PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Ep. 35: Varsho surging, Lawlar unsigned, & trade deadline chatter (Live from Ron Tonkin Field!)

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

Live from Ron Tonkin Field (home of the Hillsboro Hops), we discuss Daulton Varsho's recent surge, how concerned we are that Jordan Lawlar hasn't signed, and a breakdown of our top trade candidates heading into the deadline. 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 35 of the Rattle Podcast. As always, my name is Jesse Friedman, along with Jeff, my co-host, and Jeff. I don't think we've ever done this. We are doing a live broadcast. We are at the Hillsborough Hop Stadium, which is called Ron Tonkin Field. I'm not mistaken. We are all hopped up to be here. Am I saying that right, Jeff?

You've got it right. You've got to put a hashtag in front of it. Otherwise, you're good. We are hashtag all hopped up to be here. For real, though, big thank you to. the Hillsborough hops, they've been great in having us set up here in the press box. And we may or may not have some visitors later on throughout the show. We may get interrupted and booted out of the space at some point.

So hang with us. But we're here to talk about the Arizona Diamondbacks. We've only played three games since we last spoke. It was just the weekend series against the Chicago Cubs. Jeff, they lost two out of three. Nothing horribly significant in that series. I think the thing that is captured most people's, attention has been Dalton Varshot and the fact that he has really turned a corner, it seems,

his last seven games, he's batting 4-17 with a 5-17 on base, slugging almost a thousand in that span with three home runs. And those three home runs, he actually hit in three consecutive games. So obviously huge news. We've kind of been waiting for Varsho to turn a corner at some point. And it seems like he might have done that. Yeah, I think it's really, you know, really helpful to the club, obviously, to have his production start to show up. I mean, yeah, you nailed it. I mean, we've been waiting kind of for a while to just see like any signs of life. And so, um, certainly, certainly positive. Um, you know, we kind of have known that it's been in there. And I think one of the things that I've been, you know, kind of watching and alluded to in our

last show was kind of how he's been handling, um, fastballs in particular. And so, um, kind of digging through some of the data. It looked like he's had sort of an above average propensity to, swing and miss at fastballs, but maybe not quite as troubling, but also a strong propensity to foul fastballs off. And so he's been getting kind of a steady diet of heaters. And I mean, Major League pitchers just aren't going to, like, you know, they're going to keep throwing them to you until you can hit him. So it's nice to see he's made, you know, some pitchers pay. He's turned around some fastballs and hit him out. So that's been really encouraging. I'm just, it's such a small sample right now. I'm, you know, I'm just hoping.

and waiting to see how much of it sticks, but they need this, the Diamondbacks need this, and Dalton Barsha needs this, I'm happy for him. I remember seeing him here at the talk, actually, right after he signed. So, yeah, it feels like coming home,

but, yeah, good to see for sure. It was striking when I got here. They've got, like, big, epic portraits of Riley Smith and Kevin Ginkle and, you know, guys that at the Major League level, we don't necessarily think that highly of, but, you know, in small town minor league baseball, these guys have names around here,

and, you know, people around. here is certainly loving seeing them playing the major leagues. Beyond Varshot, another thing that came out of this weekend, Zach Gallen kind of struggled. I know he's kind of coming back from injury. Maybe we're not too concerned there, but seven runs over four innings, I think a lot of people, which seems very rare, but a lot of people were actually mad at Toroilevello for leaving him in too long, which isn't something we've said a whole lot of this year. But the numbers didn't look great.

Jeff, are you concerned about Zach Allen? is something that will turn? Is this an indicator of an injury? How do we feel about this? I've always thought that it must be so hard to be a pitcher who's like so in tune with your throwing program, you know, your starter, you pitch every fifth day, et cetera. And to like all of a sudden be disrupted and try to pick it back up. I mean, I'm not really that concerned. I think, you know, we know what he can do. This has been a little ugly, though. And this isn't the only one. He's had a couple other kind of like clunky. starts this season, you know, intermix between his injury stance. So I'm not, I'm not too

concerned. I think I'm more interested, and I understand people kind of, you know, want to see him maybe come out of the game sooner in this case. But he needs to get his innings count back up. He needs to get his pitch count back up. He needs to, like, kind of get himself back on track so that when he heads into this winter, he can kind of resume his normal program. And we see him, like, fully healthy. I think the results are kind of the least important part to me. I'm just more concerned about his health. Yeah, I think that's a fair point. It seems like maybe he's trying to be a little too fine at times.

He really likes to hunt those corners. And when he hits them, he's unhittable. But when he doesn't hit them, you just kind of don't swing. And he'll walk you eventually and his fifth count will go up. And so hopefully, Zach Allen kind of turns into more of his normal self here soon enough. I think we all feel pretty good there. Other news, actually, I'll bring it back to the scene right. here, Carson Kelly is in the lineup tonight for the Hillsborough Hopps.

I think there was definitely some engineering on the part of the team to get him here. You don't always send your starting catcher all the way down to single A when they're on a rehab assignment. But Carson Kelly is a Portland native, I believe. And so he is in the lineup for Hillsborough. I think he's going to play today and then again tomorrow. It's crazy how big news that is around here. If you go to the Hillsborough-Hops website right now, there's a big, like, Carson Kelly banner on the front, his big return home. But it should be fun.

And certainly, you know, for the guys on this team currently, it's probably cool to have like a current major leaguer visit, which is something they don't see every day. Yeah, definitely. It's a neat experience for them, I'm sure. We actually just got done watching him take batting practice. So he was just kind of spraying the ball over the field. You know, you notice, like, how easy he needs. makes that look. It's kind of incredible. It's just, you know, he's just going about his normal business. And we see some of the younger players that definitely looks like they're trying a little

bit more than he is. But yeah, it should be really neat to see what he does tonight. It'll be kind of watching. And, you know, the team's on the road. So, I mean, they could have, I guess, sent him to the complex in Arizona. But, you know, he's here. He's home. And, you know, a bunch of the local, like, cable stations already parked out in the parking lot here. So it's going to be a big deal. It'll probably make the morning news tomorrow. and yeah, let's see what he does. I mean, I won't be upset if I see him hit a ball out of here. I feel like we, I feel like we underestimate the fact that guys who are major league players,

like who are major league talents, they're really, really, really, really good at what they do. And, like, a lot of times there's a temptation to be like, oh, you know, this guy normally comes out the bench is like not that good. Like, those guys would come down here and just rake and, like, everyone would be looking up to them. and you have to keep that perspective that even, you know, even Riley Smith, you know, even some of the guys we talk about this year that, you know, you might be looking down on and you think they're horrible. They would come here and be like the superstar of the league sort of a deal. And it's easy to lose sight of that. Yeah, they would just embarrass people.

Yeah. I mean, it could be kind of demoralizing at times. And it's part of, I mean, I'm very fortunate that I have, you know, this pretty close to home. You know, this is about 30 to 40 minutes away for me. So I'm pretty fortunate in that regard. But it's a great reminder of what that talent looks like. You know, I've seen a lot of guys come through here. I've seen them on their development path.

I remember watching Pavin Smith at like a postseason home run, you know, right here, right down this right down this right field line. And, you know, now I watch them hit them in the, you know, hit them in the majors. It's just interesting to watch a player evolve and even the guys that are here with hype. You can pick up some pretty significant flaws in our game that they eventually, you know, most of them iron out, you know, to some degree down the line. And it really makes you appreciate what we watch on TV, you know, or what you see at the Major League ballpark. It just, I think it's always implore people to go check out minor league baseball if they can

because it's a good reminder of how good Major League Baseball players are. Well, beyond Carson Kelly, there's some other storylines here at Hillsborough. It seems like from what you've told me, Jeff, you're certainly a little bit closer to the team than I am. The offense is maybe a bit of a work in progress, the position player side once Corbyn Carroll got hurt and he's out for the season, sadly, which is devastating. I would love to see Corbyn't play today.

But that certainly won't happen. He's out for the year with his shoulder deal. But the real story here this season has been the pitching and how it seems like day and day out, we are seeing, you know, top-notch starting pitchers for this baseball team and some guys who rank pretty dang high on some of the prospect list for the Diamondbacks. Unfortunately, we missed out on Walston. I think he pitched on Sunday.

Cicone, I think pitches on, I think pitches tomorrow. And today we are getting a guy who you might not have heard of, but he has some pretty dang good numbers. Brandon Fad, who is, let me pull up his profile year. He's 22 years old. He's made 12 starts this season between here and Visalia. and he has a 3.190 already. He has 95 strikeouts, only 15 walks and over 73 innings.

Those are pretty darn good numbers, and this is a name that some of our listeners might not have even heard. Yeah, yeah, the pitching has been the story here. This group actually, last week, went on a little bit of a tear. Walston struck out 11. I think the next night, Chaconi struck out 11, the night after that, Drey Jameson struck out 10. Oh, I forgot about Jameson.

Oh, my gosh. starting bitching struck out, you know, north of 30 guys in three consecutive games. So it's been really good. And the fad strikeout number has been really good, too. So I'm excited to see him. This is to be the first time I've seen him, seen him throw. He had a nice little run there. And Vizelia is a little bit of an older guy, got bumped up and hasn't really faced too much resistance since coming up.

So looking to see a fastball the night that should sit in the, you know, low to maybe touch the mid-90s. but the slider I think is his meal ticket so and at this kind of level I mean if you can throw you know average or plus slider yeah you're gonna get a lot of guys out so that's gonna be a fun one to watch well I know a lot of people are talking about Jordan Lawler and the possibility of him signing that is a big storyline

I think August 1st is at the deadline so we're only a few days out here people are starting to get a little concern we played this game before with Matt McLean not long ago. So it leaves a bad taste in some people's mouth. So we're going to get to that question here on the other side of an ad break. Stick with us here in about 60 seconds. We'll be back to talk about Jordan Lawler.

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It is time to talk about Jordan Lawler, the Diamondbacks first round draft pick just a couple of weeks ago. There's all sorts of excitement surrounding this guy, and I've already seen articles from the athletic about where he's going to rank on the Diamondbacks prospect list and all this stuff. And yet he actually has to sign with the team.

You kind of have to cross that bridge before you can get anywhere else. Jeff, I know you've done some number crunching on this front. How do we feel about Jordan Lawler? signing with the Diamondbacks here in the next few days? I still feel pretty positive about it. I think the money's there for them to get a deal done. Right now it looks like they have two picks outstanding. One pick is a senior sign that should sign for under slot, which I think will free up

at least $100,000 for them. And as it stands now, it looks like they could give him about $6.6 million without having to tap into any of the overage that they're allowed to to touch if they wish but i'm sure the organization would prefer not to um you know a bonus of 6.6 6.7 million dollars you know that that's a hefty bonus that's more than marcello mayor what did mayor get 6.4 from boston so i mean i mean if it's important to lawler to be like the guy that signed the biggest deal like they can do that like if that's important to him they can make that happen so um the one of the one of the one of the one of the one sort of, you know, kind of remaining thing is the team did use a few of their deeper draft picks

on some other very notable prep players who were always going to be kind of unlikely to sign. Right. If anything changes there, you know, are they trying to squeeze every penny they can, you know, keep that away from Lawler to maybe get one of those other prep guys signed over the 125K maximum? I don't know. I don't think, you know, I'm going to be honest, I'd be kind of surprised if they get any of those deals done. I think the focus is on Lawler. And as you noted, I mean, we're, you know, three, four days away here. So we should get our answer pretty quickly. Yeah. Well, hey, if you're feeling optimistic, that's a great, that's great news.

I'm already seeing all sorts of pessimism being spout out on Twitter. But, yeah, I think, I think it seems like it's something that is likely to. happen. I mean, when you're drafted sixth overall, it is a pretty gutsy move to, uh, to turn, to turn that down, especially when the diamondbacks could probably make him the best paid draft pick anyway. Yeah. Um, so we feel pretty good on that front. Um, this is, this is exciting, Jeff. I mean, looking at all of the, all of the guys the diamond backs have up and down this farm system. And, um, we know that, you know, some of them have taken steps back and whatnot. They're, they're in different places. But Jordan Lawler is, I mean, he is a,

He is a legit top prospect to have in your organization. And this is going to be exciting to see how this all unfolds. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I think kind of the idea of where he would slot, you know, to sort of pick up on what you alluded to there, where he would slot kind of in the farm system is it's like, I think most people are looking at like this is another, this is another Corby and Carroll type talent.

But packaged a little differently. Packaged maybe a little more traditionally, you know, from a physical standpoint, you know, a little bit bigger kid. I mean, the knock on Corbyn Carroll is that he's undersized. To you tell you right now, I mean, I've seen him play. He plays a lot bigger than he is. But, you know, Jordan Lawler is much more sort of your prototypical size player, you know, 6-219 now at 19. You know, he's, he end up, you know, 6-3-2-10. You know, that's a pretty big powerful, powerful baseball player.

So I think you're looking at a guy who's going to, you know, put an immediate, you know, boosts on the farm system and has just as much upside as really anybody in that farm system. Most people I think right now probably still prefer Corby and Carroll to Jordan Waller, but it's sort of a one and one A scenario. And so kind of can't lose. Just to correct myself, Marcela Mayer did get $6.6 million from Boston. But Arizona can give the same figure in a law or so.

Got it. Yeah. Cool. Other big storyline, of course, the trade deadline is just a few days away. The Diamondbacks haven't made any additional move since we last spoke. Still just the Stephen Vote and Tim La Castro deals, which are both pretty low-key. But there's still an opportunity to make a bit of a splash here in the next few days. MLB trade rumors recently released their top 60 trade candidates on their website.

The Diamondbacks had four, five, six, I think six names on that list and probably could have had even a couple more. but Merrill Kelly was the highest rank with Eduardo Escobar right behind him. Those seem like guys who are certainly in high demand. Maybe Escobar is a little bit more likely to go than Merrill Kelly, but there's a lot of teams that could use a Merrill Kelly right now. He's about as steady of a presence in your rotation as you could imagine. So, Jeff, what do you think? We got four days to go.

I mean, the Diamondbacks theoretically could make six trades, or they could make, you know, one or two. And we have to kind of wait and see. Yeah, I mean, it's been interesting. The trade deadline, you know, as we stand right now, I mean, there have been a few deals, but I don't think like the dam has burst yet. Like, there might be a flurry of moves. And it's going to be so frustrating.

We've got wound up about this stuff so far in advance. And everything happens in the last, you know, four hours leading up to the trade deadline. So it's kind of shaping up that way again because there just hasn't been a lot that's transpired as of yet. I mean, I still think Escobar is the most likely got to go. Yeah. Wachim Soria is probably next on that list for me. Asdribal Cabrera is probably going to go. You know, I think those three guys make the most sense to move because they're all rentals. They have, you know, they're not going to help this team next year in any way, shape, or form. So you might as well get what you can from them. I think right now it's probably a matter of the

dime back's front office doing their due diligence to get what they can for the these guys, but, you know, Merrill Kelly's probably the biggest most likely, you know, of the likely guys. I mean, they get a, they get a ton back for Catello Martyrs at gallon, but they're not going anywhere. So Merrill Kelly's probably the biggest upside, you know, asset. Caleb Smith, I mean, I think there's been a lot of interest in Caleb Smith, so that's another option. We'll see if he sticks around. Tyler Clipper just came back, but man, if anyone feels like he's healthy, I mean, he can come in and help. Yeah. You know, and then Peralta and Cole Cahoon are like some, you know, lefty swinging corner outfield guys that are probably, you know, depending on their health or

their age, maybe, you know, best in sort of a platoon type situation. But, you know, the team would have an option to bring those guys, you know, or Peralta is going to come back if he isn't traded and they have an option on Calhoun. So, you know, for a team that is maybe looking to acquire someone who isn't just a rental, isn't just a one-year deal, those guys might, you know, might be enticing. But for me, I mean, I'm thinking, Escobar, Soria, and Cabrera are the three guys that absolutely go. And then anything after that, you know, maybe I say Kayla Smith is maybe the next most likely. Huh.

But that probably be, that's probably where I stand on that. Something that stuck out to me was that number four on the list for MLB trade rumors is our man, Starling Marte, through the Diamondbacks, of course, dealt at last year's trade deadline. And it seems like they're, I mean, you'd be hard pressed to find an outfielder on the market who's going to fete. as much as Starling Marte in a trade right now. Obviously, hindsight is 2020, but I'd feel pretty good if the Diamondbacks had held on to Starling Marte for another year. You probably have a pretty good shot to do just as well in a trade, if not, even maybe

a little better than how they did last year if they were trading him right now. Absolutely. Yeah, he's had a good year. And, I mean, the Marlins, man, for all that they've, you know, thought they were going to do, it just has not worked. And so it does seem like the asking price is pretty high on him, which, you know, thinking about being in the driver's seat on that trade right now would feel a lot different. But I don't know, even just the amount of time that he was around, I like Starling Martel

be in to see where it winds up. Yeah, just a lot of possibilities. It feels like we've been talking trade deadline for like three weeks now. Yeah. There's not a whole lot else to say. But certainly some things can go down and you'll want to keep it locked to our Twitter profiles when things happen and we'll have some instant analysis and try to break it all down. you. Jeff, any other reflections here from Ron Tonkin Field as we look on toward,

looks like they're playing catchdown. Yeah, excited for some baseball tonight. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is kind of what it's about. You know, it's nice to be able to see baseball in person. It's nice to be able to hang out. It's nice to be able to podcast in this small kind of echoey room here. We have pop. We'll be back to our normal high quality audio next week, we promise. Yeah. But no, just appreciative of the hop staff and, you know, for having us out. I've made some really good connections here over the years. It's a good organization. It's a well-run organization. The Diamondbacks, frankly, are lucky to have this organization as a partner. They go about their business the right way. It's a nice park. It's a good product. I'm already kind of game planning what I'm going to eat tonight.

Someone's cooking bacon down on the concession stand. So I picked up on that. But yeah, happy to be here. Glad we could do a show here. And it's going to be fun. Yeah. Well, that's all we have here for episode 35 of the Rattle Podcast. Be sure to give us a follow on Twitter. You can find our joint page at the Rattle AZ.

You can find Jeff at Outfield Grass 24 or myself at at Jesse and Friedman on Twitter. We didn't have a chance to ask for questions in this episode. But we're always down to interact with you there. So feel free to hit us up with anything that comes to mind. But with that, that's all we have here today. And we'll be back next week to talk more about the 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks.