PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Here’s how the Diamondbacks could win 100 games in 2024

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

The Diamondbacks are projected to win about 85 games in 2024, but what would it take to get to 100? We also discuss Eduardo Rodriguez’s poor spring training debut for the Diamondbacks, the SNAKES ALIVE guy visiting D-backs camp, some new amazing satin jackets that sold out almost instantly and a whole lot more.An ALLCITY Network ProductionSUBSCRIBE to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/phnx_youtubeALL THINGS PHNX: http://linktr.ee/phnxsports PHNX Events: Get your tickets to Suns Takeovers, Coyotes & Suns Watch Parties at BetMGM, and MORE here: https://gophnx.com/events/Arizona Lottery: Visit http://www.AZAdventure.com for more information on how you can take an adventure with the Arizona Lottery and for a chance to win $1 million in cash and Arizona travel prizes! PrizePicks - Download the PrizePicks app today and use code PHNX for a first deposit match up to $100! Pick more. Pick less. It’s that Easy!NASCAR Weekend at Phoenix Raceway: March 8-10! Find more information at https://www.phoenixraceway.com/spring/ on the Shriners Children's 500, and be on the lookout for racing content from PHNX!Desert Financial Credit Union: Open a free checking account online with Desert Financial Credit Union and get $200 in bonuses https://www.desertfinancial.com/200Empire: Schedule a free in-home estimate with Empire Today! Receive a $350 OFF discount when you use the promo code PHNX. Restrictions apply. See https://empiretoday.com/phnx for details.Sign up for Gila River Resorts & Casinos $1,000,000 Big Red’s Showdown! Stay in the game and get rewards; it’s that easy! https://www.gilamilliondollarshowdown.com/Gametime: Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code PHNX for $20 off your first purchase.Circle K:  Join Inner Circle for free by downloading the Circle K app today! Head to https://www.circlek.com/store-locator to find Circle Ks near you!OGeez!: OGeez! is not your average cannabis-infused gummy. Head over to https://www.ogeezbrands.com to find where you can purchase. Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Four Peaks: Follow on social @fourpeaksbrew & @fourpeakspub! Must be 21+. Enjoy responsibly. Let Someburros cater your next meal big or small! Order online or find one near you by visiting someburros.comWhen you shop through links in the description, we may earn affiliate commissions. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. 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 the PHNX D-Backs podcast. My name is Jesse Friedman. And as always, we are joined by Patrick Lyons, who's basically just supplanted Derek on the show as far as I'm concerned. Patrick, how are you today? Doing well. Doing well. Spring training's getting going. I can't believe it's been less than a week that we've had games.

It feels like this is just been life forever, spring training. I'm ready for opening day already. Yeah, I age pretty quickly. driving from Salt River Fields downtown to the studio every day at like 4.30 p.m. like the worst time to be on the 101. So yeah, as far as I'm concerned, it's been like an eternity. The games have been happening at this point. But a big game for the Diamondbacks today is they faced off against the Texas Rangers,

a team who they've become increasingly familiar with here over the past few months for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why. Have they played each other or something? I think with interleague play, I don't know that they've ever faced off, actually, which is weird. Do you think they would have? But I don't know that they have. Yeah, they've been like natural rivals or whatever it is for, you know, for years now.

But it's never made sense because they've never played each other in any kind of big games or anything like that. Yeah, no, all jokes aside, this was technically a World Series rematch, a spring training world series rematch, which doesn't exactly carry the same weight. But here is Tori Lavello answering a question before this game about what it felt like coming into a game where the Diamondbacks are facing the defending World Series champions. You know what? I had Blaze Alexander come up to me when I was watching him take BP and he's like, it's a World Series rematch, man. You ready to go?

And I felt that. When he said that, I didn't really thought much about it. But yeah, the last time that we were on the same field, they beat us to advance. And, you know, I remember doing interviews post-game. And it hurt. It hurt me a lot. One in particular, I was talking to John Verducci, I'm sorry, Tom Verducci, and I was down underneath

the tunnel and it was right when they were presenting the trophy and, you know, I heard it over the loudspeaker and now introducing your 2023 World Series champs, Texas Rangers, and that rattled me a little bit. Like I had to stop in the middle of that interview and kind of composed myself. So those are the feelings that I had. I want to see what it's going to feel like when I go back out. out there right now. But it's another baseball game, of course, but sometimes there's a little out of twist that today might have a little extra drama.

Tori Lavello is saying before this one, maybe today has a little bit of extra drama, a little bit of extra meaning given what happened in October and into November. But Patrick, for the Diamondbacks, this one did not go especially well, as I guess the World Series also did not go especially well for the Diamond Vaxes. They lose this one 10 to 3. a number of different storylines in this one. I guess the main one is Eduardo Rodriguez, an inning plus from him, four hits allowed,

four runs, two walks, two strikeouts. Not great overall from Eduardo Rodriguez in this one. No, and we've been talking about it yesterday, and there hasn't been that many days where there's been a post-game show, but you take these results with a grain of salt. So, you know, it just kind of is what it is. I would give a nice tip of the cap to Brandon Hughes,

who not only got Eduardo Rodriguez out of a jam there in the second inning, the scoreless frame. But, I mean, he had to get ready pretty quickly, right? Like, everyone's supposed to go two innings their first time, you know, on the bump, making their first spring trading start. And all of a sudden, Erod's not going to get through this. Brandon, get your butt ready as quickly as possible. And so for him to come in there and put the fire out a little bit is a nice little silver lining for today.

Yeah, I wasn't all that. that concerned really with what I saw from Eduardo Rodriguez. I think if Eduardo Rodriguez had come out and been throwing 88, 89 miles an hour, you know, if the Velo was down, if the stuff didn't really look the way that it did last year, there might have been some concerns there. But from a Velo standpoint, a movement standpoint, all of the, at least numbers wise, if you're looking at the stat cast data, it's pretty much the same guy that we saw last year was really, really good for the Detroit Tigers. It just didn't happen today form for whatever reason.

I think Command was was the primary issue. If we look at his pitch chart from this game, you'll see a lot of pitches that are not exactly in the best spot. If we go ahead and throw that up there, there's a lot of, a lot of pitches that are in the middle of the zone here. It kind of felt like when Rodriguez was not getting pitches in the strike zone, he just sort of went like,

I'll just try to get it anywhere in the strike zone. More often than not in this game, that was sort of right down the middle. Marcus Semyon, ambushed his very first pitch, a poorly placed middle in cutter that you see on this chart. The very first pitch that Eduardo Rodriguez threw in a diamond vaccine of form in a Cactus League game went over the fence. Not a great start, Patrick, but once again, you're not too concerned at this point with the results. Yeah, you want more of those four-scene fastballs to not be clustered in the middle, like a slice of pizza.

You want there to be some separation, you know, some on the edge. If you can get one that's laying up on the top of the crust, it'll make the crust go down a little bit smoother. We get some flavor in that. So, yeah, just having it smack dab in the center, not ideal. The thing that I don't think is a factor at all, and it certainly by no means would be an excuse. But I'm curious about those little things that maybe you take for granted

with a guy like Eduardo Rodriguez, where, you know, coming up as a prospect with the Orioles and then, you know, getting traded to the Red Sox. and then with the Tigers, you know, all spring trainings, he's gotten ready in the humidity. He's gotten ready in Florida and the grape. And so, you know, is there an adjustment period for some guys in some positions? It probably would maybe impact pitchers a little bit more than the position players, right? Because you're just gripping a bat and you're hitting it.

But for pitchers, it could be a little bit different. So, you know, I'm sure some guys may have to have a little bit more of an adjustment period than others. But ultimately, again, not an excuse just could be one of those curious reasons to, explain, hey, man, you have to adjust a little bit sometimes when you join a new team and you're getting yourself ready for a new season. I don't have any data to back this up. Maybe you do, Patrick. Cactus League feels like a more hitter-friendly environment in general. Is that something? Have you heard that at all? No, no, I haven't. I mean, it would make sense. It's a little bit more at an elevation, right? What like, thousand feet maybe above sea level? A little drier, I guess.

Yeah. And again, just the ball being drier. And so that's, That's different when, again, you've got so much humidity down in Florida, and your body probably produces a little bit more sweat than you would out in the Cactus League. So, again, is that just something to adjust for perhaps? But I'm sure you're probably going to be asking those questions tomorrow when you go to the clubhouse. There you go. Here is how Eduardo Rodriguez felt about his Diamondbacks Cactus League debut. Good.

Good. I was strong like beaches. Almost right what we wanted. Come on was a little off. But overall, I feel good. Belzer was right what they wanted, like 90 to 92, after 90s, some times. So overall, everything was good. Just location.

That's the one that's what we're here in a speed 20 for. What do you take from spring training outings usually? Do you just worry about results at all? Or is it all about? No, I mean, I've been in spring training so much times already that I know, like, I know how it is, you know. There is some spring training that I think I give it like two runs on the whole spring training. There is some that I give it a lot of runs. So like, for me, it's just more to work in.

on what I'm working. Like today was more working on my command and all day was off. So like that's something that I still need to work on it. But overall, like I'm feeling good with all my pitches. And velocity was right what you wanted, which was like 90 to 93. So overall, I take the good part out of it. And the good thing is like these results over here don't count. So that's perfect.

The results here don't count. So that's perfect. There you go. Well, well said by Eduardo Rodriguez. I did find it interesting that like going back through his, his career stats in spring training, Eduardo Rodriguez has been pretty darn good in spring training, like basically every year.

Last year, he had a 1447 ERA. He's never had an ERA of even four. It's always been below four going back to 2014, where I don't even, I think he was in camp, but I don't even think he was, he pitched in the majors at all at that point,

back when he was with Baltimore. So, so, yeah, but again, you're not really concerned at all about results at this point. Here is also how Tori Lavello felt, about Eduardo Rodriguez in this game, kind of sharing the sentiment

that you're not exactly sounding alarm bells at this point. I thought the ball is coming out of his hand pretty good, maybe a little distracted by some balls at the plate that he didn't necessarily get as part of the game, and I think we've got to find a way to overcome that. But just an up mistake, where the ball carried out of the ballpark for a three-owned home run, and just maybe a little fastball dominant

trying to find that location. first outing, I'm fine with what he did. We just want to get that pitch going up and let it keep climbing. The first homer that Erod gave up, that was the Marcus Semyon shot, and it was an absolute bomb. But as you heard Tori say there, that the other one sort of carried out. The wind was very much blowing out of Salt River Fields at that point in the game. So I think there's another world where that's a flyout, and maybe this outing looks

a little bit different for Eduardo Rodriguez. But yeah, nonetheless, you know, this is a big investment for the Diamondbacks. want to see him do well in spring training for sure. But again, I'm going back to the fact that the stuff across the board looked pretty much as I expected it to. There weren't any alarming changes there. We saw Eduardo Rodriguez just the other day in Live BP really have his way with some of the Diamondback sitters.

And hopefully for this team, he'll start to look like that a little bit more in these games coming up. Yeah, he'll have that opportunity, obviously, and as we'll get to later on in the show, you He's obviously very important to the Diamondback success, whether they win 100 games or, you know, whether they win 85 and they best the record from last year and then make another deep run because, you know, the Diamondbacks definitely saw how important that starting pitching, you know, can be to take you deep into that postseason. And if you don't have someone like Brandon Fought coming out of nowhere to be your third big horse that you can ride, you know, you need, you need Eduardo Rodriguez to count on him in that rotation this season. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, in the World Series, the narrative was that the Diamondbacks didn't have that fourth starter. And so it was a bullpen game in Game 4. You know, you would have liked to see what Eduardo, you know, having Eduardo Rodriguez in that series would have looked like in retrospect.

I'm not sure if today necessarily informs that. Hopefully it wouldn't have looked like today because I think you maybe would have taken the bullpen game route at that point. But yeah, it's still early. No huge concerns there at this point. A couple of other notes from today's game, Blaze Alexander. We talked about him a lot on yesterday's show. He tripled in this game, went one for two, continues to look solid defensively. Aeohenio Suarez came over in a trade from the Seattle Mariners a few months ago.

He had a couple hits in this game, both with Exavilo's well over 100. One of those, a double, also a single in this one. Those things good to see. But I think the biggest narrative, Patrick, from Diamondback Spring Training today, was that it appears that the Snakes Alive guy, his name, I believe is Jeff Gazzardo, returned. He, well, I guess not really returned. He came to Diamondbacks camp,

and he paid a visit to a number of players, and also manager Tori Lavello, he was standing near one of the backfields and had a collection of snakes alive, like printed signs with him, I guess, replicas of the real one, if you will. And what he was doing was pretty fascinating. He was basically, he was not only asking for autographs.

He not only was asking for Diamondbacks players and manager Tori Lavello to sign his additional copies that he had brought, but he was also handing Diamondbacks players and coaches a signed version of the Snakes Alive poster signed by himself. And Tori Lavello, I asked about this. I was like, I'm pretty sure I just saw Tori Lavello sign a Snakes Live poster. And so I asked about this pregame and here is what Tori had to say. It was unbelievable. The guy said, here, I have a signature for you. He signed it and gave it to me.

And he said, that's never happened to you before. I'm like, no, nobody's ever giving me their autograph before asking me for mine. I thought it was a great move. So that was the gentleman that had the original. I think he might have been the OG. I heard some interviews with him. He was doing national interviews and stuff after. Yeah, so he felt strongly that he deserved a hand one over to me, and I like that.

I kind of liked it. Yeah, I haven't signed that. I haven't signed that. I do know that after the NLCS in Philly, that was a shirt I wore to the post-game parties. That's what I had on. So it reminded me to that. So if you're asking me what I was thinking, it reminded me of the post-game celebration when we were away from the field that night,

the shirt that I was wearing said the same thing, and I thought about that a few times. I mean, Patrick, you have to admire the guts to go in there, and before he even asked for Tori Lavello's autograph, he gives him a signed version and says, no, you need my autograph more than I need yours. That is a baller move. And to get that printout from the printer.

Like, look, just that one. I don't know if his printer has been MLB authenticated. Hopefully, at least the paper is. I'm almost curious, too, if, you know, I'm sure this guy being the diehard that he is, not capital D diehard. We're not sure if he signed up to the P.HNX. Exactly. But he's a diehard, at least in lowercase, D cents.

But that's probably for his private collection. Then again, it does make you think, you know, on the secondary market, what would, you know, a Gabby Moreno signed Snakes Alive paper slash poster, you know, go for? I think that's a very much of one of a kind. Toro Lavello, I think probably would be tops, right? He's the guy. He's the manager. He almost, in many ways, was the star I thought of the postseason last year by just the way that he was able

to push all of the right button. So I think that was a smart move by our buddy, Jeff. I mean, my question is what would a Jeff Gazzardo sign Snakes-A-Live paper go for, right? I mean, that's the real, like, that's really what the people want. Well, there's so many counterfeit. There's so many counterfeit of those that are going around that, again, that's why you get the certificate of authenticity. Right.

Because, I mean, I saw him in pretty much every shop. There was a guy sell him out of his trunk at Camelback Ranch. It's crazy. So you almost, that's why you need to just pay the money to get the autograph from Jeff. directly and then you know it's real because anything else it's probably a bootleg you can't you can never be too sure these days people selling fake uh fake snakes alive like jeff gazardo that that that would be that's just that that's an amazing narrative i really hope that someone somewhere is doing that uh any speaking of things that people should be doing uh Arizona lottery is introducing a unique new ticket and

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get started by visiting desertfinancial.com slash 200. We also have, speaking of incredible no-brainer deals, we have one of those going on here at the PHNX Locker. Daniel, do we have that? Yeah, there it is. We have a clearance sale going on at the PH&X Locker right now through Wednesday, 30% off, literally everything. So if Black Friday came and went and you had a little bit of remorse about the purchases that you didn't make, Patrick, now's a, now's a time, a good time. to make up for it. Oh yeah, definitely stock up. You got to stock up now. And by the time you're listening to this, because if you're waiting around for the podcast and you're not watching live,

hey, you know, things happen. You should be watching us live on the PHNX Sports channel on YouTube. But if you're listening to this as a podcast, Wednesday's the last day. So you need to act quickly to take advantage of these big discounts. All right. We're going to have what I promise will be a completely reasonable conversation in this next segment, which goes back to the title of this show, which is, what would it take for the Arizona Diamondbacks to win 100 games in 2024? And I want to preface this by saying, we don't necessarily think it is likely that the Diamondbacks will win 100 games in 2024. If Derek were here, he would probably have a loan to pick with that. And he would be trying to convince us why this is surely going to happen. I'm not

quite in that camp, but I do think that in Major League Baseball, a sport that has as much volatility as this one does, a lot of teams can win 100 games if enough things go their way. Patrick, when I think of teams that won 100 games that I didn't necessarily expect, I go back to the San Francisco Giants back in 2021. When I thought they were going to win maybe like 70-something games and they won 107, these things happen in this sport. And the Dodgers last year too, which, you know, they had plenty of injuries on the, on the pitching front. There are all those questions. Yeah, like you said, the volatility is

real where, you know, 10 to 15 game difference, right? Expectations can be a certain way. And then just like that, a team that's pegged for, you know, 93 wins can, you know, might only win 78. They're under 500. They're selling off at the trade deadline. And then a team that you say, they're going to be around 500, they end up winning 10 to 15 more games to go into the postseason. So if you believe that the Diamondbacks are at least one game better than last year in the the regular season and they're going to win 85 games. Well, then you should say, you know what, at the high end, they very well could win 15 more and get 100 wins season in 2024. So the Diamondbacks, according to fan graphs, are projected for 83 wins as of right now. If I go to

their projected standings page, that's what I see. I think baseball prospectus has 85 wins right now for the Diamondbacks. So that's kind of the starting point here. Is right now the D-backs are projected for something in that mid-80 range. And so the question is, how do you get from the mid-80s to 100? So we're talking about about 15 wins here. How do the diamondbacks get an extra 15 wins? Patrick, I'll pitch this over to you. What are kind of your initial thoughts about how this might happen?

Well, now hearing us say it out loud because we were obviously just texting back and forth. And you know, 100 wins? Yeah, that's on the high end. But then going, we've got to find 15 extra. wins. We've got our job cut out for us. But I think when we actually dig into those projections, you're going to see, ooh, that's maybe a little bit low than you would expect. And this guy can maybe take a big jump. And I think, you know, as we go through this conversation, I kind of looked at the Dodgers last year, won 100 games, and say, okay, how were they able to do it? And what were

the roles and the influences some of those players had? Do the Diamondbacks have players that can fill those roles and the short answer is yes so let's let's see if we can make this happen all right so so i'll start with just zips projections for some of the diamond backs better players and we'll just kind of say are these reasonable is there an opportunity for some of these guys to uh to perform above and beyond these numbers so corbin carroll zips has it 4.6 wins above replacement corbin carroll is coming off a six war season so i don't think it's unreasoned reasonable that Corbyn Carroll would you know could finish well above that when all is said and done. You know, we could pretty easily pick up an extra two wins, I think, with Corbyn Carroll having, you know, a six and a half war season, for example, in, in 2024, if he's able to build on what he did last year.

Could tell Marte, similar story where last season he was at 4.2 wins above replacement over at Fangraves. Zips hasn't projected for 3.6. If he just maintains what he did last year, there's another half a win for you to pick up there. The last guy who's very much in this camp, I guess there's two more guys in this camp. Christian Walker is projected for 2.7, whereas last year he had 3.8. Heraldo Pardomo is projected for 1.7, whereas last year he had 2.7. So if you just add all that up, if those guys just perform the way they did last year as opposed to in line with what their projection is for 2024, you pick up about 5.1. wins from those four players alone. And I think it could end up being even more than that, right?

Sure. Yeah, you hope Carol doesn't have any sophomore slump. You hope he's able to maintain. But if he takes it to the next level, that's obviously not going to surprise you either. And I think a lot of these projection systems don't just look at one season to figure out how good a guy is going to be and maybe put it in that context of, oh, man, this is what he did as a rookie. He's going to be even better as a sophomore.

You know, you're taking some of those minor league numbers and some of those comps to try to figure out where he is. So I think Carol is probably the one that can really overshoot what the projections are at this point since he's so young in his career. Marte said can kind of take another step forward and Walker. You just got to hope, you know, if he could just average what he has the last two years, you know, about five wins above replacement in 22 and maybe a little more. depending on which version of wins above replacement you're using, you know, that's a four and a half win player. And right there, you're putting yourself into the positive and gaining some of those 15 plus wins.

So, yeah, I mean, maybe you get five or six there. I think you're, yeah, you're making a good case. It could be north of that, especially if Corbyn Carroll goes out and has like an eight-war season or something ridiculous like that. A couple of other players that I'm intrigued by in terms of their ability to far outperform what fan graphs has expected for them. Eugenio Suarez is projected for two war in 2024. We've talked quite a bit on this show about his projections, both at Bacota and at Zips

and how they're quite a bit lower than maybe what you'd expect given his recent performance. He was at 3.2 in 2023 in terms of war. A lot of that came from his defensive value at a really good defensive season based on the stat cast metrics last year. So if he's able to maintain at least some of that defense performance, you know, maybe take the offense a step up a little bit. It was kind of a down year for him offensively, basically right around league average. I think there's potential for Suarez to far outperform that two-war season that he's projected for. I think he was at 4.2 war just a couple of years ago with the Mariners.

So he's one guy I look at. The other guy that intrigues me on the position player's side is Alec Thomas, someone who is projected for a bump. FanGraphs has him at 2.2 war for 2024. He was only 0.5 in 2023. You know, struggling against lefties. That was certainly a big part of that. Even against righties, there were some, so there were some inconsistencies there. But I think there's a world in which Alec Thomas, you know, kind of has a full-on breakout season where he finds a way to hang in there against lefties, becomes an everyday player, doesn't have to sit as often, and finds a way to really just become a force against right-handed.

pitching. If he were able to take a step forward and, you know, kind of raise or approach the ceiling that he has that a lot of people have believed he has for a long time, you know, you could pick up another three or four wins potentially between Swares and Thomas. Yeah, those two guys are definitely in that second tier. And for Thomas, you know, on one hand, you know, you see what the projections are and you say, okay, well, that is an improvement off of last year. And then on the other, you see, you see what. what he was able to do in the postseason and you think it's going to be more than that. Also, you know, he is the sixth highest as far as Zips is concerned on the team.

So Zips does like him in that way. So if everyone again just plays up a little bit, you say, all right, well, if he's sixth highest, he very well could be three, three and a half wins above replacement so long as he's healthy. You know, hopefully that, you know, the bum wrist that he's dealing with right now, hopefully that gets better. So he is able to be out there, you know, even more. regularly but but thomas and swarres you know they've got a little bit more left in the tank to be able to to contribute to this total uh i guess gabby moreno's another name i'd at least mention

uh he's already projected for for a bump from from last year he was at 1.7 on fan grafts last year which is there's a huge discrepancy there between fan graphs and baseball reference baseball reference has been being like four and a half war or something like that uh the way that they measure defense is different and baseball references picking that up a whole lot more than fan graphs is but i do think there's a you know no matter which which method you're using i think there's a world in which gabby moreno has kind of a full-on breakout season you know we saw the power a little bit toward the end of last year if if gabby moreno comes out and hits 20 homers or something you know and continues to be an elite defender behind home plate i have to believe that you know that could be

worth more than more than the 2.8 wins that he's projected for now. It's not a terrible projection. Like, I still think you'd be pretty happy if Gabby Moreno came out and had that season. But there's, at least in my mind, Patrick, there's room for more there, you know, just given the ceiling that he has. Yeah, definite potential on both the defensive side and offensive side where he can still make those, those strides for a guy that was, you know, he only missed being a qualified rookie by a couple of plate appearances. I don't even think it was played appearances that disqualified him. It was his service time. So he ultimately was a rookie last year with so many of those other players.

So he is one, I think that can take a big step forward because wins above replacement has a lot to do with the position you play. We know there's not a ton of great hitting catchers. And even really defensive catchers can be hard to come by. So he's got both of those skills and abilities that could allow him to jump up and outkick that coverage as far as his wins above replace. is misconcerned. Tim in the chat says Jordan Lala rookie of year type season might propel them. Doubt that happens. He probably won't be up until mid-year.

Yeah, I think that's fair. They actually have Jordan Loller projected for 2.4 war as it is, which I think is actually pretty bullish, more just because of playing time than anything else. Maybe I'm not sure if he's not starting the year in the majors, how long does it take for him to get that opportunity in the majors? I think his early on performance down in AAA is going to be.

a big factor there. But yeah, I guess there, you know, there is maybe some world in which Lawler finds his way up to the majors in May and has some crazy, you know, Corbin Carroll-esque rookie season. And, you know, you gain five wins or something right there. Don't expect that to happen. But Jordan Lawler is the kind of player who has a, you know, has a really high ceiling and you wouldn't necessarily rule anything like that out. Switching gears over to the pitching side of things.

The Diamondbacks, actually several of their starting pitchers are projected. lower than what they did last year. Zach Gallin Zips has a 3.5. Last year he was at 5.2. That's almost a two win difference right there. Merrill Kelly projected for 2.2. Last year was at 3.2. There's another win right there.

And then Eduardo Rodriguez had obviously a really good year last year with the Tigers. He was at three war last year with Detroit projected for 2.5. I think I just made about, I just picked up about four wins right there, Patrick. just with those guys finding a way to repeat what they did a year ago. Yeah, when we were discussing this, as I mentioned, I was looking at it from the perspective of using the Dodgers as a template. And they didn't have very strong starting pitching. They had a lot of guys who contributed,

but they didn't have the front of the rotation guys like the Diamondbacks have, obviously. So Bobby Miller, who got a late start to a season, was worth 2.8 wins above replacement. You have Clayton Kirshaw, 2.2. the entire, the best five guys that they had was worth just under 10 wins above replacement. And really, you can very easily get that from maybe even Zach Kelly, excuse me, maybe even Zach Allen and Merrill Kelly. Just those two guys, the Eduardo Rodriguez into the mix, and you've already matched what the best of the Dodgers rotation had last year.

So I think these projections, they can probably, you know, be exceeded by the pitching staff alone because, man, Zach Allen, we know he's playing for a contract soon here. You know, very soon, Eduardo Rodriguez and Merrill Kelly. They've earned theirs, but look, they're trying to win a World Series here. That's the big goal that's at hand, too. So they're keeping that in mind. I think with the rotation in particular, that's really where they can make some major strides. Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, I think the starting rotation is a strength of this diamond back scene for sure. you know, I think even Zips, you know, these are not necessarily bullish projections on these guys, but I believe even Zips has all four of the Diamondbacks top four guys in their rotation. This includes Brandon Fott. It has all of those guys with sub four ERAs, which would be obviously pretty big. And yeah, you know, if you get Zach Gallin getting back to his 22 self in particular with, you know, an ERA of two and a half instead of three and a half, that, you know, there's, there's a lot of room for gains to be had there as well. So, yeah, I think, I think on the pitching side, there's, there's some, some opportunity here for sure.

Brandon Fott, I guess, is someone we should talk about a little bit more. He's projected for 2.1 wins of replacement, which again is a pretty, I mean, that's a pretty solid projection. I think if you got a two-win season from Brandon Fought, you know, I think that's an ERA of right around four that they're projecting him for. That would be, like, you'd be, you'd be pretty happy with that. If he can give you 170, 180 innings or whatever with an ERA around four, that would be pretty fantastic. But at the same time, we saw Brandon fought in the postseason in particular. He kicked things up a couple of notches.

I mean, he was getting all sorts of chase out of the strike zone. He was getting a lot of swing and miss when guys were swinging, you know, obviously the Diamondbacks were protecting him a little bit. He didn't face lineups a third time through. We have to kind of see what that looks like when Tori Lavello allows him to stay in games a little bit longer. But I don't think it's crazy to say that Brandon Fott could have, you know, something of a breakout season in 2024. I'm not saying that's him getting Sy Young votes or, you know, having an ERA of 2.8 or something like that. But, you know, you could pretty easily

pick up another winner to from Brandon Fott really coming out and having an excellent year. Yeah, he was really impressive in the postseason last year. And, you know, we mentioned it on Monday, just how highly the coaching staff and Brent Strom think of him and know how important he is, obviously, to this rotation. So he's another one of those sophomore players that you hope doesn't slump and can really use that momentum that was built all throughout October. And look, when you have the swing and miss stuff like that, you know, that's more likely to stick than a guy who has to kind of finesse his way through. And, you know, and maybe luck is on your side a little bit more if you're missing bats in the capacity that that fought was able to. do it, you know, last year. You feel really good about him to be, you know,

be able to make that jump up to maybe, you know, a number two type quality starter to go along with an ace and Zach Gallen and another number two starter in Merrill Kelly. You know, as you said, with the projections from Zips, Brennan Fott is the second best pitcher, you know, according to this projection system, you know, right behind Gallin. So, you know, does Brendan Fott actually care about that? Is he walking around cocky thinking, oh, I guess I am the second best?

He still has so much to prove and plenty of ways to go. But that confidence is obviously going to be there with him when he takes it out on the mountain. In fact, tomorrow where he's going to be making his Cactus League debut. So I think Fawt's going to be really exciting to watch. And I love the fact, too. I know that Tori hasn't divulged what the order of the rotation is going to be. But if more likely than not, Fots the number four starter, pitching against other teams' fourth starter, I think he's going to provide him even more of a cushion and a pillow to go out there and say,

all right, even if you don't have your best stuff for the first two winnings or so, you're going to get that run support against someone else's number four starter that your team is hitting again. So that's going to set him up for a lot of success this year, I believe. Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, getting away from the numbers a little bit. I mean, we're like trying to build out 100 wins like on a computer right now. I think just having Paul Seawald for a full season, there's a lot of value there for the Diamondbacks. And, you know, Zips is going to say that Seawald is worth, I think it's 0.7. War is what it's projecting in in 2024.

He was at 0.9 in 2023. The impact of relief pitchers, you know, war is just not really a good metric for relievers in general. I think it's kind of ridiculous to really read too much into a war calculator. on a relief pitcher. But you have Seawald, you have Ginkle, you have Ryan Thompson in place at the back end. You know, the Diamondbacks, they didn't really add anything to the bullpen this year, which has been something I've talked about is something I maybe would have liked to see them do. But just having a certain, this level of steadiness at the back end of the bullpen,

it's something they haven't had for a long time. And it's something they certainly didn't have in the first four months last year. Like how many games did the Diamond Blueprint? backs lose in the first half, you know, in the beginning of the second half of the season last year, because their bullpen was really a disaster and guys didn't know what their roles were. And, you know, it was Miguel Castro as the closer. Then it was Andrew Chafin. Then it was Scott McGuff.

There was, you know, there were a lot of different moving pieces throughout that. I think the bullpen, Patrick, could win the diamond back some games as well. Yeah, they're going to have to, right? You need some big performances out of at least three relievers in your bullpen in order to be a hundred-win team, right? So Seawald, Ginkle, and Thompson, they're the favorites to be those guys, but still, you need three, you know, big dudes right in the back of your bullpen. You know, going back to what you were saying about not adding, you know, a notable reliever in the bullpen, I can't help but think with the way Mike Hazen operates and, you know, doing things on a different

level and, you know, we're not even a fly on the wall to know really what's going on behind the scenes with the front office, but with really only, you know, you know, you know, Miguel Castro and Paul Seawald not having options. Granted, you're not going to option, Kevin Ginkle. But the other guys, they actually do have options. So push comes to shove as we get late into spring training, sometimes veterans are made available, whether they don't make a staff or they just don't pitch well in spring.

But Hazen, Lavello, their coaching staff, their scouts say, no, this is a guy that's worthy of a big league deal or give them a two-way contract. whatever it may be. So it could allow them to still add, you know, in the latter parts of March and early April for any veteran guys. So they're doing it frugally, right? Like you'd like for them to go out and spend a guy, spend money on a reliever. But we also know that, you know, it's such a volatile market when it comes to signing a relief pitcher. And sometimes, most times, they get overpaid. Even if you're paying a guy that's fairly decent, $5 million, you might blow all of

that value right away and it just isn't worth it so perhaps they'll be a little bit frugal and it'll be interesting to see what they do you know late in in spring training and and pick up some guys off the scrap heap similar to what they were able to do with ryan thompson so they were able to do it once before maybe that's that's part of their plan to go ahead and and add more notable names to the rotation and rodriguez and you know your petersons and your gritchicks doing it on the cheap with with these relievers maybe that's you know that's part of the the chemistry and the mixology of all this for my casein yeah that's a good call i think in general just you know trading for a reliever at least in my mind is just is just better in in some ways because at that point

you've seen them pitch for a few months you kind of you kind of have a sense of like what that year's version of that pitcher will look like whereas you know if if a pitcher is coming off a good year you don't necessarily know that that's going to carry over relievers are obviously so so volatile so it's definitely something they could look to do at the trade deadline if they felt a need to do so. At least in the chat said if we can use the bullpen meme like 25% less than we did in the first half of last season, I feel good about our chances of increasing the wind total. Yeah, the bull, the bullpen meme that we have around here did, it's ladies and gentlemen, the bullpen.

People who follow us on Twitter know exactly what I'm talking about. But yes, I know people would be very on board with not seeing that. quite as much in 2024. I think there's a, there's a good chance that you won't, given the steadiness that I talked about earlier. I think my biggest takeaway, Patrick, from from kind of thinking about this, this path to 100 wins, like obviously it's ambitious. We're not expecting all of these different things that we talked about to happen. But I think like the path to 90 wins, for example, is really pretty reasonable. You know, you can get to 90 pretty much just with a few, a handful of guys repeating really good seasons that they had last year,

rather than regressing. And again, that's not, you know, that's not like their baseline projection necessarily. The computers are saying there are reasons to believe that what they did last year isn't something that they'll repeat. But yeah, I think just looking at this objectively, there's a path for the Diamondbacks to get, you know, well over 85 wins without like, you know,

a whole bunch of players who are no names coming out and, you know, becoming stars or something like that overnight. And the NOS is a pretty strong division other than the, Colorado Rockies, but you're not playing as many series against the Dodgers and the Giants who? Sure. Are they a little suspect, perhaps? Padres, a little bit suspect. But still, you're not playing the Dodgers, you know, 19 times a year anymore. So you're playing the AL Central a little bit more frequently, right?

And so you might be able to take advantage of those series a lot more so than the ones that are in your division. Because, look, even the worst team in the NL. West, I mean, it's probably true for, it is. is. It's true for every division. There are teams that just own you or we're better than this team in every way, but for some reason, they are the ones who are pushing all the right buttons. And shoot, we had a losing record against this team that lost 100 games or lost close to that. So that's less likely to happen now that there's a lot more balance in the schedule. Well, speaking of the future and trying to project or predict the future, betmgm sportsbook app if you have the ability to know what is going to happen rather than just

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That's a thing. Puerto Rico. Oh, so it's, don't worry. There's people who get that. I did something different. All right. I'm just not one of them. What else is new?

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Anyway, we're going to finish off today with some fun checking out some new MLB satin jackets that have been floating around. And I haven't checked this within the last few hours, but I'm pretty sure that basically all of these are sold out. right now. These are over at homage.com, which I guess is like an MLB licensed thing, and they made these and they're all pretty spectacular. So we'll start by looking at the Diamondbacks one, which is pretty beautiful. I know Jacob was griping about this yesterday, thinking that there was too much purple, but Patrick, people don't complain about too much purple. Like, that's not a complaint that Diamondbacks fans ever have. No, that one looks so good.

That is just perfect. I actually got excited because when they had the little teaser about, you know, the date that it's coming out, I saw the purple and I immediately go, oh, man, Rockies are getting a cool purple jacket. And people zoomed in and they're like, that's not green. That's more of a teal. Rockies do, at least in the, in the mid-90s, they did use a little green in some of their logos in and around Coors Field.

like security jackets had that but that dime of x one is just is so clean i guarantee you're going to see it in zach allen's locker at some point this season he's going to yeah we we know we know for certain that zach gallon is on board with the purple uh he's not going to complain about too much not sold out yet it is not sold out the dime of x okay i guess there's a few of those left so if you're interested they're they're pretty fantastic uh speaking of uh speaking of your rockies uh we take a look at what the uh what the rockies looks like the uh what the rockies looks like I guess we'll just run through some NL West teams here. There it is.

It's like a little plainish, but, you know, I don't mind it, Patrick. What do you think? It looks so old. Like, and I don't think that the bad way. It's like the Rockies are not that, they haven't been around that long, right? It's 31 years. And yet it has like a classic kind of look to it, which was, you know, the original idea. They want it to resemble and feel kind of like the Yankees as much as possible.

So, you know, they hit on that. And, yeah, it's simple. But I think it's very measured and it looks sleek. It's, it's one of the better ones in the NL West. I'll say that. Yeah, I guess we'll stick with the NL West here. I don't know, maybe the Padres. Padres, here's what we have for them.

This one should get the chat going. The comments should start flooding in here. Yeah, I think it's pretty ugly. Is that what you think? I don't know. I don't hate it. I also don't know that I would wear it because I feel like if I was like riding through somebody's neighborhood, people would flag me down and be like, hey, I was expecting a package.

Did you miss my block? I'm like, no, I don't work for UPS. Like it just looks like a delivery driver jacket, which again is not a bad thing. I'm just kind of on the fence about it. Yeah, it does give off UPS vibes for sure. The Giants, I think the Giants is pretty, pretty classic. Uh, no. Right.

Uh, yeah. I mean, you can't, you can't hate it, right? I guess. No. No, pretty basic. Pretty, pretty basic, but good. Uh, Dodgers also, also pretty basic. Uh, but again, if you're a fan of the Dodgers and the Dodgers blue is pretty, pretty

iconic. Uh, probably can't, uh, probably can't complain about this one too much. Um, one that, one that, one that I know you have complaints over though, Patrick. Can we get the Nationals one? Yeah. And that was the only one that I wasn't really digging. It's white. So, I mean, I guess that's a very specific fashion choice, I guess.

Like, I don't know if you're going to a club and you know you're not going to be eating anything that has ketchup or yellow mustard on it, then, okay, wear it out. But also, why are you wearing that out to a club in the first place? It's just white. Like, just, it looks like bad news to me. Yeah, we were having this discussion the other day over which MLB team has, like, just the worst team name. And multiple people pretty emphatically said the Washington Nationals. So I guess that just sort of goes along with that conversation. And they're the only team that didn't have one of these jackets actually in the 90s.

They're the only one, right? Expos moved to Washington, you see. But, you know, the raise and the debacks, they're 98. So, hey, they're 90s kids. Yeah. Speaking of 90s kids, the Marlins, this one, this one is pretty nice. I'm a I'm a pretty big fan of this one Patrick this is beautiful sold out it is sold out that one looks very sharp yes yeah just that that deep like turquoisey color uh it's it's it's iconic I wish the

marlins would would do more with that that's here's the thing like I don't really I don't really wear too many MLB or team specific gear but the marlins because they're they're just like the marlins I feel like you could wear a marlins jacket just for style and no one's really going to care. They're not even going to bother asking you like, oh, wow, you're a big Marlins fan. They're just like nice jacket. I feel like that's one of the few teams you could actually rock some of the merch and people just wouldn't care.

They'd be like, the color looks great. It just looks great. Yeah, the color in of itself is fantastic. Well, we'll go ahead and stop there if you want to check these out. homage.com. Most of them are gone. But a few of them, including the Diamondbacks, apparently is still there. really, really cool.

If I were not like a journalist who's supposed to have like integrity and not go around wearing like individual teams gear, I would probably get in on this. But yeah, there's there's some pretty cool stuff here. But that is all that we have here for this Tuesday edition of the PHNXDback show. We have a crazy night here at PHNXHQ. I know the coyote show is going live here shortly with their postgame show. Hopefully the coyotes won. Did the coyotes finally win, Danielle? know?

Last I checked, they were losing. They're losing? Yeah. The coyotes just never win anymore. It's unfortunate. But you should all follow us on Twitter. You can find me at Jesse N. Friedman.

You can find Patrick at Patrick D. Lyons. You can find our beat account at PHNX underscore DBAX. Derek will be back tomorrow posting all of the ridiculous memes and whatnot that he usually has going when games are being played. You can also find our whole company here at PHNX at PHNX underscore sports. That's on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Thank you all again so much for making time for us here on this Tuesday evening. And remember, kids, baseball is fun, but it's so much more fun when you win 100 games.