It’s over.
Spencer: So much for probability huh…? I’m very disappointed. In the players. We are the poster child of embarrassing sports performances once again (sharing with the twins). I maintain it’s a successful season, but certainly one which I am happy to forget. I hope ownership and Hall don’t overreact and fire Torey or Hazen, but it’s got to be on the table if we start ‘25 the same way.
Season High: day in and day out watching the offense string together innings and games that made the Yankees Murder’s Row fret
Season Low: the final two weeks of September watching the guys get tired and lose to teams motivated to play spoiler.
Let’s go Columbus Crew and come on Draft Lottery and Spring 2025! *unless the team actually fires Torey/Hazen, then I’ll be very skeptical of the 2025 season.
Brett J (DBacksDispatch): It stings, and it’s going to sting for some time to come, and might even be that way until first pitch of the 2025 regular season, but I still wanna acknowledge the good times and fun we got to see from this team throughout the 2024 season.
To recover from 7 games under .500 and go on the run they did to get us even hyped for a potential return playoff appearance was more than a lot of us would have probably expected heading into June. Geno made a lot of us (myself included) eat our words, Corbin showed that even the best of rookies go through slumps but bounce out of it, Ryne Nelson took a huge step forward and showed he can be a real effective starter in the rotation and Justin Martinez proved that he has the stuff to be a truly elite back end reliever that can take the closer role and run with it.
The National League and MLB in general seemed more balanced than they have in the past (Zero 100 win teams for the first time in how long?) and while that really does add some excitement and drama to the divisional and wild card races, it sometimes can be a double edged sword, and even the reigning NL champs can still miss out on a postseason spot even when improving their win total by 5.
I would say that this season was disappointing but still a success in ways (like the ones listed above previously). We can be mad at the Mets and Braves all we want about them “punting” the game or not having “integrity” but I can almost guarantee all of us would be begging form the DBacks to do the same exact thing if they were in the Mets shoes.
One way to make sure you don’t let other teams’ outcomes decide your postseason chances is to take care of your own business, and going 2-5 over the last 7 games while blowing an 8-0 lead in one of those is the exact opposite of taking care of your own business.
While this was not the outcome I, nor many of you probably expected/hoped for, I wouldn’t trade any of it away for the people I got to meet (especially here on the Pit, love the community here), the memories I got to make and the chaos that comes with Diamondbacks baseball.
See you all in 2025, Go DBacks!
Jeffern51: Its easy to get caught up in the last couple of weeks for this team and the missed opportunities. However over the course of a 162 game schedule there were many times this team exceeded expectations and won games they probably shouldn’t have won as well. For me, it comes back to this team being TERRIBLE on the mound. It is actually kind of amazing they won 89 games having given up the 3rd most runs in baseball. They had to literally lead the league in runs scored. And I guess that is the most frustrating part for me is just how badly the pitching performed. And even more puzzling is how much of the rotation is likely already set for next season? Plenty to analyze over the offseason but it really stings at just how much the pitching underperformed this season.
Important to keep in mind though the season was much more than just the last couple of weeks. Plenty of games in the middle of the year this team won they had no business being in. Postseason last year aside, this team improved by 5 wins. You woudlve taken that if someone wouldve told you you would win 89 games the beginning of the season.
Probably the worst part of all this was today for me honestly. So terrible to be eliminated via a double header and a formality game with a team with nothing to play for. The Dbacks had to play like their lives depended on it all season and for the Mets to go out there and swing at literally every single pitch was horrible to watch and bad for the game. MLB knew this hurricane was coming and the game shouldve been played Monday. There is a reason all games start at the same time on game 162 so that teams cant sandbag. Unfortunately, this is how it ends. Manfred should be ashamed.
Preston: the players should now know that every game matters. They blew not one, not two, but three leads against the Braves. Their six run blown lead on April 7 hurt them more than their 8 run blown lead in September 22, but it’s the latter that people will remember. But games in April matter. They got off to a bad start, and couldn’t overcome it. But the focus will be on the flop at the end. But it was really the poor start to the season that did them in.
Now, there’s questions about the roster. The pitching staff doesn’t look very good, and there’s no confidence that Hazen will ever be able to assemble a bullpen. 2023, far from being the start of something, might well be the high point. Realistically, only two teams reach the World Series each year, so the odds were long against them doing so again with this group.
I’m afraid of what knee-jerk reaction Kendrick is going to have here in a few minutes.
[I left the above sentence]
I’ve been extremely critical of Kendrick. Some of my criticisms were deserved, and some were not. But my respect for him greatly increased when he admitted to pushing for the Montgomery signing. We’ve known that he pushed for signings in the past, and they’ve almost universally not worked out. For him to take the blame here is huge. I hope that he’ll stick to his word to continue spending, and I hope the fans will continue coming out, although I fear a drop-off.
That said, I don’t know that there’s a way to fix the problems. There aren’t pitchers worth giving money, and there isn’t the prospect capital for a trade, unless a completely barren farm is acceptable. The best thing to do is likely to invest in the offense and hope for bounce-back years from the pitching staff.
Anyway, Ken Kendrick almost certainly won’t read this, but if he does, I appreciate the honesty and while I don’t take back every criticism I’ve ever given, I respect him like never before.
Dano: I’m disappointed, certainly….teams can catch fire once they make it to October, as we discovered last year.
That said, though, it sure has looked the last few weeks like we’ve been running on fumes. Lots of games that were sad and angry-making and heartbreaking and thoroughly demoralizing to watch. I don’t know that I’ve enjoyed watching our boys play for more than a game or two in a row since late August.
It would have been cool to see if last year’s October magic could find us again, but I can’t say that I’m not maybe a bit relieved that we don’t wind up instead having to watch them go belly-up, again, in the Wild Card Series or the NLDS. I mean, those who were watching in 2017, for instance, saw that….we had that stirring one-and-done WC win against Colorado, and then got utterly buzzsawed by FTD for a three-game sweep. Those sorts of postseason trips aren’t fun. And even if we’d made it in this year, I think my expectation, shaped by how the team has been looking in September, was that whoever we faced, a buzzsaw with us on the business end would be the most likely outcome.
The team played hard all season, they worked their butts off, they’re tired and battered and beaten up. I think that they’ve earned a full-length offseason (take that statement in any sense you care to….I mean it on several different levels), and we’ll see where Hot Stove Season takes us. I am confident, at least, that 2025 is going to be another year with a lot for us to look forward to in terms of Diamondbacks baseball.
Dunno….that’s all I’ve got, at the moment.
No, actually, one more thing. While we’ve been crippled by problems with the pitching staff, both rotation and bullpen, since the start of regular season play, this offense was, by the end, a revelation. Teams don’t wind up leading the majors in runs scored, and they don’t wind up being rated by just about all statistical metrics as the best offense in baseball, unless there’s something real there. Most of that is going to still be there next year. That’s something, I think, to be very happy about, and to feel very hopeful about going forward.
Steven: A very uneventful end to a roller coaster of a season. Injuries, ineffectiveness, and the 2nd best offense in franchise history just wasn’t enough.
The biggest thing for me is the front office went all in on this season salary wise, and came up a win short with pretty much every big signing failing to produce. Eduardo Rodriguez, Jordan Montgomery, and to a lesser extent Lourdes Gurriel Jr were all disappointments in some fashion. I’m curious to see if they’ll double down on this team with a couple of big losses, or pare down the roster and return to building from the ground up. Either way, interesting things to look forward to once the playoffs end and the FA gates open up.
Sam: I mainly feel bad for Geno, who went from an 88-win playoff-missing team last year to an 89-win playoff-missing team this year. Both years, multiple teams in the other league got in with worse records — the 84-win Marlins and Diamondbacks last year, and the 86-win Royals and Tigers this year. At least he got his 30/100 season.
The same goes for every positively-contributing team member who didn’t get to experience last year: Pederson, Grichuk, Newman, JMart, McCarthy, Puk. This team was better this year than last, and finished with a better record than half the AL playoff bracket. The only problem is that the Padres and Mets weren’t having mysterious down years.
Without diminishing the contributions of the players listed above, I also hope we can continue to raise a stink about the way the final day played out. It was indeed an Atrocity in Atlanta (Jim’s proposed turn of phrase) that the final games were not played simultaneously.
Dano: Yeah, Sam, I’m glad you brought him up. I definitely feel bad for Geno, too. Took a long time for him to find his footing as a D-Back, but once he did, hoo boy. Hopefully he’s still holding down the hot corner for us next year, and hopefully we’ve got enough health, depth, longevity, and luck to get to October baseball in 2025.
Makakilo: After the All-Star break, the Diamondbacks’ excellent offense powered their rise in playoff odds per this AZ Snake Pit article and this AZ Snake Pit article.
Optimism abounded in August, when playoff odds were consistently above 90%.
September was like a ping-pong ball being hit back and forth between disappointments and renewed optimism. The Diamondbacks had playoff chances until the last game of the season. Although my a priori definition of success was reaching the playoffs, I’m kind of surprised that I view this season as successful. Annotated graph of FanGraphs’ playoff odds for August and September follows:
Dano: You probably won’t see this before the plug is pulled and this goes live, but I wish you’d say more about, given how devastating that annotated graph is, you view this season as successful. I think I actually agree with you on that, incidentally, by the way. Given the above, though, I’m interested to hear how your thinking leads you there. As I say, my own thinking has led me there as well, so maybe I’m just curious as to whether our respective trains of thought followed the same path.
Ben: I’m bitter and I’ll probably be bitter for a while. I don’t know if it was psychological or physical, but there was so little urgency from the team this month. Yes, I understand that the early losses count the same as the late ones from a season-long perspective, but the early losses can be discounted somewhat from a long postseason run clearly taking a toll and several key players either missing or not actively part of the team yet. Overall, it was a clear improvement over last year in terms of the record, but seeing so many pitchers take steps backward was alarming – including both veterans and youngsters. If a baseball team’s success is determined by making the playoffs, which it should be in my opinion, then this team failed. If you define it as improvement or development on either an individual or team level, then there’s an argument to be made that this was a successful year.
I agree that firing Hazen or Torey would be an overreaction based more on emotion than anything else. For the former, he and the front office did everything you could hope for as a fan: they augmented the weaknesses by either trading or signing proven veterans. As for Torey, it’s nearly impossible to disentangle the on-field product from his coaching or decision-making, but I suspect that he will be on a lukewarm seat next year if the team again fails to make the playoffs or make significant strides in player development. However, given the pitching struggles this team had, I suspect that Brent Strom may be asked to resign or retire to show that there is some accountability. I don’t want to blame him as the players themselves are ultimately to blame for how they perform, but it would not surprise me if ownership wants some kind of change after the very blatant struggles from the pitching staff. In all fairness, Strom is not a particularly young man (his 76th birthday is coming up in a couple weeks) and it feels like there could be a possible philosophy shift at play for the franchise. Of course, he did just sign a new contract this winter so I may just be bloviating, but there needs to be some shift in my opinion.