FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: September 20, 2025

I promise, I didn’t plan to write about the 2019 Diamondbacks in back-to-back editions of this column. That year was Ketel Marte’s breakout season, and also the year they traded Zack Greinke to the Astros at the trade deadline, but otherwise, they were a mostly forgettable team. Not bad by any means — Arizona finished 85-77, second in the NL West — but nowhere near notable enough to be remembered in consecutive weeks of the same column six years later.
And yet, isn’t that the beauty of this mailbag? This is the space for you to ask any and all baseball questions that pop into your head, no matter how silly or irrelevant they may be. And as far as we’re concerned here, the 2019 Diamondbacks might just be one of baseball’s more relevant irrelevant teams. I mentioned them last week because they were the team that Gerardo Parra was pitching against on August 3 when he became the third player ever to allow five or more runs without recording an out in his only career pitching appearance.
But before we get to the 2019 Diamondbacks in this week’s installment of the mailbag, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
Some team should try to reunite Josh and Nathaniel Lowe this offseason so they can set a new record for “most strikeouts by brothers in a single game”, among other brothers-related records.
This got me thinking how a team consisting entirely of brothers would do. There’s no way you could do this with just contemporary players though. These are the only current duos I can think of:
Hitters:
Acuna
Lowe
Naylor
Contreras (lots of first basemen / catchers here)
Jung
Pitchers:
Rogers
Peralta
Diaz
Mixed:
Nola
Maybe we could do 21st century only? That would at least give you enough time to fill out a credible rotation, as well as giving you the Seager brothers.