PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - Tank SZN is ded

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

On this episode, Tank SZN is "ded", Derek is sad, and Jesse is carrying the load while discussing Derek's ridiculous memes, where we go from here, and who our pleasant surprises and biggest disappointments were this season. 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.

Well, hello and welcome to a very sad edition of the PHNX DBAX podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as an irrational fan. And today's podcast is brought to you by the fine folks over at the Draft King's Sportsbook app. The Draft King Sportsbook app is the official betting partner of the NFL. and America's top rated sportsbook app. You can go download it now and use our code of PHNX and simply for betting $1 on any NFL game, you will win $150 or I'm sorry, $100 in free bets

if either team scores a point. So that's $100 in free bets for using our code of PHNX and betting just $1. So best of luck to you with that. I'm joined by an absolute monster of a human being this week or today and every day because that's, That's what's happened to me. I'm attached to this guy now forever.

He is my co-host and former friend, now an enemy. The Grim Reaper. It's Jesse Friedman. There's so many emotional. Oh, my gosh. You went from you're the sad fan and you're also my enemy and you're also irrational. I don't know what to make of everything that just went down. I'm swinging wild, Jesse.

I'm angry. I'm angry. They did the thing they weren't supposed to do. tank season is dead jesse tank season is dead it's dead you're right you you are irrational Derek aren't you so uh you were here we talked about it a bit yesterday but let's talk a little bit more about you being here for the end of tank season uh you rooted it on you you you did this to us so uh what were your thoughts of finally seeing this team live and up close uh for the first time at least a little while for you.

It was a great time. I enjoyed being at the ballpark. I enjoyed just watching Diamondbacks baseball in front of my eyes. There's something about, you know, seeing it up close as opposed to on TV all the time. But I got to say, Derek, I know I said this yesterday on the audio podcast, but I share a little bit of the devastation that you experience. Many of our audience experience. Because, as I said from the beginning, Derek, I am not a. I was never opposed to the diamondbacks getting the first overall pick.

And at that point, you know, once you were in the, you know, the sixth or seventh inning, the diamond backs were down two or three runs. I was like, okay, I mean, you know, I didn't want the diamond backs to try to lose for the last month of the season. But I'm also pretty okay, you know, with, with this outcome. And, uh, and I mean, it just felt so fitting for the 2021 diamond backs, right? That of course, you know, they come back and win with this heroic comeback, you know, down four to one and they, and they come back and win the game.

It really did. It was fitting. It was fitting for just what has gone down this season. It's fitting. It's the exact kind of disaster that I didn't want to happen in the second season, or second half of the season. That was my one hope, my one fear was that they would win enough games in the second half to do this to themselves.

And of course, they did. And did so in dramatic fashion, waited until the very last series to really just take it home. We knew in our podcast, titled Advantage Baltimore that Baltimore definitely had the the harder road ahead with the teams that they were facing and the playoff implications that those teams were involved with. The Diamondbacks had some similar series, but obviously that last series of the year, which is what everything ended up coming down to against the Rockies, which was exactly what we thought it would be. I'm serious, I'm surprised the games didn't end in a foot race or a hot dog eating contest because neither two.

team cared at that point anyway. So, yeah. If it's any respite to you, Derek, one thing that I will say is that I think we can be honest here and say that the Diamondbacks are a more talented baseball team than the Orioles. Like if the Diamondbacks had come away with the first overall pick, I think, I think in some ways that in itself is a fluke that's caused by the enormous number of injuries in the middle of the season. Like, I mean, you go through the Orioles rotation and other than maybe John Means,

Like, I challenge anyone watching right now to, like, chime in in the chat box, try to name another Oriole pitcher other than John Means. I mean, their rotation was filled with guys who are basically, you know, no name types who called up from AAA late in the season, guys who do not have a lot of major league experience. The Diamondbacks had Luke Weaver and Madison Bumgarner and Zach Gallen. And even on the offensive side, I think in a lot of positions, they're just a more established baseball team.

So in the end, I don't know if, you know, if that makes it feel, any better, but the Diamondbacks are a better team than the Orioles. And, and I don't think that, you know, we should be super, you know, necessarily quite as devastated that they missed out on the first overall pick that, frankly, they weren't really bad enough in reality to really warrant getting. I don't know about that, Jesse. Did you watch this team in May? I mean, yeah, I get what you're saying. In May, I mean, how, they literally lost their entire starting rotation for a month or two. That's why this team's record is so bad, right? It's because of that stretch in May and June where they were, you know, 10 and 50, essentially over two months.

And that's why they dug the hole that they dug. They're probably about a, you know, not a good team. They're probably a 60, maybe 70 win team if those things don't happen. They're still not good. But they're not Orioles bad. I mean, let's face it, the Orioles, other than Cedric Mullins and a nice first few starts from John Means, there's not really anything of interest going on in that franchise right now. There's some interesting minor league players from all of the tactics they've accumulated.

But they're a horrible, horrible baseball team. I'm going to give you a staggering stat. This is courtesy of our friend Steve Gilbert over at MLB. And Steve Gilbert wrote, in 1969, the two NL expansion teams, the Padres and Expos each lost 110 games. since then only two National League teams have lost 109 plus games, the 2004 debacks and the 2021 debacks. That's history, baby. That's history. That's dubious history. There was another. Did you see the stat that I put out yesterday on Twitter?

It also actually dates back to 1969. 1969 was the beginning of the divisional era in baseball where they established the West and the Eastern divisions in each league. And since that happened in 1969, there has never been a gap between the worst and best teams in the NL West Division as large as the gap between the Diamondbacks and the Giants this season. It is a 55 game gap.

55 games. I mean, that is, I mean, you're talking about the Giants. setting the Giants set their all-time record, right, for wins in a season, 107 wins. And the Diamondbacks nearly did the opposite by setting their franchise low. And that created this absurd margin between two teams that somehow some way, and I fell for this too, two teams that were completely projected by so many people to finish with essentially the same record at the end of the season. It's absolutely mind-boggling how they were separated by 55 games by the end of the year.

Well, Jesse, I want to give a cheers and a toast in memory of tank season. It's dead, Jesse. In memoriam. It's dead. It's over. We're not going to talk about tank season anymore. Tank season is officially over. Put on your long sleeve shirts.

Put on your hoodies. It's hoodie season. It's 86 degrees today here in Phoenix. So, you know, it actually is hoodie weather. But that's hoodie season, right? 80s. Yeah, I will say I think there's a good chance that maybe we still see Elijah Green slip to the Diamondbacks. There's no certainty with the MLB draft at all. And again, that's something we talked about yesterday. We could see the Baltimore Orioles easily pass up on them. Hell, we could see

the Diamondbacks pass up on them, right? That would be a very Arizona Diamondbacks thing to do, too, right? Dangle this carrot of this player in front of us and then, you know, also not go after him, even if they end up getting him. Who knows? I know that they're going to go after the best available pick. And I know internally, they're pretty satisfied with this result. They are okay with getting the second draft pick. Mike Hazen said that he doesn't feel like this team is a series of top five draft picks away from being competitive again.

He feels like they can be competitive again before that. They can rely more on the talent that they have that is almost ready to come up. to a major league level that we will most likely see in spades next season. I do think that they're going to probably retain a lot of the guys they have on the team just based on the fact that they are going to need those guys to, you know, kind of coach up some of the younger guys that they plan on filling the rest of the roster with. I wouldn't be surprised to see more of the same that we saw this season next year.

Just hopefully it's not with guys playing out of positions that they normally play. We talked about defensive runs saved in center field and second base. There seems to be an easy fix there as far as bringing in a real center fielder, whether that's, you know, one of the young guys, Alec Thomas, or whether that's, you know, leaving Jake McCarthy, who's done a fine job in the last, you know, what, 15 games of the season playing that position. The team seemed to click defensively much more once McCarthy moved out to center field and Marte was playing on the infield.

So it's just one of those things that they still were playing, 155 different lineups before the end of the year. And I'm sure that's something that a lot of people would like to see Tori change. I saw a little hope. I saw a little light in the end of the tunnel. By the way, check out the shirt because I'm, even though I prosecuted against this man, I'm still wearing an in Tori we trust job over here.

And I'm bored, you're on board. I'm on board, right? But you know what I'm not on board with? I'm not on board with the sadness that was created inside of me for the potential loss of Elijah Green. It made me create Photoshop's and memes, Jesse. Let's take a look at that one really fast.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we are not okay. We're not okay. I'm not okay. One of us on this podcast was not okay. At least not okay enough to make this. But yeah, that's kind of everything the way I felt. Elijah Green, just slipping away like a little baby Gomorrah,

bye, I'm going to kill you one day. You know, that kind of thing. Not the same thing, but it's like he's killing my soul, you know, that's what he's doing with this, with the soul stone. Am I, am I overreacting, Jesse? Just, just a wee little bit, maybe. Okay. All right. I do appreciate the, the, the, the meme, though.

That was quality meme work from you, Derek. Well, I think you. Well, I think you appreciate it around here. Yeah. Well, you know, we're, we're trying our best to do the content, right? There you go. There you go. It's good work from you. I guess my, I guess my biggest question now at this point is, you know, where where do we go from here tank season's dead so i can't i can't hope for that i can't root for

that what are you going to talk about der what am i going to talk about like what's my identity going to be we're about to do a whole off season of shows and i'm just trying to figure out what your content is going to be because you you can no longer flash the tank season graphic on the screen oh i go 20 seconds so i watch watch me i don't know one more time just to prove to them that we're going to do it this is i mean now we have this one, Jesse. If I have to go to this one, I will. That's the way it's going to work. Or we'll switch back to the old one, because the old one's still there too. It's still going to be tank. It might be tank season next season. We'll see what happens next season. It's a long 162 games and it might be over sooner than we think. I do think the Diamondbacks are going to be better. I do have a positive outlook for this team. I think that what the Giants did, even though once again, the Diamondbacks are not the Giants. And they don't have the Giants roster. I still think that it's very inspiring, you know, winning a record number of games. games with a roster that people predicted, you know, was going to, you know, maybe be 500, maybe be a little bit above, but still not compete in the division with the likes of the Padres

and the Dodgers. Lo and behold, now we sit at this point where the Dodgers are in a one game playoff tomorrow with the St. Louis Cardinals and could be out of it. One of the big things that Mike Hazen talked about yesterday and his presser was just trying to, I think someone had asked him about the Giants and what can be learned from that. And one of the big takeaways for him was just trying to get the guys already on this baseball team to just perform at a higher level, right? Like at some point, you know, I mean, the Diamondbacks, obviously they have some roster moves to make. They've got some adjustments to make.

This was not a winning roster from the beginning. But also like, like Christian Walker shouldn't have a season where he, you know, has an OPS under 700, right? Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of guys that just underperformed. Robbie Ray. Hey, look at Robbie Ray. Look at what happened with Robbie Ray. Robbie Ray has to be a prime example of a guy that they didn't give up on. Robbie Ray was in their system for a number of years.

The minute that he moves on and gets just different coaching or whatever, you know, changes that he made to his game. Right. And now he's a Cy Young award contender, you know? Like, it's crazy to see certain players go on and get coached up and get, you know, become a, elite or much better than they were for this team. From Hazen's perspective, he has to see something like that and think, there is still a guy, a bunch of guys on this team with a ton of potential. I don't like that he says like even Marte isn't really untouchable as far as like a potential

trade or anything, but I know deep down inside that a guy that's essentially hitting 320 at all times in every situation isn't a guy you get rid of, right? I think that they are going to try to still build around a small core of this team and supplement it with young talent that they think could be the future. It's, you know, it's it's it's it's a process though. It doesn't happen overnight. I think we've seen a lot of a lot of players this year kind of blossom, not necessarily be consistent, but just have some great moments. And we're going to talk about that next based on a question that we got from Twitter. Again, we're still answering our mailbag Monday questions because they were so good that we need to make them into an entire second half of an episode.

But before we move on, I just want to remind everybody that Draft King's Sportsbook is once again, the official sports betting partner of the NFL. And they have a week five offer. Every NFL fan should jump on. New customers can bet just $1 on any NFL game with and win $100 in free bets of either team scores a point. The last zero-zero tie in the NFL was not. 1943. So believe it or not, I was not born yet, but I would say this is a no-brainer as far as betting on bet your dollar. Like I said, call their bluff. Bet your dollar, but $5 that get your dollar, get your $100 out, whatever, whatever you want to do. Or bet 25, bet 50. You can do that

with the Draft King Sportsbook app. There's a number of options. Plus it's safe, secure, and reliable. You can deposit your money and withdraw it whenever you want. And that's a big benefit. I've used some of these other sportsbook apps. And it's a scary situation when you get a message that your money has to go through a review process first. So it's really great to jump on the Draft King Sportsbook app and deposit and withdraw whenever you want. Also, please use R code of PHNX.

And for that $1 bet, you will get $100 in free bets of either team scores. 21 and over only, Arizona only. Gambling problem, dial 1,800 next step. new customers only eligibility restrictions apply see draftkings dot com slash sportsbook for details jesse what happened i know i know you didn't win any money while you were here and i was sad you just i was it you just couldn't in your heart bet on the diamondbacks even though they won was that what ended up happening what happened yeah i uh i had some uh i think my phone is just stuck thinking that i live in seattle and so i look my

phone's location was very much struggling and yeah for some reason the app was under the impression that i i was uh still in washington or or something um but yeah i have to say i mean my plan was to bet on bet on the diamond backs and i guess i would have won some money there because they did you absolutely would have you absolutely would have i missed out i i absolutely missed out i i did i did and i won money so i don't even know i'm mad but i i i'm still mad tank season's dead um i i will say that that we are putting out some great content on the website, by the way. So if you have a chance, go check out go phnx.com. If you're not a member already, what are you doing?

Be a member. Join us, join the family. You can either get a month-to-month option and you'll get your first month for 50 cents. Or if you get that annual option, you'll get your choice of a free t-shirt over at phnx locker.com. And let me tell you, I still haven't gotten my free shirt, by the way, because I haven't paid for it yet. That's why it kind of works out that way. I'm still waiting for it. I think I'm going to wait it out and then I'm going to order probably the coyotes one first.

Look at me. I'm not even a homer on my own. Wow. Wow. But then I'll get the D-D-D-Rex one. The coyotes one is so good. There's so many good options, though. I'm doing that because Leah is here in the room and I'm trying to win her over more than you, Jesse.

She's the one that lit me to look like this. So she gets all the props. But I want to say, hey, I did. I have to say, I didn't get to use the draft. King Sportsbook out this weekend, but I did order two t-shirts. Hey! When I was in the press box, I ordered the, I ordered the D-BACs one because I'm not a trader like you.

And I also ordered one of the pH and X ones. So I got two shirts on the way there. Very nice. Yeah, yeah. You got to get on my level here. I do. I do. And I'm going to, Jesse.

And you know, where else I'm going to get on your level is on the Discord. You can join our members only Discord and overcorrect the name of that. website like I do and you know talk sports talk baseball we can talk off season stuff non-tank season stuff we'll talk positivity we can talk draft prospects and most importantly we can talk who the diamondbacks need to really kind of move on from at this point that's one of my favorite things to talk about but it's only because i'm sad tank season is over and i need to latch on to something else negative so join us over here and become a part of the family we we absolutely appreciate the sport and just a reminder. No pressure. No pressure. But Jesse doesn't eat if you don't become a member. He

doesn't, we don't ship him food. If he doesn't, if we don't, if we don't. That is why I rely to, I mean, that's what I rely on for survival is shipments of food from the. That's correct from me. It doesn't come food. And I did Johnny, Johnny over on the Cardinals podcast, he's living with no lights in, in his garage. I don't even know if he has a garage. I think it might be a carport. He's not picking up his mail. He doesn't know. He does not getting his swag from anybody. It's a sad situation over there.

We need to take care of our guys, though. So take care of us, become a member, and we'll ship Jesse out some food. Jesse, though, we did have a question from our Twitter, from our Mailbag Monday that we wanted to kind of expand on. It was a little bit too big of a topic to just handle in a segment. So we wanted to talk about this question from Twitter from Brighton Bobbitt at BB Nitro, who asked, would the season fully complete,

who were some of your pleasant surprise players and who were some of your most disappointing guys. So let's first talk pleasant surprises. I think for me it was Dalton Varsho was really a guy that I wanted to see something out of. He was another guy like Alec Thomas and some of these young prospects that we saw doing some pretty extraordinary things at times in the minor leagues.

And then when he got called up, had a little bit rough of a start, a little bit slow start, especially this season. Yet he really turned things around as we discussed on the Varshow episode, especially since July 17th. And just he just became a different player. He just absolutely became the guy that I think we thought he could be. It just shows that you've got to be a little patient sometimes, but these guys will come around.

I think from my standpoint, the first thing that comes to mind is actually Madison Bumgarner. It wasn't like he really had that great of a season, but I got to be honest. I mean, after last year, this looked like potentially the worst contract in Diamondback's history. I mean, we were at that level. I mean, he posted basically a seven ERA in his first year of a five-year contract where the money was only going to escalate significantly from what he made last year. It was, it was, it was right up there with like, yesmani Tomas and Russ Ortiz deals, right? Yeah. No, I mean, I think you could even argue it would be.

be worse than Yasmani Tomas because I mean a 70 R a pitcher yeah is not even a like you just can't I mean you just can't use a guy like that yesmani Tomas I mean he could at least you know he would hit 260 and you know not really ever draw walks and strike out a lot he wasn't great but he was at least like a player you could call up if you wanted to right he hit 31 home runs yeah and he still he still had a a negative war, B war. That's damn near impossible. How do he hit 31 home runs and still have a negative war?

Like, he never, his career war was like negative two or something for somebody that earned 68 million dollars, you know? Everyone, they were trying to play Yasmani Tomas at third base for a while. And it was, oh.

I mean, you didn't really, you didn't play a great outfield, but oh man, that was a, that was a failed experience. But, but yeah, I mean, Madison Bumgarner came in this year, didn't have a great season. Like, I'm not going to sit here and say that Madison Bumgarner is an ace.

I think he's probably a number three, number four starting pitcher at this point in his career, which is not great. This contract still doesn't look very good. It's an ace contract for sure. Yeah, yeah. But the fact that he's just viable is huge for this team. Because, I mean, if the Diamondbacks had 20 million from their payroll on a player who is not pitchable in the major leagues essentially over the next four years, I mean, that'll take

out a franchise that only spends, you know, 80 to 100 million a year on their payroll. If they've got, you know, one guy taking 20 million of that, it's basically all dead money. So that was big for me. Bumgarner had stretches where he was excellent. He had some injuries that might have held him back from putting it together a little bit more. But going into next season, I think it's reasonable that Bumgarner could sort of bounce back and hopefully stay on the field for the entire season, try to be a little bit

more durable, get some more innings in his arm if possible. But that was big for me, just that he was able to perform and at least was a viable major league starter throughout the season. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree with you more. I think that it looked disastrous. Even at the beginning of the

season, he still didn't have it together, but he had that stretch where he just looked like old Madison Bumgarner again. And I think it was very promising. I wonder if the team's expectations, how low they would have been without someone like Bumgarner on this team, because I don't know if he impacted at the beginning of the season with how bad he was last year, the expectations being, you know,

pretty low for how this team would finish. I know the expectations weren't this low. It's like Hazen said, they, they kind of set their expectations themselves for like an 83 win season. And even that was low in their estimate, but they were being conservative. This is 30 games less

than that. So I just think with Bumgarner being back to form, it's definitely promising, especially with the young pitchers coming up. I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that Madison Bumgarner

is going to be this foxy old like, you know, take them under the wing kind of guy that ain't happening right no he's not maybe mason saunders maybe mason saunders yeah he might mad bum definitely not so i think you know but still by proxy by being around someone like that by being around someone that you know you never know the small um imparting of wisdom that you know bum garner could have on young guys i mean really we we only see the the media version of him we only see the version that at this point is pretty honest and his career and doesn't really feel like playing the game aside from going out there and playing the

game. That's all he wants to do. He doesn't want to do all of this other stuff. He doesn't like this attention and such. So I still hope that, you know, there could be a lot of teaching that he does even in small increments with his, with younger teammates. And if that's the case, again, I know it's a lot of money, but you never know how invaluable that could be if some of these young players that get called up next season can really turn into, you know, superstars for this team. What about disappointments, Derek? What do you got? Well, I got, you know what I got, Jesse? I got disappointments when I find out my friends aren't taken care of their outfield. You know what I mean? Again, we talked about last night. Chasefield, turf. They're cheating over there. The rest of us,

we have all natural grass growing around our strike zone. And we need to make sure that we're keeping our balls clean, Jesse, and you can do that with manscaped. That's right. You're going to do that with Manscape and Manscape. Some of the deals that they have, especially with our code of PHNX, are pretty incredible. They have a package for your package. They'll take care of your package. You can get right now the lawnmower 4.0 trimmer, Jesse, which has a headlight on it. It's convertible. It gets great gas mileage. It's fully rechargeable. Wireless rechargeable. It's a great. It's a great tool. I, you know, it's, it's a state of the art trimmer.

Not to mention the fact that you get a weed whacker for your ear and nose hair. I'm not going to go into that whole thing like I did yesterday. It made me feel old. It made me feel very old. But let me tell you, yeah, young man, you're going to have nose and ear hair problems before you know it. I'm telling you, you're going to want that weed whacker, the liquid formulations and the two free gifts. Right now you can get that plus 20% off. using our code of P HNX on Manscape.com.

And those free gifts, those are pretty good. They got a Manscape boxers and the shed travel bag because you want to make sure that you, even on away games, you're keeping your field trimmed and looking nice. So do that with Manscaped and they, especially that lawnmower 4.0. Again, I can't get over how useful the light is on that. And I'm going to let you use your imagination as to why a light would be so useful. but again, go use our code, PHNX.

Also, again, Draft Kings, use that same code of PHNX on Draft Kings. And on the Draft King Sportsbook app, you will get $100 in free bets for betting one dollar on any football game as long as they score a point. And come on, they're going to score a point. So go on there and get your $100 in free bets if you haven't done so. If you're like Jesse, missing out on the free bets, missing out on the free money. But yeah, let's talk biggest disappointments. I mean, besides missing tank season. But, you know, the missing the number one pick, by far the biggest disappointment.

Nobody on the team has disappointed me more than Josh Van Meter hitting that home run as a walkoff in that game. That's who's disappointed me the most. But let's be honest, the real disappointments for me, Jesse, have been the guys that we thought were going to, you know, elevate their game to the next level, right? Yeah. Guys, I'm not going to blame guys that have been injured. I think Carson Kelly and Cattell Marte, I think they both. were wonderful for this team, even though that they both suffered injuries and just had problems all season long, staying on the field. I'm personally disappointed with David Peralta, Christian Walker, and Nick Ahmed.

Those guys that we've talked about at length of times are really the biggest disappointments for me this season. I can't really be disappointed by the young guys. I can't. You know, like they're still developing. In some cases, some of them have been called up earlier than would have been planned, but. we needed warm bodies to take the field and put nine men out there. So I don't blame some of the young guys, but for me, it was really disappointing to see those three guys really not step up in a season like this when, you know, they had so many other injuries and problems with so many other players. And I know Nick Ahmed also suffered his share of injuries, but I think with Ahmed, my issue with Ahmed is that, again, he's a guy that I feel like the Diamondbacks have given ample time.

to and we're just still seeing those numbers of his go down instead of up and I I don't see that trajectory correcting itself. Am I allowed to say someone that like we still really like but I'm like oh go disappointed probably not I'll probably yell at you for it but go ahead Zach Allen didn't have a very good year. You son of a bitch. Zach Allen was was I mean last year he was I mean last year he He would, I mean, let's face it, not much went right for this baseball team last year either. But Zach Gallen seemed like the most sure part of this baseball team moving forward. I mean, he had a little tiny baby fracture in his arm.

Jesse, have you ever thrown a baseball in a hundred miles an hour, a little tiny baby fracture in your arm? Well, I haven't done much of anything. I'm sorry, I'm getting defensive. It's my fault. I'm sorry. I haven't done much of anything that any of these players have done. We're going down that road. Then we might as little just stop podcasting.

Sure, fine. wrap it up. All right. Well, thank you guys. Remember baseball on kids, bet on it, whatever. Zach Allen was, he sort of seemed to lose his best pitch, which was a little bit concerning. And to your point, I mean, the injury, we've seen this happen time and time again with starting pitchers. I mean, those injuries are a big deal. And in no way, in no way am I suggesting that Zach Allen, you know, wasn't trying or anything. I mean, he's one of the hardest workers that you'll find. I think I'm more just, I'm more just like disappointed a little bit, a little bit nervous about sort of his long term future. Just that like the picture that we saw this year wasn't really the same guy.

And I don't think it was really a fluke either. I mean, toward the end of the season, he had some good moments, right? He had some great starts. You see him put it together from time to time. But the reality was he just kind of struggled to throw strikes at times. he tends to nibble a little bit too much. And it seemed like his change-up just wasn't there for him. And that's his most important pitch.

I mean, Zach Gallen needs that change-up in order to go back to the guy he was last year. And I think he will. Like, I would bet on Zach Gallen turning this thing around. But as of right now, I mean, if you had told me Zach Gallen was going to have, you know, like a 450 ERA this season, I mean, that's about as bad of an outcome as I could imagine for a guy who really looks like the, you know, the future ace of this baseball team. Tori Lovelos said today on Burns & Gambo that he's still making a decision about his coaching staff and he doesn't want to leave the guys hanging for too long.

He knows very, very recently he knows how it feels to be hanging in the, in the balance and waiting to hear about your career, right? Yeah. I, my biggest disappointment has been heard just as a pitching coach. and I just say that because when you ask Lavello about certain things like that, like why has Gowan gone away from his change up? Lavello doesn't have anything to do with that. He doesn't even really have an answer for you on that because that's something

that the pitching coach handles and Gallen handles. So he didn't have like an answer like, oh, well, it's not working for him, kind of like what you said, right? It just makes me wonder at times how much the coaches on this staff are impacting this team. And I, again, think that people tend to blame Lovolo way too much. I'm going to say this as I'm wearing this shirt right now. But I say it because, you know, Mike Hazen, he's the one in charge of the personnel. Lovolo doesn't really even have a say on who gets called up and who gets,

he just, he gets players given to him and then he has to figure out where they're going to fit into the roster. He doesn't have a say when it comes to the pitch selection and what pitchers are doing, what's working for them, why they're going away from a certain pitch that was effective. We talked about it, but that was such a big part of Gallin's repertoire. That, the curveball, which he didn't start throwing until later in the season, he was throwing primarily fast balls and still relied on that heavily, even up until that final series with the Dodgers, but he really just started putting it together as far as hitting the strike zone and hitting his spots,

which made a big difference then when he was struggling earlier on a bit. I don't know what we'll see out of him. My hope going back to the coaches is that I would like to see the Diamondbacks clean house as far as the other coaches. I think that at this point, there's not, there hasn't been much that went right for them. I think at the, at the midpoint of the season when they fired DC, when they fired their hitting coaches and there was, you know, kind of the blame was placed on them.

I thought that was kind of ridiculous at the time. I thought their offense was definitely not the problem. I had been watching that team pretty consistently, and they didn't have problems necessarily scoring four to five runs in a night. It was their pitching and their bullpen. But it was their starting pitching and bullpen combined last in the league in ERA and other pitching stats. So it was their pitching most of this season.

Whatever you want to say about they're hitting, the entire game of baseball relies on pitching and not allowing run. and when you're dead last in MLB, you're going to lose over 100 games. Am I allowed to end us on a high note? No, no. No. want to say is that there's one other pleasant surprise who came to my mind. And that is a guy that,

I mean, honestly, in some ways, maybe this isn't surprising. But I think he deserves a lot of credit for what he did this year. Merrill Kelly was quietly the, he was kind of the guy who, he's kind of the guy who holds this thing together. I mean, in moments where the starting rotation was completely fractured at times, he was kind of the only one left. And not only that, but Merrill Kelly, people forget, is coming off of thoracic outlet surgery over the offseason. That's right. Which is not Tommy. He was going to pitch this year, right?

Yeah. Which is not Tommy John's surgery, but like it's sort of on that level with what it does to guys pitching careers. I mean, it is a significant procedure. And Merrill Kelly came out and was kind of the same guy he's been in the past. He was an innings eater. You know, he's not going to have an ERA under three all the time like he did last year somehow. But he's just a solid, steady presence in the rotation.

And of all of the roster decisions this team has to make this offseason, picking up Merrill Kelly's team option in my mind is the most no-brainer of all of them. I mean, he is absolutely, he has absolutely proven that he is here to stay in this league. And I know Mike Hazen's not getting a whole lot of credit for many things right now, and rightfully so. But picking up Merrill Kelly out of the international market is one of the best moves that Mike Hazen is made. Well, and I mean, honestly, when you talk about that kind of stuff, Doi Ramirez, I've talked about him a lot on how much he's been that guy for them in the

bullpen, right? The thing there about both of those guys is it's not sexy, you know, it's not strikeouts and it's not going to be a great ERA, but what you see out of them is consistency, and you see them come in in big situations and do what they need to do. Even when I, the thing I love about Kelly is even when he has a bad night, he just rebounds. You never know how his night's going to go. He could have, he could give up three runs in the first inning, and then he won't give up another run his entire outing, and he'll go seven, right? Right. Like, Kelly does such a good job of not getting rattled, not getting, you know, in any way, he was their, he was their gap stopper. You know, like he was the one, whenever they were on a losing streak, he stopped the, he stopped the longest

losing streak in Diamondback's history, and he also stopped the longest road streak losing streak in MLB history. So he was their guy that they could count on all season long to give them consistent outings. And I think he's, again, he's, it's, he's so underrated. And if this, if this starting lineup, or I'm sorry, if this starting rotation was better, he, he would have been such a valuable, like, three guy. You know what I mean? Um, But I don't know at this point. I absolutely hope they pick up the team option on him,

and I'm still a little weary about the Calhoun option. I'm going to be on that one. There's no way. Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. Well, and I don't think they should even if they were considering it. I really love Cole Calhoun. And I'm sure he wants them to pick it up. That's why he's kind of given this.

Like, yeah, I've been a DeBacks fan my whole life. I'm from here. Come on, guys. You know, but yeah, definitely. I could see at this point. this team moving in a different direction. And I mean, still maybe being able to pick. I know Hazen said that it doesn't look like they're going to be going to external

candidate options, but who knows if they can still get one of those guys that we said that could at least add some depth to this roster and play outfield at a major league level. Yeah, I think the big knock for Cole Calhoun is that he's left-handed. And the Diamondbacks, if you look up and down this roster, David Peralta's left-handed, Dalton Varsha's left-handed, Josh Rojas, bat's left-handed, and the list goes on. This is a very, very left-handed lineup.

And at that point, Cole Calhoun, I mean, given how few games he played, even if the number was lower, I'm not sure if it really makes a whole lot of sense for them to target a guy like him. I don't disagree. So we'll see what happens.

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