Summer has come and passed The Diamondbacks can never last Wake me up when October ends
Dbacks postseason push comes up short: Snakes Dead
The Arizona Diamondbacks came into the final series of the regular season with their postseason destiny in their own hands, as winning 2 of the final 3 games against the San Diego Padres would ease the minds of most snakes fans and go along way to securing their dance in October. What we ended up seeing in that final series of games (2 of the 3 at least) was utterly disappointing as Gabe put it best with them looking like they did earlier in the season with their inconsistent offensive production.
“…This was the typical first half DBacks where they get their ass kicked for 2 games, can’t even hit the ball and then they show out for one game…”
Snakes shoot themselves in the foot, leaving fate up to the DoubleHeader of Destiny.
What made this series loss sting even more was not just that the “Best Offense in MLB” being unable to even touch the starter with an ERA above 5, it was the fact that for the second straight season the Diamondbacks would need to rely on other teams with helping them out and beating their Wild Card competitors, but the D’Backs could not capitalize on those moments when they presented themselves and put them behind the 8 ball and at the will of the Mets and Braves doubleheader that ultimately decided the Dbacks fate. It’s easy to want to blame MLB or the Mets themselves, but Gabe believes the blame and fingers should be pointed at the Diamondbacks themselves.
“…As soon as the Mets won I’m like there’s no way they are going to try at all and I don’t see why they would…rivalries are dead in sports, there’s no such thing anymore especially in baseball…I know the Dbacks shouldn’t have been in that situation, they choked, there’s no other way to put it.” – Gabe
I won’t lie and say that I’m not salty or upset that the Dbacks missed the postseason because of a doubleheader that seemed decided from the start, but the only group to blame for this scenario are the Diamondbacks themselves for not taking care of their own business when the opportunity arose. You can’t go 6-9 (2-4 against SF and COL, 2 below .500 teams) in your last 15 games and expect to deserve a postseason spot.
Success and disappointment from the roller coaster ride of 2024 DBacks baseball
The 2024 season didn’t end the way that any of us wanted or hoped, there were some pretty rough moments for a few individuals throughout the season like Jordan Montgomery and his awful campaign that had Brandon listing it as “the biggest disappointment of all” and Dbacks General managing partner Ken Kendrick taking the blame by saying that he “pushed for it” and that the “horrible decision” to invest in the Southpaw was on him, to Paul Sewald and his often mentioned closer struggles, and even the constant injuries to multiple key players that lead to extended time missed such as Geraldo Perdomo, Gabriel Moreno and even MVP candidate Ketel Marte. Gabe was more focused on the seasons outlook as a whole and not necessarily on just the individual players performance for what was the most disappointing
“There’s no way you can look at this season and truly say it was a success…this team went to the World Series last year, they upgraded their payroll…they have a better roster, the attendance was higher, they lead the league in runs, they had a 93% chance to make the playoffs 10 days ago and they collapsed.”
The 2024 season was not a full failure however (89 wins is hard to fully classify as a “failure” IMO), as there was a lot of good that we got to see like Ryne Nelson taking a HUGE step forward as a Starting Pitcher and as Gabe put it, “Showed to be a lot better than we all thought he would end up being”, Corbin Carroll and Eugenio Suarez bouncing back from borderline abysmal starts to Justin Martinez showing that he has the tools to be an elite back end relief arm.
Lovullo, Hazen and Kendrick end of season comments
The end of season press conferences are never ones that seem to be a happy one, unless you are doing it with the Commissioner’s Trophy at your side, and the Diamondbacks front office seemed to make that very clear as GM Mike Hazen, Manager Torey Lovullo and Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick all echoed what Gabe mentioned previously.
“We should have made the playoffs and we didn’t and it’s pretty disappointing quite frankly…we had a lot of really good moments, a lot of good individual moments, we had a lot of players take huge steps forward, those are things that we’re gonna keep with us moving forward…I think there were some controllable things we could have done differently to change the outcomes and we’re gonna try to build on those thing moving forward going into next year.” – Mike Hazen, Dbacks GM
“Mike said it best, we should be in Milwaukee right now, we all know that, and we’re not and I’m bitter. I gotta figure out a way to work through that and I will when it’s the right time and then we’re going to charge forward. Every single year we’re gonna compete at a very high level and we’re going to be looking at something like we did last year. That, that is my mindset, it’s every player’s mindset, we’re training them to think that way, they prepare that way and they play that way. We just came up a little short this year.” – Torey Lovullo, Dbacks Manager
Rating the Season on a scale of 1 to 10?
We touched on it a bit before with each of our disappointments for how the end of the season wound up unraveling, but it’s nice to try and put things on a numerical scale/rating and all of the DBacks Dispatch crew agreed that this season would sit at around a 5 or 6 out of 10. Yes there were some unfortunate injuries that the Snakes had to deal with throughout the season that could have very easily been the difference maker in whether or not they made it into October, but as Gabe put it “every team has injuries”, from the Padres missing Tatis for nearly half the season to the Dodges almost needed Shohei’s dog Decoy to get some innings in.
They did get to play meaningful games down the stretch and make nearly every game feel like a playoff game with what potentially was at stake, but as Brandon said, “[they] didn’t make the tournament, that’s the whole point of playing the entire season is to make it to the World Series.”
Improvements to look at heading into 2025?
With the 2024 regular season behind us and the future ahead, the Diamondbacks have few players like Paul Sewald and Kevin Newman hitting free agency but the entire crew agreed that there is no one more important to resign than 1st Baseman Christian Walker. There is no guaranteed replacement or heir to Walkes spot, especially on the defensive side of the field, and he is going to be a hot commodity among contending teams looking for that slugger who also plays borderline elite defense at 1st.
Gabe is also keeping his hopes up that Mike Hazen will see that going into 2024 with basically the same bullpen as 2023 was not the best call, and while AJ Puk is going to be a great piece to that bullpen for the next 2 years, going out and getting some more lockdown/reliable arms instead of the McGoughs, Castro’s and Hughes because that i crucial to winning games.
Ken Kendrick: Doubling Down or Shying Away?
The DBacks had a franchise record $175 million invested in their 2024 payroll, which even to me going into the year was very surprising to see from Ken Kendrick. A good reason for that hike in payroll was definitely due to the extra revenue that playoff teams got for however far they made it with the snakes missing out on that 2024 postseason revenue share, it had us wondering if Ken Kendrick and company would still be willing to spend money and add to areas that need improvement (Resigning Walker and getting bullpen help as previously mentioned will not be cheap), or if they might be a tad reluctant to spend money in the same capacity as they did in the 2023 offseason.
Gabe brought up a good point about Madison Bumgarner’s $17 million coming off the books along with the possibility that Jordan Montgomery opts out of his $25 million in 2024 being a good chance for Kendrick to reinvest that money right back into next year’s team. Brandon did mention that Ken did say on the Burnes & Gambo show that he would be spending money again, which is good news, but as Brandon put it “yes we didn’t make the playoffs, outside of Montgomery, every move they made last season worked out. Erod there wasn’t enough time…”
Thanks for all the fun in 2024!
While the ending to the regular season wasn’t as happy as we wanted it to be, we truly wouldn’t undo or trade away any of the memories, experiences and especially conversations we have had with all the great people over here on the Snake Pit.
It might be the offseason but we aren’t going anywhere and will hope to have some fun, entertaining content here in the coming months!
Now it’s time to go and hate watch the rest of the MLB postseason lol.