PHNX Arizona Diamondbacks Podcast - This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Jesse and Derek lament over the loss of another player due to injury and discuss the future of Christian Walker and Luke Weaver. 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.

and welcome to the PHNX D-BACs podcast right here on PHNX. My name is Derek Montia, occasionally known as the mayor of PHNX, though that continues to be highly disputed. Of course, this show is sponsored by the good folks at the Draft King Sportsbook app. Download the Draft King Sportsbook app now. Use our code PHNX. And for betting simply $1 on any football game, college football NFL doesn't matter, you will get $200 in free bets coming back to you instantly. That's code P-H-N-X.

And again, you can be like the guys in my group chat, and everybody's talking about how much money they won this past weekend. So be like that. Joining me, of course, is my friend and my co-host. It's Thunderstick Jesse Friedman. Jesse, what's happening? Derek, I'm doing well. The Diamondbacks not so much.

But then again, what else is new, brother? What else is new? It's tank season. We're happy about it. It's a good positive spin. It's my mental focus on making all these losses seem like good things. And it's a, I think it's an approach that people should take. I don't know. You're right, though, last night the debacks had a heartbreaking loss because of what happened during the game. There were some good things. There were some bad things. And there were some really, really ugly things. It was Tuesday's loss. The Diamondbacks have now lost two out of three. They have one more game on Wednesday going up against the Dodgers. What are your takeaways from that that particular loss and kind of the devastation that we experienced yet again for this team that has experienced so much devastation this season? On one hand, it wasn't as traumatic as a recent time in recent history when the Los Angeles Dodgers clinched a playoff spot playing against the Diamondbacks. I am still sort of scarred from when that happened to Chase Field.

And we all know what happened. I'm not even going to say it. Last night was not that bad. But nonetheless, not a great game all the way around. Derek, Luke Weaver was just sort of okay, really not very good. Only lasted four innings when it was all set and done. Ketel Marte had a good game. I know you sort of called this on Twitter.

You were like, hey, this could tell Marte at bat is, you know, the Diamondbacks one shot at getting back into this game. And sure enough, he hit a two run homer right then. there made it a six four game. It seemed like in, we're talking about Tuesday's game here. It seemed like it was, you know,

the D-Backs had a shot to come back. And unfortunately, the bullpen did what the Diamondbacks bullpen has done many, many times this year. And that's when, you know, you inch a little bit closer and, and you sort of hand that ground right back to the opponent.

And unfortunately, that's what happened. And the Diamondbacks come away with an eight to four loss to the Dodgers. All right. Well, let's talk about that again on, on that. particular Tuesday game, the good, the bad and the ugly, Cattel Marte back at second, that's a good thing, right?

Making his first start of the season at second, which was surprising to me. I know that they were dedicated to him being in center field, but it was surprising to me that this was his first start of the year at second base. He went three for four with a home run and really was the shining light of hope for this team at times when everybody else seemed to be so unproductive. Yeah, Catele-Marté, actually, an article came out earlier today from Megan Garcia over at MLB.com. And Cotel-Marté essentially makes it sound like this is a day that he's wanted to come for quite a while. He said, he was asked if he felt good.

He said, I feel good. I continued taking reps at second base, even though I wasn't starting there at all this season. I continued training and putting the work in yesterday and the day before. I kept telling Tori that I wanted to play second. Now I finally got the start. those are Catele Marte's words. This is something that he's wanted for a while, Derek. And frankly, I think from the very first moment,

the Diamondbacks put Cotel Marte out in center field. I don't know if he's really ever wanted to be there, even though he's looked pretty good out there at times. Second base is really where he wants to play. And, you know, I don't know if there's necessarily a correlation here, but he had an awfully good day at the plate in his first start back playing second base. I don't question Tori Lovolo as much as some people do. I do acknowledge that he does have some things that are weird to his managing style.

And the one thing I have questioned, the one thing I have not been a fan of, has been his particular need to change positions guys play. Positions guys have played almost their entire life. And it almost seems like it is against their will. I'm not saying that we are part of those conversations, right? We're not present when the players and Lovolo are having these conversations about when they want them to switch or play other positions. I just see the answers from the players when they get asked about the changes. And typically it's something to the extent of, well, I'll do whatever the team needs me to do.

It doesn't ever really sound like they're super amped to make these changes. So at times it's that tinkering. You know, Lovolo is like the sorting hat at Hogwarts where guys come in and they're like shortstop and they put him on and he's like, outfielder, you know, and it's like, that's what's so weird at times, you know, and it was a, you know, Pavin Smith's first basement, outfielder, you know, like everybody, everybody in the outfield. That's where I'm moving out. Everybody that's Slytherin, you know.

And so I don't agree with that at times. considering that like Catele Marte had his all-star season at second base. Right. And I don't see a team's need to fill a gap like that, that I don't see the answer being making a guy change his position. I know that a lot of these guys have played several different positions. David Peralta was a pitcher. And then after what he went through,

he somehow made it to the major leagues as an outfielder, right? So I understand that sometimes those changes, changes are made because these guys are athletes and can play different positions. The goal is to find, though, where they play at best. And we have not seen Marte necessarily excel at center field, but we've seen him do great things at second base. Well, speaking of positional changes, Seth Beer didn't last real long at first base. Oh, that's the, that's the real ugly from Tuesday's game. I think he lasted maybe about five minutes. It was the first inning. only a few batters had come up.

He dives after a baseball dislocates his shoulder. I think Derek, from what I've heard from you, it sounds like as of right now, he's day-to-day. The Diamondbacks are not putting him on the injured list. So initial news there is good. But nonetheless, you know, I warned you all a few days ago about Seth Beer defensively

that there's a reason the team waited until it could have a date. Oh, you shut up. You shut up, Jesse. How dare you? You're not wrong, though. I mean, how can you argue with that considering it was the first play that he made defensively, right? He DHed in Seattle. This was his first start playing a position for this team.

He started at first base. I was excited to see it. That excitement did not last very long. It soon turned into heartbreak hearing that he dislocated his shoulder. Per the team, he had x-rays taken to make sure the shoulder dislocation didn't cause any kind of bone chip or fracture. the x-rays came back negative. So his status right now is day-to-day. He has not been put on the IL yet.

But in talking to him after the game, apparently his shoulders slid back into place pretty easily, smoothly, in his words. And the training staff was going to see how he feels this morning. So I think the team is just going to take it from there. It is, it's an injury that isn't necessarily as bad as like a separation or something. but the problem is, as we have seen at times in the past with athletes, is a dislocated shoulder can go on to cause other injuries if aggravated or if they continue to play on it.

So, again, the goal here is to not have any kind of permanent, you know, any kind of injury that becomes worse here on this kind of season. Beer was exciting to watch and it's great to have them up, but there's no need, again, to rush them back with seven. 16 games left in the season. I also don't want to overreact. I mean, I have my doubts about Seth Beard defensively. And, you know, we've heard from the team in the past that they're, you know, a little unsure about his future defensively. But nonetheless, I don't want to say that Seth Beer is, you know,

completely hopeless playing first base. Obviously, you know, it happened, right? I know it was the first inning. But, you know, we'll see him out there again soon enough. And, you know, hopefully he's able to get healthy. And we're able to see him back. of first base here pretty soon. It just definitely doesn't help the case that, you know, his track record shows that he

isn't really great defensively. I think this might have been a case where he was just trying to do too much and make a spectacular play right out of the gate. And, you know, I mean, this is the kind of injury that it can happen to anybody making that kind of cross-body attempt at a ground ball like that. But definitely, you know, good news post game about, you know, the way everything smoothly slid back in the place, which just sounds disgusting. That must have been a pleasant experience. Yeah, absolutely.

But I guess the bad that we skipped over there was on Tuesday, the debacks lost to the Dodgers, allowed the Dodgers to clinch a playoff spot. And I mean, it's a meaningless game, once again, for the debacks. It's tank season. but it wasn't a it wasn't a loss that I was really particularly happy about watching that the little spurt that you talked about with Catelle Marte hitting that home run really really gave me hope that that we were going to see something you know just fun happened with this team you know just just an exciting moment the Dodgers are in a neck and neck you know playoff race with the with the giants who also keep winning it's a

it's insane how good these two teams are coming down to the wire. And the Dodgers are winning all the time and they can't seem to really make up ground on the Giants. I just wanted to see, as we discussed before, wanted to see the debacks play a little bit of a spoiler. You know, just do what they can here at the end of the season to make these last, you know, two dozen games mean something to them before the season wraps up. You mentioned, I want to go back just real quick to the Cattel Martei conversation. between center field and second base. One stat that our listeners might be interested in.

No team has been worse defensively this season than the Diamondbacks in Center Field. They have a minus 26 defensive run saved going back to that stat that I mentioned with Nick Ahmed yesterday. They have been far and away the worst defensive team in center field. Obviously, that's not all could tell Marte. There's quite a bit of Pavin Smith and Dalton Varshow in there, which obviously, like you mentioned, those guys are not, you know,

they have not been centerfielders historically. And so you sort of get what you'd expect there. But Cotel Marte, even individually, did not fare well in those metrics either. So I think in the past maybe he's looked a little bit better out there. But right now, there isn't really much of any reason to put Cotel Marte in center field because unfortunately he doesn't really look that great there defensively anyway. Right. Well, and a lot of that, too, is due to the time he missed.

the carousel of replacements that they brought up to fill in that role. It really goes back to the discussion on what the debacks did during the offseason. That $8.5 million that they spent primarily on, well, primarily solely on bullpen arms and doing nothing to add anything to the rest of this team, including a team that didn't even have a center fielder, you know, that their decision was to put one of their all-star players in center field and have them change positions. It seemed like a recipe for disaster from the start. You add in all the injuries and everything that happened, and it was, you know, the perfect storm.

It was the perfect scenario of this team not preparing for the possibility of anyone getting injured, really. when you looked at some of their backups and their depth chart when the season started and their lack of planning for something like this to happen, a terrible, terrible, you know, season of, you can say it's bad luck, but it's literally starting to feel like a curse, you know. It's starting to feel like they wronged the baseball gods in some way, and now they're paying those repercussions. I think what's interesting about last night is in addition to the fact that Kattel didn't play center,

but who did play center last night was Jake McCarthy, who I know is a guy that the diamondbacks are kind of wondering about. Like, is this a guy who can man, you know, center field well? And like you mentioned, Derek, this team, I don't know if they're going to make this mistake twice. Going into this offseason, they need a center fielder. I mean, without Tim LeCastro here after they dealt him, Tim Lecastro was probably the most stable defensive center fielder. out outside of Cotel Marte.

So at this point, I think it's, it is absolutely crucial that the diamondbacks go and find someone this offseason. But for the moment, Jake McCarthy is, you know, he's getting an audition. He has a, you know, we obviously have seen his speed on the base paths. And maybe that pays off into him being able to play some center field too. Yeah, I, I just, I have no faith in this team to attempt to compete. So I wouldn't be surprised if their answer is to call up, you know, another young player and have them in center field, you know, someone like Stuart Fairchild or, you know, I mean, even with some of the ways the guys are playing in Reno, I wouldn't be surprised to see Alec Thomas too soon, you know. Yeah, they don't. They're kind of running out of guys to man different positions. I'm sure we'll probably do, we could probably do a whole show on this down the road.

But positionally speaking, Derek, the Diamondbacks are in trouble. They do not have very many guys left over who are like, yeah, yeah, like this guy is a solid, you know, second baseman. Like pretty much Nick Ahmed at shortstop and Carson Kelly a catcher, those are pretty much the only guys that you can confidently pencil in and say, you're going to get good solid defense from them. They've got a whole lot to figure out defensively here in the coming years. I can't lie to you, Jesse. I want to lie to you, but I may or may. may not have bet against the Diamondbacks last night to lose to the Dodgers. Wow.

There's no confirmation. I mean, you don't need to look at me like that. I feel you, I feel you're judging me a lot here. Oh, I am. Again, it's, as I tweeted out from our account, look,

just because the team loses doesn't mean you have to lose. You can jump on the Draft King's sports app, and you can bet on whoever you want to, and you don't have to tell anybody. You don't have to come on a podcast about, like a baseball team and then tell everybody watching and listening that that you bet against them, you can keep that 100% private. But you can bet on whoever you want, take whatever gamble you want to.

There are a lot of scenarios out there. And it's, again, it makes watching sports even more fun just to have a little bit of money on it. So check out the Draft King's Sportsbook app. And, you know, to add to the excitement this weekend, the Draft Kings is giving all customers an exclusive, no-brainer offer that you don't want to miss. We had our one last week, this week. They're giving all customers who signed up now a chance to double their money if Arizona or Minnesota scores one lousy point during this Sunday's football game.

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And yes, Jesse, I did take the no-brainer offer. I know you were curious about that. And I took it the minute I saw it, one point. Come on. Anyway. But another thing I'd like to remind everybody to do is, since we're talking about signing up for things, go over and sign up for PHNX. We have some great articles that we're posting on the debacks. I'm going to discuss this curse in greater detail. And Jesse is going to talk about Tori Lavolo's future a little bit more coming up this week. But, you know, what we're trying to do, as we've talked about in the past, is make it fun to be a sports van in the valley.

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and check out your membership options. You can get the annual membership that comes with that free T-shirt, or you can choose a month-to-month option where you will get your first month for just 50 cents, depending on which of those options you choose. Those are your rewards. And, you know, hey, if you're curious

and want to just check us out, check out that month-to-month option and get your first month for 50 cents. sense. That way you can see the ridiculous idea I'm going to float out there about this curse because I'm telling you it exists. But yesterday we talked about Ahmed Peralta and Walker's future. I want to hit on Christian Walker here specifically because this is a guy coming into this year, Derek, that I actually felt pretty good about. I mean, you talk about last season and one of the very few things that went right for this baseball team. And Christian Walker was right at the top of the

list. You look at his numbers last year and his numbers the year prior to that. They're pretty much on par with each other, even obviously last year was a super small sample size. But I mean, with Christian Walker, at least as of right now, you're talking about a guy who makes like 150th of what Paul Goldschman makes. So even if the numbers are just, you know, somewhat close, somewhat comparable between the two, you feel like you're getting a great deal, you know, by having Christian Walker as your first basement. Yeah, absolutely. We were looking at each other there for a especially early on after Goldschmidt left and

pretty excited about how comparable those numbers were considering the discount. Mike Hazen looked like a genius, right? He really did. Yeah, he did. Yeah. For a minute because Goldschmidt was getting used to his new environment and, you know,

Christian Walker was probably hungry and excited for the opportunity. So those two things probably met pretty close there in the middle. But like you said, yeah, 2020 was looking like a pretty good year for him and this season has just fallen off considerably. I did some numbers digging

to try to figure out, you know, like, what's going on with this guy? I mean, he doesn't necessarily look like he's adjusted his batting stance or anything. Like things look pretty similar with Christian Walker. But doing some numbers digging, Christian Walker is not really hitting breaking pitches anymore. Last year, he was actually really, really good at hitting breaking pitches.

And his performance against fastballs, oddly enough, is pretty much the same. this year as it was last year. But for whatever reason, Derek, I don't really have an explanation for you yet, but Christian Walker is not really hitting breaking stuff. And the last thing I'll say on him is that he's about to enter his first year of arbitration, which means his salary is going to tick up here. He has some big homer seasons in his past, specifically 2019, where I think he hit about 29 home runs. And because of that, I don't think he's going to get a huge number in arbitration, but it might be more than the Diamondbacks would be willing to pay

for a guy who can only play first base and has posted like a 650 OPS this year. So that's definitely something to watch with him. Yeah, I can't disagree there. And I think at times I've been more excited to see other people getting the opportunity to play first base than Christian Walker. I think I've been more excited to see Pavin Smith. Obviously, for five minutes on Tuesday,

I was excited to see Seth Beer play first base. I just think that that really comes down to wanting to see if the next star is waiting in the wings, right? If somebody's going to come up and grab that brass ring that Tori Lovolo has been talking about these young guys, you know, wanting to see them grab. He wants to see them come out and take this opportunity and run with it. And I've kind of been waiting for the same thing, you know. So I'm not, I don't know how I feel about it. yet, but I do know especially looking at the numbers for these three players, you know, looking at the numbers for Nick Ahmed, David Peralton, Christian Walker, you know, you're

talking about batting averages between 222 and 263, 20 home runs between the three of them. About 126 RBI between the three of them. So the three of them collectively make up a really great player, you know, but not as individual players, unfortunately. I think that there comes an attachment to guys and then you want to see them kind of come back. You want to see them overcome and you want to see their best years be here with Arizona. Obviously, with the debacks, as we're going to discuss on tomorrow's show, it's heartbreaking to see our players. leave here and not just not just have success elsewhere but become the best pitcher in the entire American league arguably right now a Cy Young candidate in Robbie Ray I think that that is where

we have this patience we like guys and if we like their personalities and they've been around for a while we want to see them do well it just comes a time where you got to start looking at their performance and realize that this is all that they are probably going to be. You know, Nick Ahmed is a great defender, but his probably best batting average is going to be 250 if you even get that out of him going forward. You know, there's times where you've got to start looking at the future of this team and really start thinking about not just calling guys up and plugging them in here or there like they do, but really moving forward.

So, and again, I say this. because when I am around these players, especially when we used to be in the clubhouse with them, it was much harder for me to speak like this. And I mean that honestly, it comes to, you know, you come to not be able to think of them as just moving pieces in actual human beings, right? So, you know, it's, it's something that I'm, I'm, you know, I'm still, I'm still there at heart, but, and I think that's how fans feel too. You know, fans love someone. one like Ahmed, fans love David Peralta. After a while, though, you have to start thinking about, you know,

wanting this team to get better and win and go after World Series. And that's where we want to see them get back to again. The great thing about Ahmed and Peralta, just real quick, is that you don't have to get rid of these guys, right? I think all I'm asking for, Derek, is you don't pencil in Nick Ahmed as your, you know, 162 game every single day level shortstop, right? You platoon him, you play them only against lefties. Maybe Peralta, you try to only really play them against righties, right?

Like, these don't have to be truly everyday, everyday guys. And like you said, their personalities are great, right? Like, this team doesn't have that many faces that people recognize anymore. And if you keep those guys around, you can still have that at least for another year. The thing about it, too, is they don't have depth. So it's not like they really need to be getting rid of guys. Exactly. They really just need to be bolstering their lineup with talented players that are going to get an opportunity to play and not just be seen as the replacements that come in when they're 50 games below 500 or below 500, 50 games out of the first place.

They're both of those things. So these are these are the opportunities that I want to see. I think that the Diamondbacks still have a really good farm system, and they have a lot of young players that are really close. I just, and I don't think they're going to do this. I just don't want them to get desperate and call on those guys too early, you know, just because they need to fill those roster spots. There comes a time where this team needs to start doing things to grow its fan base

and to get people back in the stadium and to do more. And that's going to involve picking up players of, free agency and they're not they can't be 15 year veterans that they're signing to one year deals they got to start making moves to actually improve this team and not just waiting on the young guys to get called up you never know what a minor leaguer is going to do at a major league level so there's no guarantee that those guys are going to be superstars when they hit the majors right one thing that irks me last night was how much more tweeting i was doing than the arizona diamond back's twitter account i don't want to really throw them under the bus

but they sent out three tweets from their account last night. The tweet that the game was starting, an update on Seth Beer, and the final score. The whole game. The whole game against the Dodgers, right? A game that a lot of Diamondbacks fans still have interest in because it's the Dodgers and it's a division rival. They still want to always see us beat L.A. I don't understand how, I guess I do. I can only imagine being the social media person for Twitter or for any social media this season for the debacks.

It's probably a nightmare. You know, with the comments and the negativity and everything all the time, I can only, I get that. There just comes a time where you still need to do your job. And your job is to promote watching this team still, even though they're 50 games below 500, even though in 16 games they're not going to be playing anymore, you still need to, get people excited about this and a big part of it is doing it on Twitter. I just can't really understand, you know, folding and calling it a day during a game like this.

Did they tweet Catele-Marty's Homer? They did not. What they did was they retweeted Ballet Sports's video of it. So they did send it out, but not from their account. You know, they just retweeted Valley Sports. So, I mean, it's just my opinion. I just think that I like to see, social interaction regardless of, you know, how good or bad this team is doing.

So I think that there's a lot of things that they're doing wrong right now to continue to grow their fan base. I know it's impossible to grow your fan base during a season like this, but I don't think that they're doing anything to retain their fan base, you know. But anyway, what we want to do, though, is we want to retain our fan base and we want to grow it. We love the support that we've received, and we are so happy to be a part of this thing at PHNX. So if you're catching us on YouTube right now, we want to remind you that you can never miss out on any of the shows, our show specifically, the PHNX Debax podcast, because you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcast. And if you're hearing us on one of those apps, we want to remind you to go over to YouTube and subscribe to us there. we have our P-HNX Sports Channel and you know we're just trying to create an environment

where we can all watch sports and have a good time together even if the team is losing that's what tank season is all about I'm in a tank right now not in a not in a military vehicle I'm in a tank top but I am that excited about tank season thanks for clarifying that I just needed to let everybody know they were like what is that mechanical sound oh he's been in a tank this whole time I get it but finally

you can follow along on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook by following us at P-H-N-X-U-Sports. And again, thank you guys so much for checking us out. Jesse, before we leave, I just wanted to pose one question to you. Are you buying or selling Luke Weaver as a starting pitcher? It's pretty hard to buy right now, Derek. It is absolutely hard to buy. Why does he show moments of brilliance? And then, like, that's relief pitcher stuff, right?

where you can come in and just look outstanding, and then in the third or fourth inning, have everything fall apart. It's not like it was a perfect game, but he looked really good through those first two innings. What I notice is that he really doesn't walk guys. Like he doesn't get in trouble in the way that some of the debacks, other starters do where, you know,

suddenly he just can't throw strikes anymore. He's just really hitable sometimes, right? Like his, I'm sure we'll dive more into this later on, but his change up does not have near the depth that it once had. it is not nearly as effective of a pitch as it is now or as it was back, you know, a couple years ago when he was really starting to look like a big part of the future of this team. And without the change up, I mean, that was sort of his big weapon. So right now it kind of feels like Luke Weaver is just throwing fastballs and more fastballs

and more fastballs and, you know, trying to get it by guys. And it makes sense that, you know, by the fourth or fifth inning, guys are going to start to figure that out. It seems to be the case entirely too much where we are talking about guys going away from their off-speed pitches on this team and relying entirely too much on the fastball. Yeah, totally. All right. Well, that's something else we're going to have to dive into for sure.

But again, thank you guys so much for joining us here on the PHNX DeBacks podcast. You can get us on Twitter. Of course, the main account is at PHNX underscore Sports. That is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And you can follow me and Jesse. cap underscore caveman with a K, and Jesse is at Jesse N. Friedman. So again, thank you guys for joining us. We appreciate you being a part of our baseball family here on PHNX.

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