Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - Arizona Diamondbacks | Profile & Projection | 616

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Use code JOMBOYPRESEASON for 15% off on your next purchase at SeatGeek https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/JOMBOYPRESEASONThe Diamondbacks have a bunch of under-the-radar dudes on their roster. What's the ceiling for Jake's Snakes after being voted 20th in baseball by our audience? 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. Oh, hi. We play for rings in the desert. Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another team profile and projection here on Talking Baseball. We are giving you an episode a day every day until opening day. And today we're talking about the Arizona Diamondbacks. You guys, our audience, ranked them the 20th best team in Major League Baseball.

And just to pull the curtain back, we were wondering why. We think you forgot about them as you were making your picks. Because the over and under doesn't reflect that. And neither does my brain. But Jake, these are your rocks. These are my snakes, actually. Oh, shit. That's how much I get confused.

I know. It's tough. Not a good start. These snakes are different in the way of, how about Evan Longoria, throwing an arm. around all the young talent while hitting 25 ding-dongs this year. Yep.

They were involved in one of the biggest trades in this off-season. Gabriel Moreno, super prospect at catcher and Lordus Gariel Jr. in the outfield. Couple pitchers, they signed who they lost. I mentioned that big trade, Short King, Dalton Varshow. He is now in Toronto. Also, Jordan, Loplo Stone Garrett. What a name.

Sergio Alcantara, Ian Kennedy. Jim's Ian Kennedy. He's gone. So, hey, some in, some out, the one big trade that everyone was talking about this season. But. Pipe out? Do you talk about him?

I'd rather not talk about that. Okay. Trev, the lineup, there's some kids with potential. And like I said, your guy, Evan Longoria, coaching him up. What's this lineup? going to do. Oh, and before we do that quick BPD ad break to tell you guys even more about Sikh, all of our PPPs, TPPs, our whole preseason package here is brought to you by Seekek. Baseball is back and to celebrate Seekeks giving you a special offer. This is just for

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boy preseason. All one word. I know I'm optimistic all the time and should I be? Should I not be? I'm getting optimistic when I look at the line. They got some young guys mixed with that veteran presence. Corby and Carroll. Yes. Electric

Factory. The exact opposite of Jake Storeale. He's fast and athletic. He'll be in center field bat and lead up. Catelle Marte. Is that a funny face, Jake? Are you making a funny face? Switch hitter. He'll be at second base. Josh Rojas at left. Christian Walker at first. We'll see who ends up in left field. They have Lordus Guerrille Jr. here, but they have some other guys that might be pushing him around. Evan Longoria, D.H. All over. Fucking player coach. You know he's going to be in there. Jake McCarthy in Wright, Carson Kelly and or Gabriel Moreno

and Nick Amad at shortstop. They have some bench pieces too. They brought in Kyle Lewis. I mentioned Gabriel Moreno already. I'm sure they'll be splitting some time. Geraldo Herdomo is another shortstop. They have utility infillotype guy and Emmanuel Rivera there.

Where is the guy I'm looking for? Tomas is not listed here. Why is that? Who are you looking for? Drew Jones. Anyways, James, tell us about the rotation.

Cut that whole thing out, PBD. The rotation, the rotation. They have the law firm of Gallin, Kelly and Davies and their one client,

Madison Bumgarner. Ryan Nelson, kind of their clerk. Helps them find stuff. That's it. Zach Allen's really good. Merrill Kelly, all-time boring name. Madison Bumgarner may have heard of him.

I don't know. Isn't the bumgarner's got to go to the bullpen at some point? I'll keep going. In the bullpen, they got Joe Mantiply, who had kind of a little bit of a breakout season. All-star Joe Mantle. Yeah. Mark Malanson, Kevin Ginkle.

Tough name. Tough name. Mr. Ginkle. Mr. Ginkl. I didn't get my homework done. Corbyn Martin. They had two Corbyn's. Yeah.

Miguel Castro, Scott Miguel. That's a lot of it. Jake, you're the expert. I'll bet lead off. What do we have here? Corbyn Carroll, your NL favorite for rookie in the year. Rookie in the year. Kid can fly one of the fastest dudes in baseball,

if not the fastest. He got a taste last year. Let him go. Let's find him. out what we have. Ketel Marte. He's on a lot of people's bounce back list this year. He had a hamstring injury that hamstrung him for a little bit. And then we've got a bunch of other young dudes that it's a let's find out. Gabriel

Moreno, are you ready for it? Might be. Let's find out. I mentioned Christian Walker on one of our, well, it's not a recent talking baseball at the time, but he had a ton of homers last year. Top 10 baseball. Like, let him ride. Let's find out what we have with these young guys. Treve, I think you were looking for Alec Thomas before. They've got a lot of options with the outfield between him, Jake McCarthy, Lordus Curiel Jr. came over. He's been a big leaguer for a little while. It's what does it all mean. And I think the good news, we're playing for rings in the

desert. I don't know if we're playing for rings this year. But I think coming into, next year's TPP. We're going to know a lot more about a lot of young players. And I think that's going to be a good thing for my stakes. And don't forget pitching coach slash retirement job, Brett Strom out there. So true. Forgot about that he just took it home. Evan Lungaria, same way. I think he's going to end up being like a coach type player. But I've seen the offseason videos. He looks good. I text him every day saying, you look so good, bro. I'm his biggest fan. So I think these might be my snakes this year. I do want to see

what they're going to do with the outfield because I do have those young guys that you want to see playing every day. And then you do bring in Lotus Guerrille Jr. So this is a similar situation to like, maybe not the same situation as the Cubs. But, you know, if the trade deadline comes

around, Guerrille Jr. is, I think this is just a one year thing for him there. Like, this is a potential trade piece when you have the rest of these guys. I like the Dalton Varsho trade. I know he was a fan favorite out there. I didn't know how good he was defensively, but I found out. I effed around and found out about that. But if you're going to trade someone, you better get someone good in return and they bring over the top catching prospect

and all the baseball. And that's nice to have. So I think they're doing well. I agree with you, Jake. I don't know if 2023 is the year they're going to put it all together, but they seem to be on the right trajectory. And it's definitely, if you watch this team play, you're going to see some really fun baseball. I think there's going to be some really good spurts of baseball. They are in a very tough division, but I think that's going to help them in a long run. I mean, they got two pitchers at the top that are really good. Kelly and Gallen. Merrill Kelly is an awesome butter knife victim, Jake. You want to, for those that don't know what we mean when we say that, we have sharp stats, and then you have butter knife stats. Basically, you just take out some bad starts. He had two,

eight earned run outings last year, which bump, those two games jump his ERA from a 272 to a 337. Those two starts. Which, by the way, that 337 on the year still really good. Really good. And a year when, well, yeah, really good. And then Zach Gallen, he finished with a 254 year A and 31 starts. Gallin's nasty, man. He had that long run of score of no runs, like 44 and a third we have here on the sheet.

He also had the dust up with him and Jazz Chisholm because they got traded for each other, so they're always competing. I think Gallen won that pretty easily last year. I would love to see both those guys he just talked about, do it again. Because that changes things, man. I mean, you have to have those guys at the top of the rotation to give yourself a chance. I don't know what type of chance I'm given the Diamondbacks this year. But I'll reiterate what I said earlier.

I mean, there's going to be some fun baseball played. I think you mentioned Zach Gallen. He should be known a little more on the national level. You know, he came up. He had set the world on fire. He had like a little hiccup and then he came back to it. We met his dad in a parking lot once. How many times have teams had two top five in ML?

be prospects getting rolled out for them for the whole year. And with Corbyn Carroll and Gabriel Moreno, I think you're going to get that. So that's pretty cool, man. Like, there's a lot of hope for the future. You got to be real with this year. Dodgers, Padres, a retooling Giants. Let's see what they look like. The snakes won 74 games last year.

Not to jump ahead too far, so I won't even. But there's things you like. And I, how about this? I think we're going to be genuinely excited for the snakes TPP next year. What if they trade Merrill Kelly at the deadline this year because he's a prime going to get a ton of offers? He's got the rest of this year and next year on the books with a club option.

So you can decline that. But yeah, so interesting to see how they treat some of the deadline. They have so many outfielders right now. what was that reaction? Hell that that club option could be a beautiful part of the trade. Yeah. I mean, that can get you excited. I mean, this is a guy that they signed.

He went overseas. And now if he's your Brent Strom, you know, if you can trade him for the price of a good starting pitcher, like, yeah, I think that stuff's going to be on the table. I think between Merrill Kelly, Christian Walker, you know, if that guy does what he does, he did last year, then you start talking about the pieces that are going to be around Corbyn Carroll for the next five years, the pieces that are going to be around Gabriel Moreno for the next six years.

You know, Brandon Fott is a big pitching prospect who he's probably going to get a chance this year. Dre Jameson, Ryan Nelson got a look last year. There's Youngtown on the way. It needs to be supplemented more because you're dealing with a problem. You're dealing with the Dodgers or, you know, an all-time baseball franchise, some of the, maybe the deepest pockets in baseball. And then San Diego, who decided out of nowhere, that they're going to be the big ballers at the table.

A little LeVar ball shout out. So if you're going to do this, you kind of have to do it right. And it's Evan Longoria. Trev's guy, a guy who talks baseball to the people. You have his guy teaching these kids how to do it the right way. We're building something. I'm genuinely excited for it. only because they're very friendly and nice to us, which I do like. But man, the kids are on the way.

They are. You know, the off-season free agent signings were pretty minimum, and that obviously points to the fact that they're really not ready to compete just yet. But I do, I mean, we've said this a couple times now, and I want to reiterate, having a guy like Longoria there is going to pay dividends in the future. This is a class act, a guy that knows how to be professional. and he's going to steer these kids in the right direction. They're going to absolutely love Evan Longoria in the desert. So I'm happy about that. And I do believe the moves that they made, you know, with Varsho,

the young guys that we got to saw a little bit of last year. I mean, this team is, this team is like on the come up. And it's going to be a lot. It's going to be, we haven't seen them be good since when. Like, when is their last winning season? BPD, can you check that out? I mean, it's been a while. Do you forget Archie Bradley's triple, dude?

I remember Archie Bradley's triple. Things are looking up in the desert. Paul Goldschmidt, you ever heard of him? When was the last winning season? 85 wins in 2019. 2019-85 wins, okay. Last playoff's 2017. Let's get back there.

Go snakes. 93 wins that year. Tori Lavello, best coach in baseball. Bunting team. most bunts in MLB last year. I think they started bunting with two strikes a lot too. That was like a math equation that I think our guy, Bepe told them about.

Like, hey man. The odds of striking out or getting out with two strikes are pretty high. If you get the bunt fair, the odds of getting a hit are higher. It's math. Overrunner's like 73 and a half. 74 and a half. Last year they won 74 games.

I'm going to go under. Some trading that's going to happen. Some figuring out young guys that's going to happen. I'm going to go on. Well, have I been under on everyone? I'll go, oh, I don't, whatever. You guys go. Okay.

Trev? I'm going to take the under. Hater. Aater in the building. There's going to be good baseball played every once in a while out there. But I think that we're just, we're getting our feet. wet. We're not ready to dive in the pool just yet. So I'll take that under. I'm looking right around like 70 for this team. Kyle Lewis, what's up, man? Like, go do something. How about that?

You got all the tools in the world, man. Outfield depth. Um, here's what I'm going to say. Hmm. I'm going to go under. It's a win-win for me. I'm over. They hit the over and my baseball team exceeds their expectations. I'm happy for that. I hit the under. I win the bet. And end of the day on this season, this team isn't going to be judged by wins and losses, man.

It's judged by Corby Carroll. It's judged by Gabriel Moreno. Zach Allen could bonify himself as, like, one of the premier pitchers in this league. Lock him up for, give him the seven-year extension right now. Right now. Tappen. Hire the Braves, like, brainwasher person.

hire them, lock up gallon. I think like we talked about, this deadline might be big. Lorda Scuriel, Christian Walker. Will Longo want to stay or go? I like the player coach. Catelle Marte's always been rumored. I think he stays.

Carson Kelly, if Gabriel Moreno breaks out. Merrill Kelly, a Kelly-Celly trade? Get yourself a pitcher and a catcher? The Kelly boys? I don't like each other. Some bullpen pieces. I made that up. this team's going to have some fun.

They're going to get out to a good start. We're going to talk about them early in the year and talking baseball. They're going to hit a horrible funk. Maybe they shake my hand and they go on like a 10-game losing streak. They're out of wild car contention. They trade away everything.

Let the kids play. It's a setup for exciting stuff next year. Was there a Bonafi somewhere in there? I sure was. Yeah, okay. Zach Allen. James, you took the over. Yeah, playing the odds.

You guys both went under. So it's a good time for me to go over. That's smart. Yeah. That's sometimes the best, the best, you know, version of taking the over under. I don't feel good about taking the under on this one. It's rude.

It's rude. I can't believe you did it. And that's the end of the show. Tell us everything we missed, DeBax fans, because you know way more much team than we do. And subscribe to the channel if you want. Bullpen was awful last year if they get better. Oh, analysis.

Mm. Bumgarner and Longoria. I didn't even talk about Bum. Dahlins a diamond, man. Yeah. My little league team is Dimebex again. Tread snakes.

Over on that. Take the over on my snakes.