Analysis: Arizona’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Week
You can’t make the playoffs in a week, but in a 60-game season, one week can certainly take you out of contention. Unfortunately for the Arizona Diamondbacks, it seems like they’re learning this lesson the hard way.
Coming into this season, there was plenty to be optimistic about for the D-backs. After a surprisingly strong 2019 that saw the rise of Eduardo Escobar and Ketel Marte, GM Mike Hazen and his front office were busy in the offseason. They signed Madison Bumgarner to head up a rotation with Robbie Ray and promising young starters Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly. They obtained veteran outfielders in Starling Marte and Kole Calhoun to add to their roster depth. And they made all these moves without losing any of the top prospects in their loaded farm system.
A lot of people, myself included, expected this team to be a contender throughout the year. I even praised them in my season preview video and picked them to make the playoffs not just once, but twice. However, thus far into the season, it’s safe to say that absolutely nothing has gone to plan for the Diamondbacks.
On one hand, you have an offense that has been borderline anemic. As a team, they are currently ranked 26th in Batting Average (.202), 25th in On-base Percentage (.280), and dead last in Slugging Percentage (.275). In the first six games of the season, D-backs hitters have only managed to hit a combined total of 1 home run, which is a major part of the reason why they are averaging the fewest runs per game in the National League. And it doesn’t help that many of the players that should be main contributors in their lineup - including Eduardo Escobar, David Peralta, Kole Calhoun, and Jake Lamb - have not been pulling their weight at the dish so far.
On the other hand, you have a pitching corps with virtually no confidence on the mound. On paper, it would seem like their staff has been decently effective. They are 5th in K/9 (10.80), have the 12th best HR/FB ratio (12.5%), and their FIP is just slightly above the league median (4.68). However, they have been awful in two key areas that have been haunting them time and time again: they walk a lot of batters, and they allow those batters to come around and score. If you exclude the Marlins (who have only played a total of three games), the D-backs pitching staff is last in the league when it comes giving out walks, issuing free passes at a rate of over six per every nine innings. And when those batters get to first, they are only able to leave 71% of them on base, which is only good enough for the 15th best rate in the league.
This has resulted in a lot of long at-bats and even longer innings for the D-backs, which has placed an undue strain on an already shaky bullpen. So far, Arizona starters have only had one outing that has gotten past the sixth inning, and half of their outings have gone less than five innings. In trying to fill the rest of these games, the pitching staff has unfortunately brought themselves to the breaking point multiple times. This took the form of three- and four-run innings on Friday, a five-run inning on Monday, and most recently a five-run eighth inning to give up the game yesterday. Combine all of these factors with the awful offensive production described above, and the result is not pretty.
The Diamondbacks have been outscored by their opponents 29-17, and they currently stand at 2-4 after one week of play. That is good for last place in the NL West, and frankly it could have been worse. Had it not been for a throwing error in the first inning that ultimately brought in three runs, their 4-1 win against the Rangers on Tuesday might have easily turned into an extra-inning loss.
So far, there have only been three bright spots for Arizona:
Starling Marte, who has been hot out of the gate with 7 hits in his first 5 games.
Merrill Kelly, the number-five starter who took a no-hitter into the seventh during his first outing.
Archie Bradley, who struck out the side to capture his first save on Tuesday and has generally looked sharp in his first 2 outings.
However, these performances obviously aren’t enough to counteract how bad the rest of the team has been. If they don’t do something immediately to wake themselves out of their collective slump, their season could be over before it ever truly begins. Today, they start the first of a four-game series against the video-game-franchise-mode team known as the Dodgers. After that, they host the almost-equally powerful Astros and travel once again to San Diego, where they were almost swept in their last series with the Padres.
As I mentioned in a previous article, the first twenty games are generally the most pivotal in a sixty-game season. But having this ten-game stretch come in the middle of their first twenty games makes this a do-or-die moment for Arizona. If they continue to play the way they have been, this bad start could turn into a disaster in a heartbeat. But if they can somehow band together during this stretch, they could possibly salvage this slow start before it gets out of control. However, if that is going to happen, there are a couple of things that have to happen first.
First, D-backs starters need to take a page from Merrill Kelly’s playbook and be way more aggressive on the mound. Each pitcher in the rotation has good stuff to work with, but their middle three (Robbie Ray, Zac Gallen, and Luke Weaver) have looked very unsure of themselves to start out the year. If they can find some way of regaining their confidence (and actually throwing strikes), I think this rotation could be quite good. However, if this is going to happen, it has got to start with Ray, whose new delivery earned him rave reviews in camp (and an extra 300 RPM on his curveball) but looked erratic in his first start of the year. If he can find his groove and Gallen can get back to where he was toward the end of last season, Arizona will be able to take a lot of the pressure off of their offense and bullpen.
That being said, that offense and bullpen will have to execute. If Starling can continue his good start and Ketel can regain his power from last year, I think the Martes are going to be the key to unlocking this offense. But of course, they can’t do it alone. Eduardo Escobar has been ice-cold to start the season, and David Peralta’s new contact lenses have led to a learning curve at the plate. However, Peralta should be just fine once his eyes make the adjustment, and an RBI triple from Escobar in the last game may have been just what he needed to get himself going. If all four of these players can start to get hot at the same time, something tells me the rest of the team will follow their lead.
The biggest question mark on this team is whether or not the bullpen can pull its weight enough to keep the D-backs in contention, but right now they just have to be good enough to get through the next week and a half. If they can somehow make it out of the next ten games with a .500 record on the year, I think they still have a legitimate shot. Going 6-4 against competition of this quality could give them the kind of confidence boost they need - the spark of knowing that they can hang with even the toughest opponents.
But, as the old cliche goes, you have to play them one game at a time. And in the case of the Diamondbacks, perhaps the best way to get over a bad week is to focus solely on the day ahead.