PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Gallen and the D-backs take game 1 vs the Marlins

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

On this episode, Jesse and Derek and discussing the D-backs game 1 win over the Miami Marlins, tough roster moves the D-backs are going to have to make soon, and your Mailbag Monday questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to a very exciting edition of the PHNX Debaks podcast right here at PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, formerly known as the mayor of PHNX, and I'm going by the current vice mayor. I don't know who the hell he's backing up now, but it's the one and only thunderstick Jesse Friedman. Wow, you really, uh, you're feeling a little bitter today, Derek. I can, I can sense it in your voice. I'm fine with the fact that I've already been replaced after missing one show. I am not in my feelings about it at all. I'm not angry, Jesse.

Why would I be angry? How do you think I spent the night cursing you and saying, how dare Jesse let this thing happen on the one time? No, that's not me. That is not me at all. I am not petty in the slightest. But of course, this show is brought to you by the fine folks at the Draft King's Sportsbook app.

Go download the Draft King Sportsbook app now. Get down on the NBA action. New customers right now, of course, can get down on betting just $5 on any team to win. And you will get $150. in free bets if they do. That's for the second round now of the NBA playoffs. And don't forget the Draft King's Sportsbook is an official sports betting partner of the NBA.

Jesse, big win for the Arizona Diamondbacks, much closer than it needed to be. And of course, we already have a comment from Chris saying, if they lost that for Zach, why I ought to, right? So, yeah, that was definitely entirely too close of a game, despite the fact that Zach Gallen kind of got himself in a little bit of trouble there by putting on two batters by hitting them before exiting the game. But I'm not going to let a outstanding performance by Zach Gallen be overshadowed by that there at the end and about the game getting close, right? It was exciting and it was the exact marquee matchup that we thought we would see when it came down to Zach Gallen being a major contributor in this game.

And also to obviously Jazz Chisholm making Diamondbacks fans miss him quite a bit. I mean, Zach Gallen has given up three earned runs this season now, and two of them were driven in by my jazz chisom as things worked out in this one. But I think you're, I mean, this was a big win for the debacks for sure. Like you said, this, I mean, Zach Gallen in his major league career, Derek, has made 54 starts now. He's been one of the best young pitchers in the game for a few years. This was his 11th big league win in 54 starts. I mean, you're talking. about ridiculous. I know. It really is. I mean, he has a career ERA of 3.30. He's been one of the best young pitchers in the game over the last few years, but the Marlins didn't really get him much run production when he was there. And since coming to the Diamondbacks, I mean, last year, Zach Allen was four in ten. And, you know, certainly didn't pitch as well last year as he's looked so far this season. But, you know, the Diamondbacks have not exactly done him right when it comes to run production over the last few years.

And, you know, it was good for them, I'm sure, in order to be able to come through with this win here. And not only that, not only did it feel good, but I mean, honestly, I think the Diamondbacks have had some offensive outputs like today that were great. I think that they have been struggling with the bullpen and they're missing pieces right now. So it's understandable for them to kind of go through the struggles there. The unfortunate part is that Noe Ramirez has been typically very, very, very, reliable. Yeah. And honestly, he, you know, again, he didn't have a great outing today. He kind of put

Gallons win in jeopardy a bit, but not entirely his fault. It was just good to see them be able to have some, you know, have that have that storm come, you know, have that onslaught come of a comeback from the Miami Marlins and be able to at least hold them off for the win, right? I mean, I, we could gripe about the four runs they put up, but at least the Diamond were able to hang on and shut it down. Joe Mantiply was excellent out of the pen. And you and I were terrified about Ian Kennedy being at the plate against Jazz Chisholm in the ninth.

And he did exactly what he should have done. He gave him nothing to hit and walked him on an unintentional, intentional, you know, walk. It was, it was not a great matchup. I mean, jazz Chisholm is a dead fastball hitter.

I mean, that's what he does. You know, at this stage is, and that's exactly. what Ian Kennedy throws like 85% of the time. So, yeah, Ian Kennedy's, he's the type of guy where late in games, he's a little bit, a little bit vulnerable to hitters who like to hit fastballs.

And Ian Kennedy has a really high spin rate on his heater. The velocity plays up higher than what the radar gun shows. But if he, you know, if he leaves a fastball in a bad spot, you know, he's not throwing 100 miles an hour. It's the kind of stuff that can get hit. And jazz chisham, you know, it's certainly shown over the last few weeks. what he's able to do with some of those pitches. So it was not a great matchup.

And yeah, I think what you said before is accurate. The Diamondbacks were probably smart to just, you know, essentially give him the unintentional, intentional walk and then pitch to Bertie and that end of the game. That's good managing, right? I mean, that's good managing. Even though Bertie has been tearing the cover off the ball himself. He has a 346 average with a 1.028 OPS.

So it really was like a pick your poison kind of situation. It just felt like jazz. was the guy that was going to do it. It felt like jazz had a chip on his shoulder a bit in this game towards the Arizona Diamondbacks. I mean, the guy, the guy had just scored from second base on an in-field single. I mean, you know, I know he's really good because my wife was like, I hate this guy while watching him. And it made me laugh. I'm like, yeah, but you wouldn't if his hair was red instead of blue right now. So, you know, he'd be playing at what he's playing shortstop. I mean, I think the biggest problem with jazz is that there wasn't a clear path to him being on this team,

despite how good he is, right, without them making some sacrifices. And yeah, I think that honestly, this is one of those trades, like I believe you said earlier, when you look at the trade, it feels like both sides won. Yeah, it's hard to, it's hard to make a convincing case for either side winning this trade. I think it's, yeah. But gallon, six and a third, five hits, two earn runs. those were the two hit batters there in the seventh, which I don't know.

I guess in as much as we can say, that was good managing there to unintentionally intentionally walk chisholm. What do you think about leaving Gallin in for the extra inning after the sixth? Would you have done that? Did you question that when it happened or were you okay with it? I know I was. I was sorry, I lost you there for a second. There we go.

Now I'm back. I was surprised to see Tori Lavello do that. Just given the way that he's managed pitchers so far, I guess maybe there came a point when it's like, okay, I mean, Zach Gallen had a sub 0.5 ERA at that point. The D-Backs had a five-run lead.

So, you know, maybe Tori Lavello was willing to go a little bit further than he normally would. But, you know, I mean, the Diamondbacks are going to be careful

with Zach Allen's arm this year. I'm sure he threw about 120 innings last year. I'm not sure he's about to throw 180 or 200 or something like that this season. So I do think they're going to be conservative with him in general, but this is one of those outings where I guess he'd earned it. And I mean, I guess it all is well that ends well in some ways. The diamondbacks did wind up winning the game, but Zach Allen clearly wasn't sharp coming out for the seventh inning.

So I'm not sure, you know, how Tori Lavello feels about that in retrospect, Beck, knowing him, he probably is still happy with the decision. He's the kind of guy who likes to stick behind his players, and he certainly did that today with Zach. The gap, the D-BAC's offense has really been rolling lately, Jesse, and I wanted to take a look about their relatively, relatively rolling. So we got the five to four runs being scored, nine to seven hits. This one ended up looking a lot closer than it did at one point, obviously.

The 12 strikeouts, the six strikeouts, but the big thing here is the, the XBA. I know that's something that you wanted to get into as far as the extended batting average. Yeah, yeah, the X stands for expected, expected batting average. Excuse me.

I actually know what it is, though. This is one I'm familiar with, right? This is the one. Okay, takes the variables out of it and looks more at like kind of, uh,

the, you know, the straight up, uh, like, uh, velocity and, uh,

and launch angle and things like that to see. you know, more about whether not so much about the results of the batting average, but about how well the ball was hit. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's basically a batted balls metric. It basically throughout the entire game, every single batted ball has an expected batting average in and of itself.

And what you're looking at there with the expected batting average is basically just all of those numbers combined together for the whole game. So based on the batted ball contact that the Diamondbacks made, they had an expected batting average of two. 75 in this game and the Marlins had an expected batting average of 201. And oftentimes, you know, I mean, those numbers determine the outcome of the game. The Diamondbacks made harder contact in this game than the Marlins did. It is interesting.

The Diamondbacks swung and missed a lot more in this game than the Marlins did as well. I think they struck out 12 times. Yeah, 12 to 6th, yeah, double the difference. Yeah, so which has been kind of a trend in some ways. The Diamondbacks pitching staff has had success without necessarily. necessarily getting a whole lot of swing and miss. Even Zach Gallen this season, his strikeout numbers are not through the roof compared to what we've seen over the last few years.

He's really been pitching to contact a little bit more this year than we've seen in the past. But, you know, this game is evidence. You can, you can, you know, last a game with 12 strikeouts offensively. And as long as you still hit the ball pretty hard in some of the other instances throughout the game, you know, you can have a pretty decent offensive showing. And for the Diamondbacks, it wasn't really spread out throughout the lineup. It was really all the top three hitters who I think had seven of their nine hits in the game. But it was enough for this one in order to score five runs.

And, you know, with five runs with Zach Allen on the mound, that's a recipe for success for the Diamondbacks. Exactly. I was feeling that early on when they scored two in the first inning off of David Peralta's two-run, home run, that it just felt nice to have Zach Garland have that lead going out there before he threw a single pitch. the offense, like you said, it hasn't, it hasn't been outstanding, but neither's offense across the board, which is something I'm actually going to be writing an article about, because MLB's offense with everybody seems down.

I mean, Jorge Salar is on the Miami Marlins team, and he was, I think he had a batting average below 180 today when they showed it or around 180, right? Yeah, something like that. I mean, he's not exactly, he's not exactly a superstar slugger, but he was the MVP for the Braves and the World Series. And again, to see guys like that even struggling, it feels like there is a lot of things combining. I think the humidifiers, the humidors that they're using for the balls is affecting it. I think some of the things the Mets were saying, even though they're having a tremendous amount of success, were accurate, even though they sounded like whiny cry babies a little

bit over it. It's still accurate. You can both can be true. That's one thing I love in life. Both can be true. You can be a whiny cry baby and still have a point. But the Diamond Offensively really welcome back Nick Ahmed and Jordan Looplo since joining the team. Because these two guys have the highest batting average currently on the team, obviously a smaller sample size. But it really feels like these two have made the biggest, a big impact on the offense since returning. Jordan Looplo did it again today. Another, another big hit. It really feels like, you know, it's not like he's batting 400 or anything since coming off the injured list.

But every hit that that guy has had this season. and has been a big hit, it feels like. He's at a couple homers. He's had a few key RBI knocks with two outs. We saw that today. And yeah, I mean, he's been a huge addition for them. And we were talking about it yesterday, me and Michaela, how, you know, he was kind of brought on to hit left-handed pitching.

And the Diamondbacks haven't really used him that way so far. He's been in the lineup batting second against righties. And he still had a fair amount of success doing that. So it's looked really good for him offensively and defensively. He's played a really nice right field as well. well. Like you said, not the greatest batting average, 263 with the two home runs in an 800 OPS, but still good numbers compared to the rest of the team right now. Right.

And really, we talked in the past about this team when they were struggling that it felt like pitching was keeping them in these games close enough, but if they just could get some offense generated. And it, you know, now that over their last, you know, they won the series against the Dodgers, split a difficult series with the, the St. Louis Cardinals that they easily seem like they could have won. And then we come into this series and they take game one. These are all teams that were on a role when the Diamondbacks,

you know, stepped up and played them in these series. And they've been able to handle them really well because their pitching has maintained. We didn't see that drop off from pitching. But now that the offense is able to be not terrible, not awful, not non-existent, they're able to win baseball games.

And it's exciting to see because, I don't know how good or bad this team is going to be based on what we've seen in the first month. I have no idea the identity of this team yet other than they seem like they want to prove people wrong. They seem like, again, when I talked about the chip on the shoulder for jazz, it feels like they have a chip on their shoulder about this season, about how bad everybody expected them to be. I think you're right. They absolutely have come out this season and been better.

than people anticipated, right? I think they've already proved some people wrong. We talked about it on the show yesterday that, like, a lot of Diamondbacks fans disengaged, like, a couple weeks ago because, you know, this team was starting to remind them of what they've seen in the past. And the last couple weeks have been something new, right? I mean, this has been a baseball team that I think a lot of people have really enjoyed watching. A game like this that we saw today was just a really good entertaining baseball.

game all the way around. The Diamondbacks never lost the lead throughout the entire game. They grabbed it quickly in the top of the first. They never lost the lead. Things did get a little bit exciting. And maybe, you know, maybe we should talk about the bullpen a little bit and what the Diamondbacks plan is there moving forward. But it's been a different team the last couple weeks than Diamondbacks fans have seen in a long time. And I think it's been refreshing. I think it's helped people to have a little spark of optimism here in the month of May, which historically, Derek, has been a very miserable month for, for this baseball team. So one-in-one start feels like a, feels like a win for them so far. Yeah, you posted

Tori Lovelos numbers since managing this team in May, and it just seems to be as consistent as the sun's falling apart in the third quarter in games, right? But it's not a real thing. It's not. You know, and that's- You wouldn't think so. I mean, it's a month, right? Like, there's no reason that- I saw a great thread the other day about being the creator of your own reality and what that means. And it was a think of former Giants player who found that, got that phrase from Hunter Pence, who basically just changed his entire mindset. And you know,

like there's this idea that you let stuff happen to you, right? But none of that is real. It's as real as any other figment of your imagination or a magical creature or anything else that you believe that's not true. Right. there are things with baseball that people tend to get in their head. But it's like, May hasn't even been played yet, right?

You know, it's like, it's like Tori Lavello's least favorite meme is the one of Justin Timberlake singing, it's going to be May. But anyway, that's, we're one and one, right?

We're one in May. So, uh, we're at 500. I think the Diamondbacks right now are overachieving in both of our opinions. And it'll be interesting to see, especially with the way that this pitch. staff is constructed.

Who we see stay in the bullpen, who Tori Lavolo can rely on going forward. And like I said earlier, we'll have some more information, especially about the offense. We're going to have Jesse's piece that's incredible about Merrill Kelly as well as some information about spring training. We're going to wrap up this series. And we have a bunch of stuff coming to go phnx.com.

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Look at that guy. I didn't even know he was, but I knew he was. You can get that beautiful t-shirt as well as our PHNX Rattler design and all sorts of other designs over at the PHNX Locker.com. Go check out the PHNX Locker.com. If you like what you see and you're not a member yet, sign up to become a member, get one of those T-shirts for free and stick around with us for the next year. If you're not interested in the annual membership, sign up for the month-to-month

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I just ordered myself the Valley Sicko shirt. I'm really sad right now that I'm not watching the Sun's game. I can't legally have it on in the background because I would be streaming it. I'm sure that violates some sort of law. but again, excited for the suns, excited for all of our Valley teams. And of course, we here at PHNX are the ones that are bringing it to you.

So hopefully you sign up to become a member and you enjoy everything that we're bringing to you. Charles Woodle Pike says, I'll take all the wins in May this team can produce. And he says, I'll also take the wins between April and September as well. And I will take all of those as well. I think we all want to be wrong about this team, but in a good way, right?

We all wanted to kind of under, you know, kind of undersell this team and know that there's a good chance they weren't going to be very good. But when you see this team putting this stuff together and you see some of these pieces that the Diamondbacks have starting to be very good like Joe Mantiply out of the bullpen, then you know, it's you start to have some confidence that maybe this team,

maybe this team can turn a few heads. Maybe this team can finish better than we thought. Probably not better than I thought predicting at 82 and 80. How do you? I'm curious. Derek, how do you feel about your 82 and 80 right now? I feel watching them that they're an 82 and 80 team. I feel 82 and 80 isn't going to do anything significant.

I think that, you know, again, we get excited when teams win games and are almost as good as the teams that made it into the playoffs. But you're still missing out in the playoffs. The Diamondbacks didn't get any farther last season than the San Diego Padres did. So I don't want to hear any bullshit about how more wins matters. It really doesn't. If you're not in the playoffs, it doesn't matter, right? I think so you so you feel confident about 82 and 80 you're just also acknowledging that it that it might not even mean anything if the team goes exactly and i mean if i don't think i'd feel different if they were like 79 and 80 you know four or something like the three i don't think i would feel differently if they finished 84 and you know i mean like i don't like 84 wins and whatever they can do i mean i think that's going to be around 500 i think it might be five games below low 500 might be one or two above.

I just think that right now that's what they're playing as. They're a team that's going to win games. They're going to surprise people. And it's going to be enough for people to talk about the turnaround. It's just not going to be enough, I don't think, for them to make into the playoffs, right? But I think

the thing I wasn't expecting was the short leash that Tori Lavolo is allowing the players to have. Right now, we've seen them fill roster spots with guys that had good moment. Matt Davidson came up, immediately hit a home run, you know, as a member of this team. But unfortunately, wasn't able to, you know, sustain that, that level of performance, right?

He wasn't able to sustain that level of output. He was DFA'd yesterday or today. Was it today or yesterday? But then Taylor Widener was also sent down to the Lerner. And these were due to the roster size changes going from 28 to 26. Is that right? Yep. Yeah.

So now the debacks have some more difficult decisions to make because they have guys returning from the injured list that right now have been very valuable for them in J.B. Windelkin and Mark Malanson. Both of those guys, the team won't announce this officially, although I think Tori did acknowledge it about J.B. Wendelken went on the injured list with COVID protocols. And it's believed that the same thing is happening with Mark Malanson. Both of those guys have officially. been removed from the 40-man roster. When the Diamondbacks announced their roster moves today, they said that the 40-man roster sits at 38. And it sits at 38 because they're preparing for those two guys to come back and regain their 40-man roster spots. So, you know, they're not going to officially announce that necessarily. But I think it's safe to say both Mark Malanson and JV. Wendelken are in COVID protocols right now, which in some ways is a good thing, I suppose. It's not like

they both have, you know, shoulder inflammation or something like that. So I think there's reasons to be optimistic there. But yes, when those guys come back, the Diamondbacks are going to have to cut two more. You're going to have to open space on their 26-man active roster in order to get those guys back. So there's more, more roster slashing to come. And the Diamondbacks do have a few guys. They've called up recently who you figure might might be up and down in a sort of up-and-down role for a little while, but we'll have to, we'll have to see what they do there.

The clutch Canuck in our chat says, really curious to see Rojas return. If the starting pitching continues to dominate, I mean, she's, this is a squad. And yes, I agree with that. But then again, yeah, like what we're talking about, there's more tough decisions to be made there, right? When Josh Rojas returns and this, just the active roster size being where it's at, the Diamondbacks really do feel like they've whittled through this bullpen. situation that we had no idea where it was going to stand at the beginning of the season. We knew IPK and Melanson were going to be there at the end.

I don't even think that's guaranteed for either of those guys, to be honest. I think Joe Mantiply could easily sneak into that eighth inning setup role and free up Kennedy to just kind of be a free kind of roaming bullpen guy. But both of those guys were brought in here and told that that was the role that they were going to be, right? there was no competition for the closer role because Ian Kennedy was told when he was brought on to this organization, brought back to this organization that they were specifically going to use him as a setup man for Melanson. And he liked that. He's okay with that.

He was, you know, he saw what Mark did. He actually has a great relationship with Mark prior to them, both coming to the team. And, you know, that was, that was totally okay with him. But what I'm seeing is Lavello managing this team in a way. that doesn't seem like anybody is, is safe in their job 100%. You have to perform and you have to get results. You have to help the club win.

And if you don't, there's a good chance. Someone else that's performing better could outplay you and take your job. That's kind of the way things should be. You know, that's the level of competition that you want to maintain to make sure everybody's staying at their best. As far as I know, I don't think we even have a starter name. for tomorrow's game, at least as far as I'm aware as of this moment. I guess if you're listening to the audio podcast,

that's probably been announced by now. But the Diamondbacks have taken their time announcing that. And yeah, Humberto Castiano's, it seems like his job in the rotation is not necessarily secure. And I think there's some other guys in that bullpen. Corbyn Martin's been up and down. Kenan Middleton was just called up. Caleb Smith was just called up again.

So there's a few guys out there whose roles are still, probably a little bit shaky. And yeah, that's, I mean, that's sort of what we expected in some ways. This diamond backs rotation didn't necessarily have a whole lot of depth after the first four guys or so. And the bullpen also, you know, there's not a whole lot of clear depth beyond Ian Kennedy and Mark Malanson and some of those other names that you mentioned. So it's going to be a bit of a revolving door, at least here early in the season.

And yeah, I don't know. Do we have any updates? Has Humberto Castiano's been names? anything else. Humberto Castiano is starting against Trevor Rogers in game two and Madison Bumgardner is starting against Elysier Hernandez in game three. Okay. Okay. So they're not not shaking anything up there yet, but it'll be interesting. You feel like, you know, Humberto Castiano's the leash there might be a little bit shorter than some of the other guys. Yeah. On the flip side, got to tip my cap to Zach Davies. I can't help but wonder how much the

Diamondbacks knew about Zach Davies before acquiring him. I can't help. but wonder how much Brent Strom knew about Zach Davies and was like, this is the guy you should go get. Brent Strom is too damn brilliant, right? Like he, they talked about it on the broadcast today. We know all about Zach Buchanan's article with Zach Gallen talking about the first meeting with Strom and just knowing more than Zach Gallin knows about himself.

I love how Zach Buchanan wrote that article like two months ago. Yeah. still getting mentioned on the podcast. Well, because it's still relevant, right? I mean, I think the thing is that it's the perfect anecdote for why this pitching staff might be turned around so significantly. And you're right. Yeah, like, it is, it is just a story about Zach Buchanan meeting Brent Strom,

and it's really not that significant. Other than it is weird, you walks into meet you for the first time and has a file folder on you. Like, you know, I can only imagine the analytical data and stuff that Zach Gallen started to see on himself that he's never even seen before, probably never even seen somebody from the Diamondbacks pull that kind of information on him and give it to him personally, right? Like they may have it and they might know about it,

like Tori Lavolo might have something like that. But for Brent Strom to be on the job for like a month or so, not even that long, and to be compiling information like that and bringing it to a meeting with Zach Allen makes me feel like I've been underprepared for every meeting I've ever had in my entire life, Jesse. You know, but well, I did. have a massive file on you before we first met and started doing this show.

Oh my God. Yeah. I didn't show it to you on day one. You didn't show me that folder. That's the difference. Maybe if Strong didn't show gal in the folder, it would be different. You just need to know about him. He doesn't need to know about himself.

But I just, I love that. And I feel like, you know, again, going back to Zach Davies, that if knowing that story about Strom, and I feel like it demonstrates the kind of person he is, knowing that, I can't help but wonder if like front office leaned, you know, leaned over and asked him a few questions, you know, maybe had him look at some available free agents and what he thought on some of these guys. And in some cases, he might have even already had some profiles built on them or files put

together information or whatever, you know, um, it's, it's impressive is my point. And I really think that you got to, not only tip your cap to Zach Davies for what he's doing, but to the diamondbacks for acquiring a guy that came in here and fit right in into their rotation. and at least solidified the first four starters, right? Now they just need to figure out who that fifth one is.

Humberto Castiano's probably isn't going to get too many more starts if tomorrow goes the way that his last start did. The Diamondbacks, I mean, speaking of the rotation right now, some of the guys in the miners, Derek, are really banging on the door right now. Blake Walston was just promoted. Yeah, Blake Walson was just promoted to Amarillo,

so he's in AA now. He was promoted from Hills. Burrow and then Dre Jameson also was recently promoted to AAA. And yeah, I mean, there's a number of guys at both of those levels that you could point to who very realistically could make their major league debut this season. So you kind of feel like a guy like Comberto Castiano is in there as a placeholder. You know, he's a reliable guy who can be viable, can give you a chance to win. But at some point, the Diamondbacks are probably going to start tapping in to some

of that depth that they have at the upper levels of the minor leagues. And that might be the time of year when this team gets really engaging for fans is, you know, at some point, and I think it will happen this season, those guys might be playing a pretty prominent role in this team. Not only on the pitching side, you'll probably see Alec Thomas here. You know, in relatively short order, we don't really know exactly when that's going to happen. But there's going to be some fun stuff happening. and it's going to be these 22, 23, 24-year-olds coming up here and trying to earn a role that they could keep for a long time.

Going back to what I was saying about competition, that's exciting. That's exciting, right? And I guess a way to make it even more exciting, Jesse, is to watch this all unfold while enjoying your favorite flavor of OG's gummies. Stop by your local defensory and grab some amazing scratch-made THC gummies from our friends at OG. G's coming out this week. They have their mini OGs, three milligram microdose option. They want me to do this in a little voice. I don't know what, what's, what's a little voice?

The three OGs milligram microdose option. I think that's exactly. That's exactly. All right. If you don't want to dive into this deep 10 milligram voice, do you want to go for a three milligram microdose option? Those are going to be available soon. Actually, this week, you can get those on May 3rd exclusively at Zen

leaf locations around the valley through May 11th. And then after May 11th, you should be able to find them at your local dispensary near you. And they will have the same amazing flavors in the 10 milligram options as well as the three milligram options like orange creamsicle, tropical watermelon, pinocalata, all of those great flavors. And if you're interested in trying the amazingly delicious variety of flavors that OG's brands has to offer, go to OGsbrands.com.

That's OGEZ brands.com to find OGs near you. And yeah, Jesse, when I land. in the Medford, Oregon airport off of a plane that had propellers on it, I was very much, laughed to see like three dispensary ads right, right inside my gate, telling me where my nearest dispensary was to go. So God bless the good folks of Oregon. Now, of course, we've talked a lot. We've talked about the Diamondbacks, and we know you guys always join us here on Monday for a specific reason, right? Today is not a day to just solely talk about the Diamondbacks winning there. Game one against the Miami Marlins. I, by the way, am completely at fault for the

whole snapping the seven game losing streak, but I blame Jesse because he knows better than to let me say things without double checking my stats. But of course, today is Monday, and we don't worry about mistakes we make. We only worry about a couple of things around here on the Arizona Diamondbacks podcast. We worry about every week being Shark Week, every day being Earth Day, and every Monday going to the mailbag. Welcome to another edition of the Mailbag. And we have some questions. I'm going to start off with Chris Melton because, of course, she's one of our favorites.

And she asks, discuss optimal perdomo usage. And that's a great question because we talk about Nick Ahmed coming back and Perdomo just not getting as many starts over there at shortstop. So, Jesse, I guess I have to ask you, do we want to see more Perdomo at third base or have we kind of already seen enough with some of the mistakes he's been making over there? That's a great question. I mean, Josh Rojas, like we said earlier, is not far away. It's probably a matter of a few days, something like that at this.

point. And when he comes back, the infield gets pretty crowded. I mean, it's going to be Ahmed. It's going to be Cattel Marte. And then it's going to be Josh Rojas. And those are going to be probably your staple everyday options at third base shortstop and second base. So I think there's probably still enough at bats in there for Geraldo Pardomo. Sergio Alcantra might be the guy who takes the biggest setback in terms of opportunities. But yeah, yeah, Herolo Perdomo is a guy that you want getting every day at bats. He's not someone that you want, you know, sitting on the bench at this point. He's really done everything that he needs to at the minor leagues.

And at this point, I think it's about him figuring out how to hit major league pitching. And that's going to be a process for him. I mean, he's still only 22 years old. And we've seen signs of it. We've seen him draw his walks. He's worked some good at bats. But he doesn't look totally comfortable up there hitting major league pitch. And to Chris's question, she was talking in our Discord earlier today about really the defense, right?

The fact that he's kind of being thrown around all over the place of positions that he's not really used to. And that's a fair concern. I think the Diamondbacks are in a tough spot because it's really hard to not play Nick Omette at shortstop, especially when he's hitting the way that he's hit so far this season. I mean, you feel like you really can't leave him out of the lineup when he's hitting as well as he is so far. So my guess is they'll continue to move Pardomo around, whether that's optimal or not. You know, that's not really a question I can fully answer at this point, but it's probably what the debacks are going to have to do. I agree.

And I think he's going to continue to get reps. And I think Lovolo loves to keep guys fresh. I mean, his perspective on the season is it's a marathon and he needs to do everything he can to keep every single body healthy, well rested, as much as possible throughout the season. And we've joked about him even doing it when guys were red hot. But it doesn't feel like they're doing it anymore. I feel like now they really are like what you said about Jordan Looplo. They're really going to guys that have been producing for them and kind of throwing. There haven't been there haven't been very many.

Right, right. But if they are, they tend to play. Right. I know we criticize Seth Beers, you know, lack of of being in the lineup. But now Seth Beer has struggled in his last 30 plus. at bats 30 plus plate appearances. So, you know, maybe maybe that's what Lovolo was a bit fearful of, of, of, you know, him, you know, a bat's coming for him too fast, considering how, you know, how new his career is, right? I mean, he only had a handful of games last year and, and now

came up and immediately became this folk hero in game one. And it might just been a, been a lot, you know, it might have been a lot for a young player that hasn't really had much. much time in the majors yet. Next question comes from our pal, Kyle Collins on Twitter. And Kyle asks something similar that we're talking about now. Carson Kelly is really starting to concern with the lack of offensive output. How much longer do you think his leash is before he loses most of his starts to the bar show Herrera combo?

And that's a great question because I think Herrera has gotten a lot of praise from the pitching staff for his ability to call a game. So it almost feels like Carson Kelly doesn't have the effect of the, the, the, the, being a good pitcher variable or being a good catcher variable there to keep him there despite his lack of offense. It's, yeah, it's a good question. Carson has really been fighting it at the plate so far this season. I think he got a hit today, but I think it was it was just the one hit throughout the game.

So, yeah, it's, it's looked really rough for him. It's not, it's not like he's sitting line drives right at people. You know, it's a lot of pop flies.

It's a lot of strikeouts. It really has, hasn't been a compelling season for him so far offensively. Like we've said about Catelle, right? Cotell, you know, has been hitting the crap out of the ball. And a couple of games had the hardest exit velocity of any ball, but hit it negative 17 degrees into the ground, basically, right?

So it's like at least with Catell, even when he's struggling, you can still see things there, you know, like the expected batting average and things like that, that make you feel better about his at bats than Carson Kelly's. I have you using all these, all these fancy. It's right here, Jesse.

It's the fan's guide to baseball analytics. I'm all over it. I'm so proud. I'm so proud. Yeah, I think, I mean, Jose Herrera has certainly drawn praise from the pitching staff. My sense is that Carson Kelly is generally well regarded by the pitching staff as well. Jose has made four errors on the season,

which is quite a few at this point. So I think he's made some other mistakes, not necessarily in calling the games, but a few things here and there, a few errant throws that he's had throughout the season. Really, I mean, the catching position as a whole has been very, very not great for the Diamondbacks so far. I mean, Jose Herrera is not exactly knocking the cover off the ball either right now. Right. So at the end of the day, I think winning it. And Dalton Varsho has proved that he's too valuable in other positions for them to necessarily put him back there.

I think he's more of like an emergency catcher kind of situation. maybe in the case where the other two guys are spent or they have an injury or something, he might step up, but I don't really see Varsho playing too much time behind the plate. Maybe if he's red and they want to keep the bat in the game, maybe. Sure. Sure. I could see that. I mean, yeah, once you figure out that a guy is an above average center fielder, it's like,

oh, we should probably have him play center field then. Considering we don't have too many of those, yeah. Considering there's not a whole lot of them around this baseball team, right? now. Yeah, maybe when Alec Thomas comes up, which we expect will happen at some point. Again, there's not a whole lot of clarity on when that will happen. But if he gets everyday reps, maybe he takes some time in center field. Maybe Dalton Bar Shows catches a little bit more at that point. But yeah, I think you're spot on. Bar Shows value is going to be biggest in center field. And I think Carson Kelly has probably a fair amount of leash just given what he's done for this

team over the last few years. We've seen him struggle at the plate from time to time. He will go through these month or two long stretches where he's just not great offensively. But, you know, there's still some time for him to turn it around. It's certainly still early. Chris and Phoenix says, did Jesse hunt down Derek at his ridiculous fake wrestling Puget Sound event and body slam him like Big Mama did to Al Bundy unmarried with children? He also tagged the kill in there.

No, Jesse did not. and no, nobody, nobody power slammed me. I'm a commissioner. They're not allowed to lay their hands on me. Although it kind of looked like in your hostel, it appeared that somebody was found to body slam you at some. I almost got murdered in that hostel.

So I prefer not to talk about that. But yeah, it was definitely a murder suite that I was staying in. They gave you an upgrade, though. They gave you a real room at a real bed. They couldn't, I couldn't be handcuffed to the second bed. so that was kind of nice.

So, you know, not as fun. Charles Woodall Pike asks, the long ball has seemingly come back for the bats. So is the offense starting to piece it together? Or is it more of a band-aid to the bigger issue? I don't know. The long ball was absurd last year for this team. They hardly hit any home runs in 2021.

So I don't feel like it's above average. I feel like they're just back to hitting it the way that they should be hitting it. I feel like everything else. was below average. And now we're to this point where we're saying like, hey, look, they can hit home runs. You know, David D'allfer specifically, we knew that that power was going to come back.

It felt like it was. And then we saw the adjustments that he made in the off season and the things that he was doing. He looked really good during spring. Then, you know, kind of faltered back, dropped off a little bit. But now he's, his swing just looks good.

That home run today looked great. He's getting that foot down earlier. And he's just, looks comfortable. I think a lot of the at-bats are looking more comfortable. They don't look like they're so lost at the plate. They don't look so timid, right? I mean, I think that's the thing is the level of aggression at the plate is, and I don't give a damn if they walk less and strike out more. I want to see them swinging at the ball and trying to do something rather than sitting there with the bat on their shoulders the whole time. Yeah, you're, I mean, that's very fair. The diamond backs are not

necessarily hitting like a ton of home runs or anything this year. They're just kind of hitting about as many as you'd expect them to. I think they had 24 coming into today. So I think they'd be at 25 now, which is a decent number. I mean, it's about a home run a game so far for them this season, which is, which is certainly a pretty decent amount of production on that side of things. But yeah, the offense is, I mean, the offense I wouldn't say is, is in full swing just yet. No pun intended. The bottom of the lineup has still been, you know, you're not getting much from Sergio Alcantara.

You're not getting much from Carson Kelly. There's just a lot of names at the bottom of the lineup that just haven't done a whole lot throughout the season. And it's still early and there's time to turn things around, of course, like we've said. But I wouldn't say the Diamondbacks offense is all the way back yet. I mean, the team batting average, I think, is still in the 180s at this point. So there's still, there's still. there's still a fair amount of progress to be made there. And we've certainly seen them, you know,

turn things at least in the right direction over the last week or so. Kevin Jacks, I'm going to lose my goddamn mind about this question. Okay. Goldie trade, not looking so good. When are we going to stop this? Are we ever going to stop this? I guess my idea here is I don't want to be rude or mean about it, but the Diamondbacks 100% knew that Goldschmidt was not staying here. They knew that. Which I mean, to be fair, was kind of their own problem, right? I mean, it was an ownership problem. I'm telling you that there was a definitive decision to not pay him the amount of money he was seeking.

Right. And I'm 99% confident that they, that they had these discussions during the offseason. I'm 99% positive. that when Goldschmidt hired Scott Boris or whatever happened there as far as giving the inclination that he was going to leave. Because I think we talked about, he didn't hire Scott Boris, right? Was that something? No, yeah. He hired someone.

But it was the, it was the discussions. It was the talk. It was the evidence that he was obviously going to get the amount of money. And I know a lot of people have said the diamondbacks could have paid him what St. Louis paid him to extend him. And you're absolutely right. they just weren't going to. So the only other thing that they could do was let Paul Goldschmidt play one more year and then watch him walk at the end of the year as a free agent.

I don't like I know a trade happened and I know people are always going to connect that trade and try to see the value in what we got versus Goldschmidt and all that. Again, it's not even quantifiable because even if Goldschmidt wasn't that good here, he was still like he meant so much to this fan base. It meant so much to this fan base that we get this question about the fucking Goldie trade like two times a week. You know what I mean? Like I get it. But it's like it's weird because in my mind, I guess when it happened, I had heard so much that Goldschmidt was going to leave and they weren't going to bring him back that I was just glad they got something for it.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I was wrong for being happy that they got something for him instead of getting nothing for him. But that's kind of how I feel about players at the end of their contract when they're going to walk. I don't see a need to let them just walk if you can trade them away for a half a season to a contender and receive something for them that that's a value to you. I don't know if Luke Weaver and Carson Kelly are going to work out. Right now, people are absolutely right. If you want to evaluate that trade, the Diamondbacks definitely lost, but I feel like we've known that. I don't feel like that's a question.

Yeah, I mean, especially right now with Luke Weaver, you know, not making the rotation, being on the injured list, with Carson Kelly, you know, hitting around 100 right now. Obviously, the deal looks pretty bad. And there were times a couple years ago when the deal actually looked pretty good in that first year or so. It really did look like something that the Diamondbacks had done pretty well in. I think that the tide has certainly turned there. But like you said, you know, the Diamondbacks traded away one year of Paul Goldschmidt. The fact that he still plays for the St. Louis Cardinals,

speaks to the fact that the St. Louis Cardinals are willing to pay him something that the diamond backs were not willing to pay him. And so that's the fundamental difference here. If you want to, if, you know, you're up in arms about Paul Goldschmidt playing as well as he's been playing lately for the St. Louis Cardinals, it's not really a problem with the trade. It's a problem with the fact that the Cardinals paid him and the Diamondbacks didn't. Exactly. Exactly.

Thank you, Jesse. And thank you guys for your comments. We appreciate you guys all. Bam says debacks have the least hits at MLB. You're absolutely right. They have the least hits in MLB per game. have the least hits in MLB. Yet somehow, miraculously, they have the record that they have, right? Which, you know, at 11 and 13, after 24 games is pretty fucking good and pretty, I don't know.

I mean, I know, I know we're not, we can't get excited, especially in the NL West that's going to be an uphill battle all season long, but I would rather that this team started putting things together slowly and gets on a path rather than what we'll probably see with the Colorado Rockies, is a super fast start that gave their fans a bunch of hope and a steep fall off. I don't know if that's going to happen for them. I already said that the Rockies somehow like are completely, I'm completely mystified by what they're doing, but it does feel like. Yeah.

You're going to Rocky and they're going to come back down. Chris Mountain says we got more than zero, meaning the Goldschmidt trade. I agree. Clutch Kinnuck says the Reds. Oof, dump on the snakes all you want, but at least they aren't the Reds right now. Or the Oakland A's because that's another terrible situation. And last motion says, you don't need hits when you somehow win and you're God damn, right? And here's the other thing is you don't need to necessarily win over at the Draft King's

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New customers only minimum $5 deposit required. Eligibility restrictions applies. See draftkings.com slash sportsbook for details. We thank you guys again for joining us for another mailbag Monday. We appreciate your questions. Of course, you can follow us on Twitter. I am at Kappa underscore Kman with a K.

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bringing us your questions and missing out on the Suns game. Now let's go watch them kick the Dallas Mavericks ass. On behalf of Jesse and myself, we thank you so much for watching the show. And remember, kids, baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when we don't have to do this show during a Sun's game.