The D-backs’ last stand…
Roster moves
The Arizona Diamondbacks made the following roster moves. The D-backs’ 40-man roster is at 40.
- Selected from Triple-A Reno: RHP Scott McGough
- Optioned to Reno after last night’s game: RHP Yilber Díaz
- Designated for assignment: RHP J.P. Feyereisen
Well, we have seen the Shelby Miller redemption tour in 2025, so perhaps we’ll see the Scott McGough version as well. The difference is, the scars from Scott are considerably more fresh and raw. Before this season, Miller last pitched for the D-backs in 2018, so we had time to heal. McGough worked the penultimate game last year, a loss which arguably sealed the team’s fate. He got the final out for Arizona, but first allowed two earned runs on just seven pitches. He made 26 appearances, had an ERA of 7.44, Over his two seasons for Arizona he was worth -1.0 bWAR across 95 appearances, and when he entered free agency, fandom issued a collective sigh of relief, thinking we would never see him again.
Yet, not even six months later, he’s back on the major-league roster. The optioning of Diaz is no great surprise, considering he threw sixty pitches on Friday, so was clearly out of action for a while. Indeed, I was surprised the move wasn’t made immediately after he pitched on Friday. Feyereisen did actually appear twice for Arizona. Still he joins an elite group of nine pitchers to go 0-1 as a D-back while pitching in two games or fewer (most recently, Nabil Crismatt in 2023 – here’s the list). Though perhaps, after the McGough situation which has unfolded, we should not be so quick to draw a line under the Arizona career of Feyereisen?
After the past few games, I’m no longer looking forward to writing the recap of this one, as much I might have been. On the one hand, you can’t say games like last night are hard to write about at the necessary length. However, it’s very much in a “19th-century Russian novel” kind of way, the results being a mix of tragedy, angst and infinite sadness. I’m tempted to recap the game in the style of Dostoevsky: “The innings pass, oppressive and slow, like time in a Siberian penal colony.” I’m not sure I have the requisite quantity of vodka to be able to achieve the necessary levels of gloom though. But after losing a game where they scored ten in an inning, and another where a player hit four HR, who knows?