The Diamondbacks Can Do No Wrong
The NL West race isn’t over yet, but unless the Giants can hit the turbo boosters soon, they’ll be left in the dust created by the Arizona Diamondbacks over the past week. After losing the first of a four-game set at Washington last Tuesday, the Diamondbacks swept the final three games, then swept three games against San Diego, and then swept another three game series against Colorado. The Diamondbacks began this stretch with a mere two game lead over San Francisco. They enter this weekend’s series in the Bay with a six game lead, and even if disaster strikes and the Giants sweep, the Diamondbacks will still hold a three game lead for the final month of the season.
It just feels as though — and I’m sure Giants fans agree — the Diamondbacks can do no wrong right now.
A little over a week ago, the Diamondbacks dealt Kelly Johnson to the Blue Jays for Aaron Hill and John MacDonald — almost certainly downgrading their talent at second base but receiving a much-needed utility infielder in MacDonald. But now Aaron Hill is the one powering the Diamondbacks’ surge. Hill joined the team already one game into their current winning streak. Over that time, he is 11-31 at the plate with four extra base hits and two walks, putting together a .355/.412/.581 line.
Hill is hardly alone. Every position player with at least 15 plate appearances over the last week has a wRC+ over 120. Justin Upton has done it through walks and a .400 OBP; Miguel Montero’s done it with two home runs; Gerardo Parra’s done it with a .500 BABIP. If there’s any way to be productive over a short period of time, you can bet at least one Diamondback hitter has it down over the last week.
The pitchers have been nearly flawless as well. Only Bryan Shaw has an ERA over 4.50. No other pitcher on the staff has an ERA over 2.70 over the past week. Dan Hudson has thrown 15.2 innings with 14 strikeouts and a 1.15 ERA. Ian Kennedy has 15 strikeouts in 14 innings with a 0.64 ERA. Josh Collmenter has thrown 11.1 walkless innings with a 1.59 ERA. Joe Saunders hasn’t allowed an earned run despite being Joe Saunders. You get the picture.
Maybe there isn’t a ton of predictive value in this week, but the Diamondbacks will tell you where you can shove your predictive values and small sample sizes. The distance the Diamondbacks have created now has their playoff odds at 83% according to Baseball Prospectus (up 50% over the last seven days!) and 95.2% according to Coolstandings.
For as many question marks as the Diamondbacks brought into 2011, they are leaving us little doubt as to their talent level now. Perhaps their record is a bit deceiving — they’ve outplayed their Pythagorean record by five games and their Third-Order record by 10, but they have a potent offense, a young but talented pitching staff, and a bullpen that can actually finish games. Their reward appears to be an NL West championship, and if they can keep up the hot streak for three more games, the Diamondbacks could put the final nail in the coffin of the World Series champions and usurp their place at the top of the NL West.
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Good article. Just one point; his name is spelled McDonald, not MacDonald. Otherwise, good article.
bad article, check out his article “buster posey injury opens door for colorado”
moore says the d backs had no chance and pointed to colorado. hahaaaaaaaaahaaaaaahahaa
jack moore knows nothing.
May the Giants Rest in Peace
– The Undertaker
Hello, Mark Calaway!!
Still a lot of baseball to be played – but as a dback fan, this season has already easily eclipsed all expectations. If you told me before the season, that on Sept 1, the dbacks would be 19 games over .500, and have a 6 game lead in the NL West, i would have thought you were bonkers. Hell, I would have probably been thrilled with a .500 season.
Gibson for Manager of the year. Hands down. It shouldn’t even be close.
Also – one more interesting note.
Almost directly to the right of where this post will be is a Fan-graphs link to ORG rankings. Check out the Diamondbacks 2011 Rankings.
29th!!!!
I dont think i would argue with where AZ was graded at the time… Look at how far AZ has come, so fast.
Gotta give Towers and Co some credit.
Diamondbacks are 2011 version of San Diego Padres, we’ll see how they handle september.
Little bit of apples and oranges there – we are about 6-7 games deeper into the season this year, as compared to last year (AZ has 25 games remaining this year, SD had 31 at this time last year.)
SF was playing really good baseball at the end of last year – obviously.
AZ has a really favorable schedule from here on out.
You are right though – lots of baseball to play. SF HAS to win this series, or its over.
The Giants didn’t really start playing good ball until September last year. Timmy, in particular, sucked in August.
The Dbacks will wake up at some point in September. Whether it’ll be in time for the Giants is a different question.
Giants are done.
All I can, Giants fans, is that I didn’t trade myself for Zach Wheeler, so don’t blame me, damn it!
Bullpens, they are important…
says who?
This would probably not be the best time for FG to make articles about how dumb the ARZ front office is for the trades they’ve made, and for their philosophy of not wanting high K batters, and things of that nature. But FG has never really had good timing on these things.
As for the Diamondbacks being able to do no wrong. Yeah, Cardinals fans know how that feels. Call me when the Dbacks win 21 of 24. Stupid Brewers.
I do hope some of this causes us to temper some of our sabermetric ideas, and not just chalk some of these results up to luck (because ARZ has had to deal with injuries as well) and shrug off anything that doesn’t jive with our ideas. Not that I enjoy being wrong about things, but there may be some opportunities to learn something new or consider ideas that we might not have previously considered.
while your point re: KT vs Byrnes (should be) well understood and accepted by devotee readers, let’s not use that to shrug off the 3rd order record that ranks them 4th in their division.
We are considering new things, and though they probably aren’t as good as their record may indicate, they have improved as a team from last year, at least. They have above average pieces in Parra, Upton, Kennedy, Hudson, Drew, Montero, and Young. So it’s not an inconceivable situation that they can having a “lucky” year a la 2005 White Sox. So we may think they aren’t as good as their record indicates, but that doesn’t necessary make us wrong. I have no problem with research towards us being wrong, however, the third order wins has shown us the Pirates and the Athletics experience both elation and failure, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
Too bad they are going to get swept in the NLDS
I don’t agree within the comment that Dbacks are giving up something defensively in Aaron Hill. He’s as steady as they come…..and Johnny Mac…. he’s fantastic!
Not that I have any criticism of Kelly J. He plays a great second base.
It looks like both the Jays and Dbacks are winners in this trade.Both Kelly and Aaron are reinvigorated ; they are both pounding the ball again.
And Johnny Mac is just being Johnny Mac.
Giants are done and the DBacks will win the West, but that team isn’t going anywhere in October.
The Dbacks are doing everything right, right up until they do every thing wrong for a stretch. We’ll see if the Dbacks can handle the pressure and the inevitable stumble before it’s all over. If the Giants don’t improve it won’t matter anyway.
Didn’t that happen before this current win streak? They lost 6 in a row right before this. And before THAT they won 7 in a row. They’ll probably cool off soon, but it’s really anybody’s guess how they’ll finish the season considering they have a really favorable schedule.
By “Aaron Hill is powering their surge” you’re assuming Kelly Johnson would not have hit as well as he has for the Jays if he hadn’t been traded?
Because Kelly has actually hit very, very well for the Jays in a very small sample.
Isn’t it assuming a lot to suggest that he’d be doing the exact same in Arizona? I know that some stat fiends like to pretend that baseball is played in a vacuum, but come on.
I have to agree that it sure looks loke ARZ will win the West. But for all those claiming to be sure that the D-Backs will get mopped in the plaoffs, let me reming you that they won it all in 2001, Anaheim won it in 2002, Florida (!) won in 2003, the White Sox in 2005, and San Fran in 2010. By my count, that’s 5 of the last 10 WS Champs that were serious underdogs going into the playoffs. And you could easily add the Red Sox in 2004 to this list since they hadn’t won since 1918 prior to that title.
To me, one of the great things about playoff baseball is its unpredictability.
And of course 2006 saw perhaps the biggest underdog ever win.
Mandatory Response:
2004 Cardinals – 105 Wins, Lost WS
2005 Cardinals – 100 Wins, Lost LCS
2006 Cardinals – 83 Wins, Won WS
The 83 wins were due to injuries. Lost #2 starter (Mulder) for the rest of the year, lost the MVP (Pujols) for a month due to an oblique, lost Rolen for a month + division series, lost Eckstein for 2 months, lost Edmonds for 50 games, lost closer (Izzy) for rest of the season.
Everyone, except Mulder and Isringhausen was healthy for the playoffs. So, a very good team was in place for the playoffs. The breezed by SDP, won a very good series vs NYM where Wainwright froze Beltran on a deuce, and won the WS quickly.
That team was rather close to appearing in 3 straight WS.
The embarrassing aspect of the whole deal is not the Cardinals winning the WS as an 83 win team … it’s them winning the division with 83 games. With all the injuries they experienced, they pretty much handed the division to someone … but no one wanted it.
The Cards were the best team in 2006, they didn’t have the most regular season wins due to injuries. Two different things.
I don’t know why I care, but it really bothers me when the best team doesn’t win. It feels like the previous six months were a waste of time. It reminds of that Mariner team that won 116 games and is now totally forgotten. I remember the Cards won that 2006 series, but I can’t for the life of me remember who else was in the NL playoffs that year — and I know the other 3 teams had better seasons.
We need a bitter Padres fan to ask the Giants fan how it feels… the Giants certainly seemed like they could do no wrong last year at this time, and the Padres got the worst of it.
Not really the same thing Giants 2011 vs. Pads 2010:
Speaking as a Giants fan, 2011 is gravy. We’ve got the rings. 2010 was magic, pure joy. We still (Saturday, 9/3 AM) have a chance, a small chance, to catch the Snakes. Our destiny is still in our hands. All things considered, we feel pretty damn good.
The Giants fans know what it’s like to come out of nowhere, when nobody was expecting it, and finish, and beat everyone. Can’t take that away, ever.
Giants fans are not the Phillies fans who think they should win the WS every year.
LOL at this being a better team than last year. It’s the same team, Towers just ran hot and even members of this site can be irrational and results oriented.
The bullpen is almost entirely new, and while not outstanding, they are hugely improved over what was one of the worst bullpens ever last year.
While not actually additions to the team, Roberts and Parra (offensively) are performing like completely different players this year. And you could count the addition by subtraction of Reynolds.
Daniel Hudson and Josh Collmenter are new additions to the rotation and have been effective (Hudson played at the end of last year, but is on track to have 3x as many starts this season for the Dbacks). And Ian Kennedy is significantly improved over last year.
While the team isn’t composed of entirely different players, it’s a very different team from last year, and while he hasn’t been an amazing, sent-from-heaven savior of a GM, the largest improvement of this team over last year, the bullpen, is due mostly to KT.
Yeah but, other than the 8 guys that are totally different, it’s the same team as last year.
KT got lucky with the pen while Josh got unlucky with his, tried to trade Upton, left a huge hole at third when he dumped Reynolds.
Let’s make it even clearer. The DBacks top 7 position players in WAR are hold-overs from last year (Upton, Roberts, Montero, Young, Parra, Drew, Johnson).
- Upton is #1 with 6.5 WAR (already!), and as pointed out, Towers tried repeatedly to trade him.
- Melvin Mora, JT’s handpicked replacement for Reynolds was a -0.5 WAR disaster. Reynolds has sucked this year, but he’s still been better than that.
The top 3 pitchers on the team are holdovers (Hudson, Kennedy, Collmenter). Tower’s contribution to the starting rotation were Joe Saunders, and Zack Duke, the worst of it. Joe was a meh signing, who has run hot this year just to keep his ERA below 4, and Zack was actually a decent 5th starter pickup, who has been unlucky this year.
So KT’s big contribution was a solid bullpen, and I give him full credit for that. Josh Byrnes skimped on his, and it blew up. KT overspent on his, and it’s been a strength. But it’s not the biggest key to the turnaround.
But my big LOL is the results oriented thinking here. The DBacks bullpen was unlucky last year, BABIP .310 (5th worst in baseball), and unlucky with injuries, such as to Qualls. These year it’s not unlucky at all, and hasn’t had any key contributor go south due to injury.
The biggest keys to the turnaround were already here. That is Upton, Roberts, Montero, Parra, Hudson, Kennedy and Collmenter. That’s 29 WAR in 2011 from a group of existing players who produced only 10 WAR in 2010. CY is about the same, Drew and Johnson dropped off about 8 WAR (though they had fluke years in 2010 that weren’t likely to be repeated).
JT did a nice job on the bullpen, as any GM would have after last years disaster. But without stunning step forwards by 7 players already in the organization, this is a .500 team at best.
Most of the top contributors by WAR were acquired by Byrnes, Roberts, Young, Johnson, Kennedy, Collmenter, as was Goldshmidt, and Hudson was procured do to his Scherzer trade.