I think people tend to overestimate their ability to avoid disappointment. We try to temper our excitement so that we won’t feel let down when something goes wrong, but it doesn’t really work. The bad times are always going to hurt. More importantly, tempering your excitement can limit the joy you experience when things finally go right. Nothing strangles happiness in the cradle like that little voice in your head that keeps whispering, “It’s probably going to fall apart.”

I’m not saying we should all be walking around puffed up with unfounded optimism. I just think that some things warrant excitement, that we should trust ourselves to recognize them, and that we should allow ourselves to enjoy them fully. To borrow a line, I think you ought to follow your heart. That’s all I ever thought about anything.

Last year, over 32 games and 115 plate appearances, a 21-year-old Corbin Carroll put up a wRC+ of 130. Excelling in the outfield and on the basepaths as well allowed him to rack up 1.4 WAR. That’s a 7-win pace. He wasn’t perfect: his walk and strikeout rates were nothing to write home about, and while his .358 wOBA said Alex Bregman, his .293 xwOBA said Raimel Tapia. But in all, it was enough to make Carroll our No. 2 prospect in baseball, net him a downright effervescent ZiPS projection and an eight-year, $111 million contract extension, and establish him as our staff’s runaway favorite for NL Rookie of the Year. Corbin Carroll in 2022 was a first date where you’re talking and laughing and then all of a sudden you look at your watch and realize five hours have passed. He was worth getting excited about. Read the rest of this entry »

Everton-Bournemouth stands out among today’s Premier League matchups, as the former will secure a return to England’s elite division with a win (they could also survive with a loss or a draw, but only if both Leeds and Leicester City likewise fail to win). Everton FC, which is located in Liverpool, was last relegated below the top flight in 1951.

As most EPL fans are aware, Everton’s home grounds, Goodison Park, are located less than a mile from Anfield, the historic home of Liverpool FC. They also know that the principal owner of Everton’s longtime arch rival is John Henry, whose Fenway Sports Group purchased the more-ballyhooed of the two clubs in 2010.

According to a new book by Bruce Schoenfeld, the acquisition happened only after initial reluctance from FSG’s ultimate decision-maker. As chronicled in Game of Edges: The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports, Henry proclaimed the following during a business meeting held to assess the possible purchase:

“But I don’t want to own a soccer team.” Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like all of our coverage of the 2023 Diamondbacks here at FanGraphs has focused on the pitching, and it’s not hard to see why. Zac Gallen has looked phenomenal (at times historically so), Madison Bumgarner was abominable (eventually too abominable to roster), and the D-backs have given some intriguing young arms the chance to prove their worth in the big league rotation.

Yet all that being so, the real story of the 2023 Diamondbacks has been the offense. They lead the National League in hitting and rank third with 257 runs scored. They’re fourth in OBP, fourth in slugging percentage, and fifth in wRC+. By and large, the pitching staff has performed as expected – Gallen good, MadBum bad, everyone else somewhere in between – but the offense has been more potent than anyone could have envisioned.

It’s been a team effort in Arizona; among the nine Diamondbacks hitters with at least 100 PA, seven have been above-average at the plate. Corbin Carroll is off to the races. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has taken a massive step forward. Ketel Marte and Christian Walker have been predictably solid, while Gabriel Moreno and Pavin Smith are holding their own. Leading the way, however, has been none other than Geraldo Perdomo, who is pacing the club in OBP, wRC+, and WAR. What? Read the rest of this entry »

Diamondbacks righthander Zac Gallen is one of those guys who’s always trying to improve. That’s true of almost all pro athletes, these hypercompetitive oddballs constantly in search of new ways to get one over on an opponent. But Gallen, famous for his methodical catch play and insatiable appetite for information, embodies the stereotype more than most.

One skill the 27-year-old Gallen has honed for 2023: managing ticket requests from family. On Wednesday afternoon, Gallen makes his third career start at Citizens Bank Park, less than six miles from his high school baseball field in Pennsauken, New Jersey. So whenever he comes to Philadelphia, there are obligations to meet.

“I think it’s on the tamer side for the most part, but my mom’s side of the family is huge so it’s still a good chunk of tickets for sure,” he says. “Every year when we come back and I’m pitching, I’m trying to get better at managing all the extra stuff that comes with playing in your hometown.” Read the rest of this entry »

Only 62 men and 20 women have scored a goal in a FIFA World Cup Final. It’s a rare achievement that holds a sacred place in sports history. Being the starting pitcher in a World Baseball Classic final is a bit less prestigious — at least for now, check back with me in 60 years to know for sure — but only 10 people can say they’ve done it.

Among them, Diamondbacks right-hander Merrill Kelly. “I’ve said it a million times before, but I’m super grateful I was able to be a part of it. Just the clubhouse in general, the quality of players on that team — by far the best team I’ve ever been on and it isn’t close,” he says. “Obviously, we would’ve liked it to go a different way in the last game.”

The circumstances that led to Kelly starting that game are interesting. When Team USA was setting up its rotation for the group stage, Kelly lobbied manager Mark DeRosa for the toughest assignment of pool play: Mexico. That start went to Padres right-hander Nick Martinez, who got crushed in an 11-5 loss. (This result led to Kelly being on the receiving end of some good-natured trash talk when he and Team Mexico center fielder Alek Thomas returned to Diamondbacks camp.)

When Kelly picked up a crucial win in the pool finale against Colombia three day days later, there was a silver lining to not getting his preferred rotation spot.

“One of the things DeRosa told me to console me was if I pitched against Colombia at home, that would line me up for the championship as well,” he says. Read the rest of this entry »

Tommy Henry isn’t a Statcast darling. The 25-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks southpaw doesn’t possess elite movement or spin on any of his four offerings, nor does he light up radar guns. What he does do… well, he pitches. Selected by the Snakes in the second round of the 2019 draft out of the University of Michigan, Henry might best be described as a purveyor of the art of pitching.

Fourteen starts into his big-league career — nine last year and five so far this season — Henry has admittedly had relatively modest success. He has a 5.23 ERA over 74 innings and has allowed 75 hits and 33 walks, with a pedestrian 49 punch
outs and a 15.3% K-rate. Writing him up prior to last season, our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen opined that “No. 4 starter is a reasonable ceiling” for the crafty left-hander.

Henry discussed his pitchability profile — one that stretches back to his formative days in Portage, Michigan — toward the tail end of spring training.

———

David Laurila: You grew up in a cold weather state. With that in mind, how have you developed as a pitcher?

Tommy Henry: “I would say the biggest development thing for me, as a kid, was that I wasn’t a hard thrower, so I had to learn how to ‘pitch.’ Basically, I had to learn what pitching was. My dad also forced me to throw a changeup at a young age. And honestly, a lot of me developing as a pitcher has been learning through adversity. There are a lot of things you’d like to learn before the adversity happens, but going through experiences and learning from those experiences has probably shaped me into the person I am today the most.”

Laurila: Elaborate on “not a hard thrower.” The term is obviously relative, but you grew up in Michigan, not a baseball hotbed like Florida or Texas. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday evening, Zac Gallen will take the mound in Arlington with zeroes on his mind and history at his fingertips. You see, South Jersey’s second-best ballplayer is on a bit of a heater: 28 consecutive scoreless innings pitched, including zero runs allowed in his past four starts.

Now, I can tell some of you are already scrolling back up to the top of this page to check the date on the post. It’s the same feeling you get when you lose track of where you were on your backlog of DVR’d Law & Order reruns. “I feel like I’ve seen this one already. Did I actually watch it or did I doze off on the couch? Is that Lance Reddick?”

Run a show for 20-plus seasons and you’ll recycle a plot point or two. No, you’re not losing your mind: Zac Gallen is on a second extended scoreless innings streak in a matter of just nine months. Last fall, he strung together 44.1 scoreless innings, and now he’s at it again. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not often that a 33-year old player still owed $34 million over two years is designated for assignment, but after a three-inning, seven run performance against the Cardinals on Wednesday that ballooned his ERA to 10.26, the Diamondbacks decided to cut bait on Madison Bumgarner. Things certainly didn’t go the way the D-Backs anticipated after inking him to a five-year, $85 million deal, as he closed out his Arizona tenure with a 5.23 ERA, 5.18 FIP, and 1 WAR in 363 innings.

As a Diamondback, Bumgarner seemed like a shell of his former self, the former Giants ace who was the hero of three separate playoff runs. His numbers went from good to terrible almost overnight, but the writing was on the wall long before he signed with Arizona. After a successful 2016 campaign that ended in his second top-five Cy Young finish, he missed about half of ’17 and ’18 with injuries, one of which was sustained in a dirt bike crash. While his surface-level results in those two seasons held steady with his career norms, his FIP climbed by nearly a full run as he lost much of the strikeout potency that made him so dominant in years past. His fastball, which once sat around 93 mph, lost two ticks and much of its whiff capabilities. The slider/cutter hybrid that he threw with near-equal frequency to the heater also started getting hit harder; batters had an xSLG nearing .500 versus both offerings in his final season as a Giant.

Despite these warning flags, the Diamondbacks still handed him a big contract before the 2020 season, where his performance began to tank. His strikeout rates continued to fall, and the good luck he experienced later in his Giants tenure faded away. It doesn’t help that Bumgarner has been characterized as unwilling to make adjustments even with diminished stuff, instead sticking with his old, clearly ineffective gameplan. In his late-30s, Charlie Morton nearly tripled his curveball usage compared to his early Pittsburgh days and had the best years of his career. Justin Verlander stopped throwing changeups with the Astros and returned to Cy Young form after some middling seasons; his teammate Gerrit Cole started elevating his fastball more, setting strikeout records in the process. Bumgarner, though, stuck with his fastball/cutter diet, despite the fact that in 2022, his four-seamer was the second-worst pitch in baseball, according to Statcast. As hitters adapted to crush his weakened stuff, Bumgarner couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt back, leading to an unceremonious end to his time on the Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

Three Sundays ago, the answer to this column’s weekly quiz was Carlos Santana. The question was, “Which player has appeared in the most regular-season games over the past 10 seasons?” and the now-Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman had played in 1,440 — 13 more than Paul Goldschmidt and 40 more than Freddie Freeman and Anthony Rizzo.

Santana professed not to be aware of the distinction when I mentioned it to him earlier this week. He did seem pleased to hear it, and “humbly prideful” might be the best way to describe his reaction.

“I prepare,” said Santana, who celebrated his 37th birthday yesterday. “I prepare my body. I prepare mentally. I also try to enjoy the game every day. That’s why I can play a lot. The game is my passion. This is my 14th year and I want to play two more. Or maybe three more. Whatever God tells me, and what my body says I can do.”

Count Andrew McCutchen among those who are impressed by his teammate’s reliability and durability over the years.

“It’s really good, to be honest,” said McCutchen, who was likewise unaware of Santana’s distinction. “To be able to do it how he’s done it — he’s in [the lineup] more times than not —shows that he’s stayed healthy, which is a key to doing that. You have to be good enough to do it, too. You’ve got a whole lot of variables to be able to do what he’s done.” Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time, a Clayton Kershaw–Madison Bumgarner matchup would have been a sight to behold. But when the two lefties squared off on Saturday evening in Los Angeles, it was a decidedly one-sided affair. Kershaw dominated the Diamondbacks, allowing one run and striking out nine over six innings; Bumgarner, meanwhile, was pummeled for five first-inning runs and lasted just four frames. It was the latest in a long line of disappointing performances since the former Giants ace joined the Diamondbacks.

Bumgarner was on the ropes from the beginning. He served up a double to Mookie Betts on his fifth pitch of the game, hit Max Muncy to load the bases with one out, walked the bases loaded after Chris Taylor’s sacrifice fly scored Betts, and gave up a grand slam to Trayce Thompson, who would later add homers off relievers Kevin Ginkel and Carlos Vargas.

By the time the dust had settled, Bumgarner had thrown 31 pitches and was down 5–0. The 33-year-old lefty did pull himself together enough to follow with three scoreless innings, allowing one baserunner in each, but he finished with four walks and four hits allowed, striking out just two and getting just five swings and misses. Including his 10 called strikes, his 17.6% CSW was his fifth-lowest mark from among his 66 starts as a Diamondback; his low was 15.2% (eight called strikes, two swinging strikes in 66 pitches) in a September 27, 2020 start against the Rockies, in which he at least posted five shutout innings, netting his only win of the pandemic-shortened campaign.

Saturday’s bad news went beyond that meager CSW rate. For one thing, old friend Eno Sarris suggested that Bumgarner and Ginkel were tipping pitches:

Looks like the D-backs were tipping pitches last night against the Dodgers. Some pictures: Kevin Ginkel slider (wrist curl, grass between arms), Kevin Ginkel fastball (no wrist curls, no grass) and Madison Bumgarner letting runner on second see right into his glove. pic.twitter.com/rd2H8C1TAL

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) April 2, 2023

Even if that hadn’t been the case, the average velocity of Bumgarner’s pitches was down by nearly two miles per hour relative to last year:

You can safely ignore that positive bump on Bumgarner’s slider, as he threw just one on Saturday. Additionally, the spin on his four-seamer averaged just 2,041 RPM, down 162 from last year and 184 from his final start of the spring, on March 27 against the Guardians. The pitch also got 2.7 inches less horizontal break than last year’s model. The Dodgers didn’t actually do any damage off of Bumgarner’s four-seamer, though hitters last year destroyed it to the point that it was the majors’ second-least valuable pitch according to Statcast:

If all of this sounds like a pitcher who’s Physically Not Right, the thought crossed the minds of the Diamondbacks. On Sunday, the team sent the 33-year-old lefty back to Phoenix to be evaluated by team doctors, with manager Torey Lovullo telling reporters, “Bum was talking about fatigue postgame last night.” More via MLB.com:

“Information was kind of coming in slowly and we just thought it’d be the best thing for him to get back to Phoenix where our doctors can get a look at him. On the urgency scale, I don’t think it’s very high, but it’s all precautionary at this point.”

“There was nothing major from his standpoint,” Lovullo said Saturday night. “It was more just us asking questions and trying to find out if everything is OK. There was looseness to the breaking ball, and things just weren’t consistent. He’s always around the zone, but there were some big misses today. Red flags go up when we see that, our eyes tell us a story, but Bum was OK.”

Bumgarner underwent an MRI that showed no structural damage, and as Lovullo said before Monday night’s game, he’s on track to make his next start, likely Friday against the Dodgers at Chase Field. But even if he’s got the green light physically, that’s a long way from finding reasons to be particularly optimistic about his 2023 chances. The former World Series hero is coming off a season in which he pitched to a 4.88 ERA and 4.85 FIP in 158.2 innings and set full-season lows with his 16% strikeout rate and 9% strikeout-walk differential (he was 0.2 points lower in both categories in 2020). Meanwhile, his 9.8% barrel rate and 42.8% hard-hit rate were both full-season highs for the Statcast era. Though he made 30 starts for just the second time since 2016, his 0.5 WAR was the second-lowest among pitchers with 30 or more starts, ahead of only the Mariners’ Marco Gonzalez (0.1).

Since joining Arizona via a five-year, $85 million deal in December 2019, Bumgarner has put up a 5.06 ERA and 5.08 FIP in 350.2 innings, netting just 1.2 WAR. Highlighted by a seven-inning hitless outing that didn’t count as an official no-hitter, his best work came in 2021, when he pitched to a 4.63 ERA and 4.67 FIP in 146.1 innings en route to 1.5 WAR; he missed over six weeks that year due to shoulder inflammation, and while he pitched better after the injury than before, his career has continued its downward trajectory.

Indeed, as measured by Stuff+, the quality of Bumgarner’s pitches has been deteriorating:

Woof. Obviously you can take this year’s one-game sample with a grain of salt, but as Sarris, the model’s co-creator, wrote, the fastball Stuff+ does capture some signal at this level. Aside from his cutter, which he throws about 28% of the time, Bumgarner doesn’t have a pitch that’s consistently average or better, and at this point, one has to wonder what exactly he and the Diamondbacks, for whom former Astros pitching coach Brent Strom now works, are doing to reverse this rather dismal trend. In an age when pitchers reinventing themselves with new offerings or refinements of old ones seems like a constant, why is none of this is happening for Bumgarner?

On a team that aspires to break .500 for the first time since 2019 but that projects for just 78.4 wins via our preseason Playoff Odds, Bumgarner now stands out as one of the weak links. The Diamondbacks’ rotation placed just 23rd in our Positional Power Rankings, with six Arizona starters — staff ace Zac Gallen, veteran righties Zach Davies and Merrill Kelly, rookie Ryne Nelson, and prospects Brandon Pfaadt and Drey Jameson — all forecast to exceed Bumgarner’s projected 0.3 WAR, the last three of those each with 40–100 fewer innings. In other words, the case that he is one of the Diamondbacks’ best five starters relies upon some combination of reverence for his track record, a desire to justify a contract that looks like a sunk cost, and a need for prospects to get more seasoning. Bumgarner’s World Series exploits are the stuff of legend, but since spraining his AC joint in a 2017 dirtbike accident that cost him three months, he’s managed just a 100 ERA- and 108 FIP- and reached 30 starts only twice. Going by batted ball stats, he’s had an xERA of 5.53 or higher in every season with the Diamondbacks save for 2021.

Bumgarner is the Diamondbacks’ highest-paid player, owed $23 million for this year and $14 million for next year, but at best he looks more like a guy who can eat 140–150 innings at the back the rotation. It’s understandable why he’s begun the year in the starting five as Arizona breaks in Nelson, uses Jameson out of the bullpen, and farms out Pfaadt, who made just 10 starts at Triple-A Reno last year. But if the Diamondbacks are going to turn the corner, they’ll have to reckon with what the 2023 version of Bumgarner can give them. Right now, that doesn’t look like a whole lot.