For Whom The Bell Tolls Part 2
This post is intended to bridge the chasm of friendship that has developed between myself and some of my snake loving family members. Firmly entrenched in downtown Phoenix and charged with promoting economic development downtown I am nonetheless an unabashed Dodger fan. Anybody who has been to a Dodger-Dback game in Phoenix knows that Phoenix is not exactly hostile territory, but when I tell you I am a white man…. you can only imagine what kind of persecution I have endured.
The season is officially over for the Diamondbacks. To be honest, this should never have happened. When you have two aces healthy the entire year and play in one worst divisions in history - the Snakes should have closed this deal a long time ago. Here is a quick look at what happened and what they have to do to dominate next year.
Injuries are the easiest excuse in baseball. One of the most tired cliches is the inevitable response “Well everybody has injuries”. Sure, the loss of Orlando Hudson hurt immensely, but where would LA be with Furcal (who left with a .365 BA)? So we will avoid the “injury” argument. Enough said.
1. The signing of Eric Byrnes This is the topic I get the most heat about from dbackers. I can’t stand him. My nephew loves the guy, Phoenix loves him and the dbacks gave him $30 million over three years. Why? Nobody can ever give me a reason. Because he hustles? Because he hit over three hundred… once? Because he has a dopey TV show? Because he dives needlessly and does that obnoxious somersault? Do you think any of those moptop little Byrnsie fans know he is a career .260 hitter? True, he brings fans to the ballpark - but isn’t that a sad comment on Arizona baseball? The “crash test dummy” is the popular face of the franchise? On any other top echelon team Byrnes would be a spot starter at best. “Scrappy” rarely wins titles. Before you throw the Juan Pierre signing in my face, remember Pierre has a career BA almost 30 points higher and can run like Burns can ham for the camera. PS can somebody tell me why Eric Byrnes is on the DL and missed most of the season but can still run around on rooftops re-creating Beastie Boy videos? Man that guy is one tough gamer.
2. Giving Mark Reynolds the 3B job. This is one where I admit hindsight is 20/20. Fans and management fell in love with Reynolds last year when he hit for average and no power. Its a shame that Reynolds believed he had to hit for power in his second season. What was the result? HIS AVERAGE DROPPED TO .240 AND TODAY HE BROKE THE MLB STRIKEOUT RECORD! Wow. True, the dbacks didn’t have much of a choice with the Tracy injury, but how could they expect a kid to hit for power when he has never done it before?
3. Chris Young one good season = huge contract. Second season? nothing. See a pattern here? Really, who else in the majors was going to pay Chris Young $31 million for six years?
4. Brandon Lyon This one hurts because I really do like Brandon Lyon - maybe this is the off-season that the DBacks finally realize he is not a ML closer. I don’t care how good his “stuff” is - how many late inning home runs do you need to see before you understand he just can’t do it? This touches on the biggest problem with the team. The bullpen. Jon Rauch came too late and the dbacks never really tried to get a quality closer. How many more wins would the snakes have if they had Rauch and Lyon setting up for a verified closer? who knows?
5. Bob Melvin Yeah, I know its easy to just blame the manager but the fact is this team lost even though they had the most talent in the division. Melvin may be acceptable for a team that is rebuilding, but if the Dbacks want to be a front-runner - they need an appropriate manager.
6. Manny This one is completely out of their control, but it has to be on the list. For the first time in decades, the Dodgers got lucky and got the right player at the right time. Would the Dodgers have won the division without Manny? Probably not. Did the Dbacks counter properly with Adam Dunn? uh - no.
But Tai-Pan, Tai-Pan! what about next year? Settle down little Byrnsies! Here are the answers.
First off, if the Dodgers somehow re-sign Ramirez better just forget about it. I doubt it will happen and more importantly - there is no way he is going to be as good as this year.
1. Move Mark Reynolds in the batting order. The kid has to get his head back. Breaking the strikeout record could ruin his career. He will do more to help the team win if he hits .315 with 20 home-runs than if he hits .240 with 26. Second in the order sounds about right. Get the batting coach on him and re-teach him about making contact with the ball. 200 Ks? That’s embarrassing.
2. Assemble a major league bullpen. C’mon, you have most of the pieces - just finish the job. A closer should be the #1 priority in the off-season. I don’t know who it should be, but if the Snakes want to win - they have to do something. Simply getting a closer pushes all of the relievers back an inning - everyone gets better.
3. Beg, plead or blackmail Hudson to come back. This one might be impossible. Hudson is one of the best second basemen around, and coming up on free-agency half of the teams out there will be looking to sign him. The Dback’s downfall this season can be traced back to when Orlando busted up his knee. Solid defense - good stick. The six-year contract should have gone to him.
4. Get one more horse. Having two aces like Webb and Haren should be more than enough to win right? I guess not. Melvin ran them into the ground early in the season and Doug Davis got cancer. It sucks, I know but you need at least one other pitcher who can make it past the 5th inning. Edgar Gonzalez? please! Cut that joker….
5. Fire Bob Melvin Once again I know it is too easy to just blame the manager, but Melvin needs to go for two reasons. First, as stated above, he didn’t win despite having the better team. Second, the team needs to understand that this result is not acceptable. I can point to dozens of times during the season that Melvin’s moves backfired - just like any other manager did. What I can’t remember is Melvin displaying a true fire for winning… something that tells his team “you win or else” Its like Crash said in Bull Durham “They’re kids - scare ‘em”.
On a personal note, I would like to end this post with a personal plea for trn to come over to the dark side. Dude - you live in California, you surf all day, you go to Pepperdine. How much more LA can you get? Stop the charade and go BLUE. Then your son can finally look up to you and say “my daddy follows a winner”. The Smith & Wesson hat and the tattered flannel were retired long ago. Choose life my man - choose the Dodgers.
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Comments
fine retort! although I sense alot of “stay the course” in your response. IT is a risky proposition to think all of the dbacks young gambles are going to pay out. Please, stop with the Byrnes apologism (is that a real word). Nobody was goiing to pay him - he just got the dbacks to believe that somebody else would. He is the worst kind of showboat - he does it with a smile yet rarely produces.
Reynolds is a good hitter, but he needs to remember what got him here - high BA. He is young, and if he really does have power, it will show. Since when is 28 homers crushing power? Wouldn’t you rather exchange 70 strikeouts for 30 more doubles?
I am trying not to be a hater, but the team vastly underachieved. Great points - I knew my weakness in posting on this is that I am not a die-hard dbacker. But I have been photographed in Baxter’s living room!
That’s all it took to bring you back? so simple my friend. I guess the answer to the defection question is NO?
Hudson will likely never wear a D-back unifrom again. The money it takes to get Hudson back will be used to get better relief pitching or a dangerous bat. He is a great fielder and a consistent hitter but he is too expensive for this small market team. D-backs will put their weight behind Eckstein.
As for Tai-pan, my crushing power argument for Reynolds is the worst kind of speculation because there are no numbers to back it, just scouts that say his ball goes longer than most.
It is a dangerous situation staying with Reynolds because he is and could continue to be the strikeout king. But I would bet the head office is very depressed over letting Carlos Quentin leave after a bad year and will not let another young talent go. On the upside, sticking with him now and developing his swing could save them from spending a bunch to replace him with another prospect.
The argument for stay the course, is that the D-backs were always planning on developing young talent for the last few years but somehow found themselves to be productive, so what does it cost them to stay the course, since they werent planning on winning in the first place. Not to mention they have completely turned their accounts around as a result.
I will say that if the D-backs could wiggle out of the Byrnes contract right now they would. Cojack looked good in left and Dunn at first would be a much more solid team.
To be honest, I like the young talent. Home-grown teams are somehow much funner to watch. Anyone can buy their own vegetables but home-grown corn always tastes sweeter.
I’ll take the bait…
1. Eric Byrnes. The signing of Eric Byrnes came last year just prior to the playoff hunt, it did alot to fill seats and get fans excited to watch baseball. But it also gave us a good club house veteran. After watching Gonzo going and assuming that Clark was leaving too, they needed somebody to help the rest of the ballclub (with an average age under 25) to figure out the ropes. Byrnes getting hurt was obviously not anticipated and only looks horrible in retrospect.
2. Mark Reynolds. He wiffs ALOT, but the guy has CRUSHING power. The kind of power that when he connects everybody on the team stands up. With Carlos Quentin absolutely decimating in Chicago, the D-backs are very gun shy of giving up a player that couldpost big homerun numbers and Reynolds shows all the potential. He is a medicore feilder but the guy is still relatively young and will definitley have a lot to work on over the summer. My guess is that if his production is down for the first few months of next year, he gets put on the block. Im sure they are going to convince him to get the type of workout in that turned CoJack around.
3. Chris Young will stay. He got complacent this year with the bat but the guy has incredible range and allows medicore players to play left and right. Without Young, CoJack would have sucked at left. He is worth keeping for his defensie ability and obviously he can steal and hit. Never forgetting that he is young as well.
4. Lyon was bad. But the head office made a good calculated move. Our bullpen dominated last year with Valverde closing, but the year before Valverde was a crap shoot including a send down to the AAA. Obviously they thought that his good year was a fluke and didnt want the pressure so they got the most value out of him while leaning harder on the setup pitchers that were good as well last year. Lyons blew it. He knows it. Another hindsight call.
5. Melvin. Melvin will get at least one more year. As stated over and over, he has a VERY young team that were contenders last year when they had planned on being in development. Lots of things went wrong this year, and most of all the bullpen fell apart. Everything else could have continued as it did, if the bullpen held up. But, on paper, the bullpen should have been the better ones in the league. Lyon, Pena, Qualls all have potential but they collapsed all at the same time and D-backs gave up leads established by our starting pitchers.
Out of all your recommendations… shoring up the bullpen is the one i like, but then again, they tried all year to shore it up and everyone they brought over pitched like they dipped their hands in butter. Qualls is the closer for next year and they will look for a good young strikeout king to be a setup but there is little else they can do.
In my mind, it is a toss up for Tracy or Reynolds. Both are mediocre fielders and right now immature at the plate. Tracy needed more play time toget a good trade deal but they will likely still see what they can get for him. Dunn may stick around, he handled first pretty well and if they think its in their best interest they may trade Cojack as well while he posted good enough numbers this year for someone to take him. With a more developed Reynolds, healed Byrnes and Dunn in the lineup, Young will look much better.
I do have to call you out on the lineup issue though… the problem isnt that Melvin doesnt change the lineup enough, it is that he changes it too much. He moves it around like he is designing a living room. Players never get to fall into batting roles and it brings down the whole lineup. D-backs should be the most consistent hitter 1-8 in the league. Actually should be 1-9 but we gave up Owings for a playoff spot that never happened. I bet they wish they could get that trade back.