Former Diamondbacks GM Dave Stewart recently expressed regret for trading a package headlined by Dansby Swanson for Shelby Miller. But the Snakes control Miller for three more years, and Miller is hoping to redeem himself this season, as FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal writes. Miller says he struggled with the pressure of being the marquee player in a high-profile trade. “I wasn’t using my stuff like I did in the years before. I wasn’t as confident in my pitches as I should have been. I really didn’t throw any sinkers. My cutter wasn’t good,” he says. Now, he says, he’s trying to “almost go back to being a Little Leaguer and have fun.” Here’s more out of Arizona.
- The Diamondbacks’ new braintrust contains a number of former employees of the Red Sox organization, including GM Mike Hazen, manager Torey Lovullo, and assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye and Jared Porter. The new D’backs front office wants to emulate the Red Sox’ in some respects, Sawdaye tells David Laurila of FanGraphs. “We’re trying to build a culture similar to the one we were used to in Boston,” Sawdaye says. “We want people to want to come to work. We want them to be open with each other and communicate well. A lot of good decisions are made that way — in conjunction with other’s opinions. … We’ve worked on implementing that. It’s something that was maybe not here in the past, or at least it was a little different.” In the same interview, Sawdaye also describes the way the front office has reshaped the Diamondbacks’ analytics and scouting departments.
- Interestingly, Sawdaye notes that one factor in the Diamondbacks’ big November trade involving Jean Segura and Taijuan Walker this offseason was that the D’backs’ front office was new and therefore didn’t directly experience Segura’s success last season. “[I]n some ways, not being here last year was probably a little helpful,” says Sawdaye. “[H]aving not been here to see how good Segura was, day in and day out, took any bias out. We were able to be more objective with our assessment.”
Seems like AZ has become a hitter’s paradise. Has it become somewhere that pitchers will want to avoid going? Or is it really just based off bad performance?
Chase FIeld has always been a hitter’s ballpark. It’s just not a home run ballpark. It’s pretty much neutral with respect to home runs. It is however a haven for doubles and triples and has been since day one.
Poor defense, especially inthe outfield made matters even worse last season. Hopefully Arizona can get some more consistent glove work from the position players this year. Healthy returns of Pollock, Ahmed, and PEralta should go a long way in that respect.
Bank one ballpark
The og name says for itself
It’s just as bad as Colorado with air
Believe me, Chase Field isn’t even close to Coors as far as a hitters park. Sure Chase is hitter friendly, but we’ve had 5 Cy Youngs, 6 twenty plus game winners, 3 era titles, and several more 18-19 game winners. Good pitching still plays at Chase. Coors field on the other hand, is just completely out of control. I don’t even like watching baseball there. It’s like what arena football is to the NFL.
pitcher wins has nothing to do with run environment.
what are the ballpark factors (this is a stat that measures how much more/less HR/2B/etc happen)
I agree that wins aren’t indicative of success. The point I’m making is that there have been many GREAT seasons by pitchers at Chase field, and not just by R. Johnson and Schilling. Webb also won a Cy Young, Ian Kennedy was a 21 game winner with a 2.88 era, Dan Haren had som great years. The point is that, while still definitely a hitters park, good pitching plays at Chase and you can’t really say that about Coors. That’s not to say that there aren’t the occasional well pitched games at Coors.
Plenty of live arms in the AZ rotation. If the ballpark allows, and they pitch to their potential, it will be interesting to see what kind of year the club can have. Feel like i say that every year with dbacks tho
Agree 100%. I think that there is a good chance that they’ll surprise some people this year. Some VERY good arms that just need to take that next step and a solid core of position players. I think Robbie Ray is a super star in the making.
I like the some of the Dbacks arms as well. Unfortunately, those arms haven’t developed into pitchers. I don’t hold out much hope with Butcher at the helm. I expect more of the same inconsistencies and a staff that doesn’t put it together. I think the bullpen is more likely to be a tire fire (again) than a competent pen.
Yeah, I don’t get the whole Butcher thing. The only thing that I can think is that when the new front office took over they consulted with the pitching staff and they gave positive feedback regarding Butcher. I’m also wondering if they were asked about Wellington Castillo and they recommended giving him the boot because they wasted no time in releasing him. I always thought that Wellington called a VERY poor game. He would often try to get cute and go for K’s instead of getting for quick outs. This is why the new F/O is pushing the defense first, light hitting catchers. Plus, with all of the young, talented arms it wouldn’t be bad to have a couple of Crash Davis types to work with them.
Arizona is not a horrible place to pitch if you can pitch well, but if you’re a below average mlb pitcher then you can have problems there. The biggest issue is look at the list of pitchers that where developed by the dbacks and you will see that they have been horrendous at developing pitchers.
Well said. The only pitcher that experienced any real success that was truly developed by AZ was B. Webb. That said, they’ve also traded away a ton of young, high end pitching.
fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=pf&season=2015&#…
here is objective ballpark analysis. HR are neutral, xBH are significantly increased.
D’Backs fans say they don’t see many HRs at Chase field. That will change when Taijuan takes the mound.
It’s a good thing Stewart told us that it was a bad trade, otherwise no one would have known it.