LETS ALL PANIC
Following a humbling series loss at the hands of the now NL Central Champion Milwaukee Brewers, the Diamondbacks would hop onto a plane and head to the mile high city of Denver, Colorado to take on the Rockies for the final time in this 2024 campaign, this time in the run factory that Coors Field is known as.
Game 1 on Monday evening would have the Diamondbacks swinging early as a Corbin Carroll leadoff triple, followed by Ketel Marte’s 32nd homerun (tying his career high that he set back in 2019 during his MVP caliber campaign), would have the Snakes looking aggressive and like the #1 offense in baseball that we were expecting to see. Unfortunately the offense would muster only 6 singles the rest of the game, with the only runner reaching 2nd base being thanks to back to back walks in the top of the 5th by Joc Pederson and Pavin Smith, as the bullpen could not hold the 2-1 lead for the final 4 innings in Coors (seemingly impossible task it seems), leading to a Rockies walk off in the 9th on a Geraldo Perdomo error.
“These last 3 games reminded me a lot of the Dbacks early on in the season where they would be completely shut out for 2 games, then show up for 1 game where they would score 10 runs…it’s just very frustrating to watch, especially because of how supposedly potent this offense is…” – Gabe
“The thing that frustrated me the most was anytime they felt like they were about to break through, double play. Double plays that kill rallies are the most soul destroying plays…they had 4 double plays in this game, and the ironic thing is we lost on a would be double play. When i saw that I was like yep, it was just one of those days where things just weren’t going our way…” – Brandon
Tuesday evenings Game 2 affair would at least save us the trouble of ripping our hearts out, but rather it was one that had the Snakes behind the 8 ball early when in the 3rd inning Ezequiel Tovar would go the opposite way off Jordan Montgomery to extend the Rockies lead to 3-0. This ended up being all the offense that the Rockies would need as they went home with an 8-2 win, as a Christian Walker solo shot late in the game wasn’t enough to spark the offense’s comeback in this one.
“It’s just not a good game all around, it was incredibly frustrating to watch because the offense again couldn’t do anything, the bullpen couldn’t do anything…so overall it was just a really, really bad game. They were at least close enough for a while but then putting in Scott McGough the game got out of hand really quick…you go into Coors Field and only 1 team is having the true Coors Field outing, and it wasn’t the Dbacks.” – Gabe
“…Scott McGough got that final out in the 5th and at that point I was like okay good, don’t let McGough come [back] out…I don’t trust Scott McGough…I knew that once Gabi came back that ADC was probably not gonna be the guy to stay…I knew that was coming, I was just like anybody but Scott McGough please, like ANYBODY ELSE…” – Brandon
Thankfully for all of us, the Diamondbacks kept their fans sanity and mental well being in mind for Game 3 as they avoided the sweep at the hands of the Rockies (#WinnersWork). Corbin Carroll crushed a solo HR over bullpens as he would secure his second straight 20/20 season, which is wild considering the start that he had for his first 80 games or so. A second home run by Corbin followed by a Randal Grichuk HR to center field had the Snakes up 6-0 early in the 2nd.
It was all Eduardo Rodriguez would need as he put in his best performance as a Diamondback to this point (6.1 ip, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB with 11 K’s and 16 Whiffs) en route to the teams 84th victory, tying their same mark from last years regular season squad.
“I mostly wanna bring up ERod, he looked really dominant for the most part. We brought up the fact that the last couple of starts he looks dominant for 4 innings and then just completely falls apart in the 5th…he looked a lot better today, he was able to keep his head on straight for the 5th and into the 6th…he just looked really good…if he’s able to keep this sort of pace then I do have a little more trust in him for the playoffs…” – Gabe
“The fact that Corbin somehow got 20/20, after the way he started though like June I’m like there’s no way…I think his average is almost at .240 now, he’s got 20/20, so whatever it was it just took him a lot longer to adjust…if he would have played well all season it could have been 30/30, maybe 40/40…” – Brandon
One theme or overarching subject that we noticed not just in this series, but nearly all season long (at least going back to the Minnesota Twins series) has been the team’s reliance on the longball being how they score a good majority of their runs, and just over a week ago fellow Snake Pitter Makakilo put out a fantastic article that somewhat backed this claim.
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This was something that seemed like it might nitpicking stats to some, as the Diamondbacks were in the middle of the hottest stretch of their 2024 season and winning seemingly every game out of the All-Star break, but it was somewhat of a red flag that was to be mentioned. Now after the supposedly best offense in baseball was held to under 3 runs in 2 of the 3 games this series (7 of their 13 R’s were via the longball), we wanted to focus a little bit more on this need to hit HR’s.
I first asked the fellas which of these options would make the most sense in trying to explain why they seem to be “BOOM” or “DOOM” in the batter’s box, the options (and feel free to comment any other one’s you have in mind!) were as follows:
- The Diamondbacks’ hitting coach Joe Mather enforcing this approach
- The Diamondbacks’ hitters themselves over swinging/going away from their gameplan
- The opposing team’s just doing a good job at neutralizing the Snakes power
“This was something I noticed in the Cleveland series and that was very early August and at that point I believe I tweeted it out and I got so many people going ‘oh why are you complaining for? Wins are wins’ yeah it’s true, wins are still wins, losses are still losses…but when you see a trend happening over and over and over again you’re just like okay there’s something here and it concerns me…I think we got too home run hungry because of the playoffs, we had a lot of guys who never hit home runs or didn’t hit any homeruns suddenly start hitting home runs in the playoffs…I think once the season started everyone wanted to hit a homerun…” – Gabe
“it’s a mix of all 3, I think like Gabe said, they were loving how many homers they were hitting, it was working for a good portion and most of the fan base didn’t care cause we were winning games…teams finally got more film on it, they were able to find those holes in [their] swing and I think some of these guys are being a little too aggressive at the plate like, a LOT of first pitch swinging…” – Brandon
After going into what the main cause could be to the Diamondbacks being more free swinging at the plate, I asked Gabe and Brandon which player(s) would be the most critical for this team’s offense to make sure they are firing on all cylinders.
“It should be Ketel, most of the offense runs through him, especially when he hits behind Carroll…Ketel being right behind him has to find a way to move him over, again he’s kind of doing these home run swings, he’s not taking these nice swings like he is in these patient at bats, he’s kind of swinging for the fences anytime he gets the chance to. So it has to be him, I know everybody else matters obviously, Corbin, Geno, Walker, all these guys gotta show up but I just think to just set the tone early, especially in that 1st inning, both Corbin and Ketel have to either create chaos or get on the board early… hopefully over these next couple of series that can learn from their mistakes in this series and adjust…- Gabe
”It’s Corbin Carroll ladies and gentleman. So last 7 games on base is .484, last 15 it’s .386, last 30 games on base of .372. His OPS last 30 games…is just over 1.000. He sets the table, he gets on base and you HAVE to pitch to Ketel Marte…it baffles my mind that [Corbin] has 115 runs. After the first 3 months that he had I was like there’s no way this man is sniffing 100 runs. So for me it starts with Carroll cause he gets on base and the next couple of batters, the way the pitchers pitch to the lineup is completely different if you have Carroll on base…” – Brandon
My final question to the fellas in terms of this home run reliance trend was to ask them how worried and/or confident they are about this aspect of their game being a halp rather than a hindrance.
”I guess my worried levels are around a 6 or 7 just because it hasn’t been a small sample size anymore, we’ve seen since that Tampa series…this offense specifically has been all over the place, their not scoring at the same clip they were early on…my issue right now is Ketel and Gabi, they need to play. They can’t be getting days off anymore…they need to play and they need to play everyday going down the stretch which sucks I know for them. I know they are going to be tired and its a grueling end to the season but again, if you don’t win this stuff early, this is what you have to do. You have to play everyday now…” – Gabe
“If you would have asked me last night It was an 8. I was worried, I was like how can this happen. In Denver where runs are always scored, we had 4 in 2 games so I was very worried. I’m still a little worried but it’s more like a 5 after today. I think this was a trap series, I think they thought they could just go up there and not really have to try and win 2 or 3 games…I think Gabi will play almost every day except when Gallen is pitching because Gallen likes working with Jose Herrera. Those are the ONLY times I want to see Jose Herrera start…Gabi needs to play…I just think that the playoffs start tomorrow [now today] for the Diamondbacks…” – Brandon
After playing some “Triple Play Trivia” that our producer extraordinaire Josh surprised us with, we did some rapid fire answering of some questions that we got from our discord and live chat, where we were asked about some things like the expectations on the upcoming series versus the Milwaukee Brewers now that they might potentially try to rest some guys, the possibility of the Snakes still reaching 90 wins, along with the unfortunate thought of what changes would need to be made if the Diamondbacks do sadly slip out of the playoff race in these final 10 days
- “How we feeling about the next series with the brewers since they have already clinched their division?”
- “Will the Dbacks hit 90 wins?”
- “If the Dbacks miss the playoffs, what are some changes that need to happen?”
Let’s all just hope and keep our fingers crossed that the Brew Crew is a bit hungover from their NL Central champion celebrations, and that we AT WORST split this 4 game series before heading home to play out the final 7 games of this sprint in front of the Diamondbacks home crowd.