PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - The D-Ternals

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

On this episode, Jesse and Derek discuss the D-backs officially making Brent Strom their new pitching coach, the new AL and NL MVPS, and which D-backs are actually immortal beings put here by aliens to preserve and safeguard the Earth as seen in the new Marvel MCU film The Eternals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to the PHNX D-Backs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, officially known as the mayor of PHNX. Shout out to Saul Bookman for finally coming on board last night during the PHNX sunshine. Wow, I didn't hear about that. I got Saul on board. Saul anointed me now. So, Jesse, no one can touch me when it comes to this mayor thing. Once again, I am the mayor of PHNX because I want.

want to be liked by everybody so much all the time that walking around with me is like I am running for the mayor of nothing. So this show is brought to you by the fine folks over at the Drafking Sportsbook app. Download the Draft King Sportsbook app now. Use our code of PHNX and simply for betting $1 on any NBA or any NFL team to score anything in their game. You will get $100 in free bets instantly should they do so. And of course I'm joined by my one and only vice mayor, the thunderstick, Jesse Friedman. I gave you the thunder stick this time. Oh, I appreciate that.

Is Saul on board with vice mayor? Do we have a word on the minute? You might, you still have some winning over to do. But let me tell you this much. Once you appoint me, the mayor, you have given me entirely too much power. I can create positions underneath me. Remember that somehow an employee. of DNVR is our comptroller over here at PHM.

So I've, I've already gone crazy with power, Jesse. That's, that's fair. Well, hey, we got our, we got our announcement today, Derek. Brent Strong, I was scared. I was worried. I told you on Monday.

I was sweating a little bit Tuesday, even more scared. Wednesday came around. No word. I was like, is everybody at the debacks on vacation? What is going on? But finally today on Thursday, we get official confirmation that Brent Strom

is the Arizona Diamondbacks pitching coach. I'm relieved for it to be official, Jesse. I am too. I mean, this literally took a week, almost. I mean, almost a week. I think we're six days. The news originally came out last Friday, and now we officially have the announcement.

So, yeah, like we said the other day, this was never really speculation. I mean, we literally had Brent Stromen's elf as to last Friday, saying, yes, I am taking the job. So never a big. concern, but nonetheless, the fact that it's official is exciting. I know you are able to attend the press conference earlier today and get some quotes from Brent Strom. So yeah, I mean, this is the most exciting thing that has happened to this Diamondbacks organization in probably quite a while.

It is. And the one thing that we have talked about is the assembly of this coaching staff. we're going to talk about a whole other Marvel franchise later in the show. But again, it's like they assembled the Avengers to come together as a coaching staff. All of these different guys with different specialties that they have excelled in in different areas, you know, the way that Joe Mather helped the Cincinnati Reds become one of the elite teams hitting in this team, offensively in this league, right? Then you have the experience that two guys like Jeff Bannister and Brent Strom bring over, Brent Strom, 11 seasons as a major league pitching coach for the Astros and the Kansas City Royals.

From 2018 through 21 this season, the Astros ranked among major league leaders in strikeouts, first overall, quality starts first overall, ERA second overall, opponent batting average second overall and whip second overall. That's impressive. You can say what you want. The one thing that is a common bond between these three coaches, these three coaches is human. humility. Every single one of them does not take the credit for what their team did while they were there. Joe Mather kicked it off by saying he did nothing for the Reds as as hitting coach. Well, let's hope he did something, right? Right, exactly. Let's hope he did something, right? But he basically made it sound like the guys were already on board with whatever philosophies because they wanted

to get better when he arrived. So he felt like the buy-in from the players in Cincinnati was a key. But again, he credited the players several times. Brent Strom, it was more of the same today from him. You know, you're not going to get him saying that he was the big key to this team, even though they had three seasons in a row prior to his arrival of losing 100 games. Three seasons, not just what the Arizona Diamondbacks experience this season, but three seasons of that miserable. He's been through this before.

He knows what it's like to walk into a situation like this. And when he first announced that he was taking the job last week, That was the quote from him that stuck out to you the most. Just how excited he was for the challenge of coming over to an organization that is in a much, much worse spot than the one that he's coming from. And he's willingly coming over, right? The Astros didn't fire him. In no way did the Astros ask this man to leave. And yet he came over here because he's interested in this challenge.

He's interested in trying to take this pitching staff to the next level. And I mean, he seems like the right person for the job, as we've said. He absolutely does. And by the way, he had two, two Syung Award winners under him in his time at Houston. So again, Guy, Dallas, Tycoe and Justin Verlander. And just Burlander, yep. And again, he was there when the Houston had its five highest single season strikeout totals, right? So he said something interesting in today's press conference about the Arizona Diamondbacks being 30th in the league in. fast balls high up in the zone. And that that was just such a big part of what improves so many pitchers.

So it's it's funny for him not even to be in the job yet, but already assessing the Diamondbacks and finding, you know, ways that they kind of lack behind that I haven't really heard a lot of people talk about. When you hear that, you're like, yeah, the fact that they apparently led the league in fastballs in the zone does not surprise me one bit. you know, with the lack of success this pitching staff had at times. I have been saying about the all-star pitching staff. And that is one thing apparently that the great Tori Lovolo agreed with when it came to

my assessment on that. I actually have a clip from today's press conference where Lovolo kind of expanded a little bit on what his plan was here and how his plan is coming together. Hey, Tori. When you started assembling your coaching staff that you needed to hire, did you foresee it going in this way that you would be bringing on kind of an all-star caliber coaching staff of this much experience? It was my desire to have this type of coaching staff built around me. And yes, I was hoping for something like this. between he and Jeff Bannister. And, you know, there's going to be more hires along our path here that we're going to start to announce here shortly.

That's exactly how I was putting it. I wanted all-star coaches around me, guys that we're going to make this organization as good as possible with their teachings, with their content. So yes, I did, I did fantasize about this and it's coming true. And I'm very grateful for that. And I mean, I think that it's, again, it's something that it was speculated that he was going to have a hard time making some of these higher or finding good coaches for some of these positions. Let's, for a second, let's talk about this mustache and how terrible it is because I just noticed in that video really how awful it looks. And man, I can't wait for November to get out of here so this thing can go. You had your PHNX.

You had our PHNX t-shirt on. I did. I did. I'm here rooting for the team. But yeah, Jesse, it sounds like all of Lavello's plans for this coaching staff. And their assessment of what they planned on doing with this team as far as coaching up young players from their farm system is starting to come together. It really is. I mean, I think Tori deep down is probably like.

like a kid in a candy store right now like oh my gosh we got brent strom and jeff banister and joe mather and you know i mean in the press conference he's probably not going to you know show those kinds of emotions but but i mean this really is in my mind sort of a best case scenario for this for this team and and frankly derrick i feel like for me and and i i'm thinking that some of our audience members can probably relate to this when your team hires new coaches it's kind of hard to know how to react in a lot of ways because there's really never anything bad that comes out, right? Like when the Diamondbacks hired Darnell Coles, it was like, all right, you know, he's been with the, with the Rangers.

You know, they've had some success under him when they brought over Matt Hurges, right? I don't think there was initially this cloud of darkness over the hiring of Matt Hurgis, right? It's something that you're normally cautiously optimistic about, but it's usually kind of hard to really care that much because, I mean, it kind of always has the same feel. doesn't really feel like you ever, you know, really have a slam dunk or, you know, you really mess something up. It just kind of is what it is. This is one of few situations, one of few scenarios in the history of this franchise where I really think that this is like a home run in the fullest. I mean, there is, there's a reason that Marcus Stroman immediately upon this hire was like,

oh my gosh, the diamondbacks got Brent Strom. You know, I would love to be able to work with him at some point in my career, right? This is something that other teams are taking notice of. And that's not really always the situation when you're just going about your business coming off of 52 win season hiring new coaches, right? That's not the norm. And this is this is going to be huge for this franchise. I agree with you 100%, Jesse. So I look forward to that. And I'll have a piece today elaborating a little further. I think even at one point, it's funny you said that because Brent Strom said he felt a bit like a kid in a candy store when it came to looking at this team and the talent that's on it.

Again, a comment. There's some fun, like, like you have, when you look at the Diamondbacks starting rotation, it's not, it's, it's devoid of recent performance in some respect. Like Zach Gallen kind of had an off year. Luke Weaver had an off year. But there's some big stuff there. Like we've all seen what Zach Gallen can do. Even Luke Weaver, I feel like in, for a lot of,

pitching coaches is really an intriguing guy. There aren't that many guys who can run it up to 96 or 97 with a really, really good change up. It's kind of a two pitch mix right now, but there's a lot to work with there, right? Like, these aren't just a bunch of guys who, you know, were drafted late and have kind of always been back in starters. There's a lot more ceiling here than you would probably expect for a 52 win team. And hearing you talk about Brent Strom, it makes sense why he feels that way looking at this pitching staff. I did ask Strom if the challenge, you know, here looking at a team that had so many remarkable similarities to the Astros team when he joined it, you know, was part of his

decision. And he said it really didn't impact it. He said, really, you know, he talked about wanting to, you know, he talked to some people. They were 50% about retirement. 50% of the people he talked to said it's great. 50% said it sucked and that, you know, they hated it, right? just the lack of having things to do, and especially when you've been in a world like baseball

that consumes so much of your life, it's hard to all of a sudden turn that off. And I think he, you know, he kind of expressed not wanting to leave it yet. Obviously, living in Tucson, Arizona is another big part of it. The one part, though, that I find to be probably the most egregious error on every team in MLB, MLB's part, is he did say that the Arizona Diamondbacks

were the only team that called them. and that I think or about this kind of role. I think other people were kind of calling him more about, you know, an analytics role or maybe taking something. And that might have been the mistake of those teams just assessing his situation and maybe thinking he didn't want to be in a pitching coach role still at this point in his career, especially when he was contemplating or talking about stepping away.

Maybe they were just trying to entice him with a role that suited him a little more. Or maybe it would be, you know, hey, this will be a little easier on you. You don't have to travel with the team as much. Apparently, the debacks were the only ones that said, no, we want you for this. And I'm telling you, the one, again, the common theme amongst these.