Diamondbacks are 30 games.

behind San Francisco right now. But the Giants are 53 and 32. If you extrapolate that over 162 games, they're on pace to win 101. So they're on pace to go 101 and 61, which is a really good record, quite an accomplishment for a team that really didn't have a whole lot of expectation

going into the year. If the Diamondbacks win out, Jeff, if the Diamondbacks were to win 75 consecutive games to end the season, they would go 99 and 63. they would still fall short of the current pace of the San Francisco Giants by a full two games. And that is mind-boggling, just how far this team has been buried. And even it's not, I mean, it's not even just the Giants.

The Dodgers and the Padres, of course, are right there with them. It'll be fun sort of watching how this thing plays out. It looks pretty likely again that, you know, two wildcard teams might come out of the NOS, which is something we've seen before and we'll probably see again, in years to come. But that was just mind-blowing for me, Jeff, just thinking about how far gone the season really is for the diamondbacks and really has been for a while.

I mean, you have to go back more than a month now before you could even have an outside thought of the diamondbacks, you know, turning this around and making something of this season. You know, it's incredible that they're doing this. The Giants have eight batters that are like, you know, semi-regular guys when they're healthy, have played like a reasonable portion of the season. Some are hurt right now, but they've all played, you know, close to 40 games or, you know, 50 games or 70 games. They all have a weighted runs created plus of above 120.

Wow. That's 20% better than league average. Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, Stephen Dugger, Mike Yistremski, Evan Longoria, Brandon Bell, Darren Ruff and Lamont Wade Jr. All just mashing. Wow. Mashing. Which is really crazy because Brandon Bell, Evan Longoria,

Brandon Crawford, and Buster Posey would have just won you some fantasy baseball titles back in 2012. What year is it? My gosh. Does Pablo Sandoval still back cleanup over there? What's a panned up? Yeah. Let's get him over here.

The Diamondbacks by comparison. have really one, you know, I guess two players that could really maybe meet that. Cole Calhoun, Wood Cowell, but he just hasn't played enough. So you're really looking at like Catelle Marte and Carson Kelly, both of whom are injured. Andy Young owns the, you know, the second best way to runs Crated Plus on the team. And he has 47 played appearances to his name. And so it's just, yeah, I mean, there's, you know, here's a, The Giants, I think what's so interesting with the Giants is here's a team that like,

they're bucking the trend, right? They get the Padres. They're young. They're fun. You know, they're super exciting. They're flashy. And then you've got like, I mean, the Dodgers are just star-laden and fun in their own way. And then you have the Giants.

They're just like kind of old, not really flashy, like not the funest team. And they're just doing it night in and night out. It's been really kind of marvelous. And I frankly expected them to like fall back to Earth a month and a half, two months ago. Yeah. And it just hasn't happened. Yeah. Yeah.

It's mind blowing. I daily try to figure out how on Earth to San Francisco Giants got so good. And yeah, it really is just Buster Posey got good again. And Brandon Crawford got good again. And somehow these guys that are, you know, on the wrong side of 30. some of them working into their mid-upper 30s. And for whatever reason, they've just seemed to find it again. But we could probably do a whole episode on the NL West

and the Giants, Dodgers, and Padres. It should be a fun ride to the finish for those three teams. Unfortunately, the Diamondbacks a distant, distant bottom feeder right now in the NLS 30 games out of first place, 26 and a half out of the wild card. But yeah, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up there. Jeff, somehow we seem to have no issue talking about a 24 win baseball team for 40 minutes every week. So that's fun. But yeah, we're on a weekly rotation now.

So you can expect a new episode from us. We'll hopefully nail down an exact day of the week that you can expect us to post every week. But for now, it seems like Wednesdays, Thursdays, Friday, something in there. But hopefully we'll nail that down a little bit more here in the next couple of weeks. But as always, thank you so much for listening here to the Rattle Podcast. We'd love to hear from you on Twitter. You can find The Rattle on Twitter at the Rattle A-Z. We'd love to interact with you there.

You can find Jeff at Outfield Grass 24 or myself at at Jesse and Friedman. We'd love to interact with you on Twitter. I know we didn't take questions this time around. Didn't want to beat the bush with what are they going to do with the trade deadline and the draft and some things that we've already touched on in previous episodes. But we love to hear what you thought of the show and any comments or questions that came up along the way. But with that, we're going to go ahead and wrap things up. Once again, thank you so much for listening.

And we'll be back here next week to talk more about the 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks.