Between the standings and all the red uniforms on display recently across the midwest, casual onlookers might be forgiven for completely losing sight of the Sedona Reds, yet diehard fans can continue to spot Arizona this summer as the red team that loses. No wonder Cincinnati fans are ecstatic. A vulnerable opponent, more in the red than they, crawls into the Queen City, catapulting their Reds into a tie for the worst record in major league baseball.

For Arizona, jettisoning Carlos Quentin is already paying dividends down the road, as journeyman Kyle Lohse (5-10) yielded one hit through eight innings against the retooled, Jeff Salazar-led D*backs. It has been suggested that this young team could go far – so very far – not unlike the 1966 Orioles, and now with that geezer Quentin finally out of the picture, we can almost smell Frank Robinson and the postseason just around the bend. Oh sure, these guys may look like Augie Ojeda and Jeff Salazar, but you have to understand the history of the game like Josh Byrnes to appreciate what we have here.   

Our desert "monsoon" is running a bit late, as is, apparently, the "New" Diamondbacks’ annual summer swoon. One can feel the swoon as certainly as a Phoenician feels the dew point rise in July. Hometown fans just kinda "sense" the D*Backs will lose games before they start, perhaps a reflection of Bob Melvin and some of his players, who clearly believe they can win, but less clearly that they should. The opponent doesnt matter. Starters – on either side – rarely seem to. Tonight, for example, pits our healthy Cy Young Award winner against some kid with an eight ERA, appropriately named "Homer". A gift, on paper – one the Diamondbacks must inevitably unwrap on the field of play at this inopportune juncture dictionaries refer to as "summer".

Some have ridiculed Arizona’s 14-16 record so far against >.500 clubs, but it’s not a significant problem, not when playoff caliber teams like the Mets, Padres and Milwaukee dont play much better v. similar opposition. Breaking even against the haves and pummeling the have nots is a recipe for postseason participation – and the D*Backs’ 33-25 mark against the lower division could still portend good things to come.

But it’s not likely.  As of yesterday, Arizona had played 58 games against sub .500 teams  – more than any other MLB team. It could be sixty at the break. Only a few teams have played as many as fifty against baseball’s also rans – and some teams are still in the thirties. Part of this is a National league phenomenon and certain teams are destined to exploit easier schedules than are others. More importantly, this is a dynamic, even volatile stat, as opponents are categorized on shifting seasonal records, not their static record when the Diamondbacks happened to play them.

Even so, as of July 6th, the D*Backs had played fewer >.500 teams (30) than anyone, and the most (58) <.500 teams – by this measure, the easiest schedule in all of baseball.   

So far.

(photos courtesy of baseballalmanac.com and ghostvillage.com)

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NOTES:

* Diamondhacks congratulates Ken Griffey for tying former Red, Mr Robinson, on the all time home run list. Both joys to watch play and genuinely great, all around players. The kind of players people gladly pay admission to see. 

** We also congratulate Diamondback fans – and this great nation – for ignoring Daron Sutton’s thoroughly embarassing campaign to ramrod Brandon Webb onto the NL All Star team over worthier entrants – apparently on the basis that doing so might be "fun".  No local outlet fights harder on Brandon’s behalf than Diamondhacks, when he’s worthy of recognition. This wasn’t that time.

*** Few things gratify a baseball writer more than to be recognized by a respected sportswriting organization – so a big thanks to si.com for linking to several posts recently. Now, if I can just review that highlight DVD on mlb.com,  provided I absolutely luvvvv it,  life will be complete ;- )

What do you call a team that yields more runs than it’s scored over the first half of a full season – yet finds itself eleven games over .500 with the most wins in the National League ? An anomaly? Paper tiger? Magically delicious?

Or is their outstanding mark in close games (18-9) the result of superior pitching, particularly in relief, and/or inordinate clutch ability at the plate?

One thing you can say is that no MLB team exceeds it’s "expected" wins total with actual wins as much as the Arizona Diamondbacks(+12). In the NL, the next highest positive variance (among +.500 clubs) is only +4 (LAD, MILW) – and the Padres, with their league best staff, fall in at a minus 6.

We hear it said often enough that a particular team with a good record is so because they win the close games. We hear it about the D*backs all the time – and if you’ve watched them battle late in games, the claim sounds reasonable. Anecdotally, they win the types of games that recent AZ teams regularly let slip away.

Examining above .500 teams, one indeed sees a correlation between good overall records and success in one run contests. The Bosox are 14-8, Indians and Tigers 14-10, Mets 11-4, Dodgers 17-9, and the Angels and Brewers each just above .500. There are exceptions – the Phillies and Cubs, essentially both .500 performers, are 5-11 and 10-15 respectively in one run games – the divsion leading Padres, sporting MLB’s very best run differential, are just 14-16 in squeakers. Think about that – a team with better RS/RA than the Red Sox, Angels, Tigers or Mets – with the league’s best bullpen – still cant win half their close ones. The Padres are not a good team because they win their close games.

A different W/L split correlates even more closely with overall record – and may more reliably indicate underlying team performance and help predict future outcomes. That is a team’s record – not in one run games – but in blowouts (decided by 5 runs or more). Makes sense. Intuitively, blowouts dont have the somewhat arbitrary quality suggested by closer decisions – that is to say, over time, good teams rather emphatically blowout bad teams more than the other way around.

The "blowout" marks of teams above .500 are consistent with this idea: 

Boston     17-10

Anaheim   12-7

San Diego 15-6

Mets         17-9

Tigers       14-7

Twins        14-9

Indians      12-8

Dodgers    12-10

Brewers    11-9

Braves      20-13

Cubs         12-6

Mariners    11-13   

That’s a strong correlation. Only the Mariners failed to win more than half their laughers – and just barely. Those team’s cumulative blowout record, including Seattle’s mark, is 150-107 (.583).

But wait. There’s one team we’ve neglected. The Arizona Diamondbacks, who appear to be a standard bearer for our control group of excellent clubs, at 46-35, deadlocked for most NL wins. Their record in blowouts?

7-14.

Off the chart for a genuinely "good" team. This is the blowout record of a weak, perhaps a very weak, team. Has there ever been a good – or even competitive – club which lost two thirds of its blowouts over the course of a full season? 

The Diamondbacks, of course, are not predestined to continue that futility, but this illuminates the uncharacteristic, razor thin nature of their ascent to date, and may suggest a certain tenuous quality to it going forward.

(images courtesy of markdroberts.com, entertainment.webshots.com & 123musicstars.com)

April’s closure brings 100 degree tempertures to Phoenix along with a couple announcements.

First, Diamondhacks doubled it’s previous high monthly readership in April, and for that we thank each of you, as well as the various outlets and bloggers for linking to our junk, in particular si.com, who we’re quite certain needs to take a good hard look at their standards.

Second, it’s time for our second annual, end of April predictions for the 2007 Diamondbacks. We do it now because, frankly, March ball has the odor of ‘bad intelligence’, and like that thar uranium in Niger, relying on it causes problems upstream. Eyeballing April, by contrast, affords first hand visual info on prospects , as well as an updated view of the competition, a critical component of making projections. But it’s not as easy as it looks, as April is rarely representative of the six month season. The Yankees are in last place (9-14) as we speak – the Dbacks in first, at 16-11.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick look at how we did last year:

April 30th, 2006 predictions

Estimated   2006        Actual

78-84           W/L        76-86

750-800         Runs          773

175             Homers       160

<40-80>  Run Diff(RS-RA) <15>

4.36-4.84     ERA            4.48

7-13th       ERA rank        6th

It’s an odd list, but unabridged, and as you can see, we didnt screw up too badly. At least until now.

We could write 5000 words on the hows and whys, but this needs to get out the door, before, like, September 26th, so here’s our raw hacks, on May 1st 2007, on the heels of Chris Young’s two homer game in LA. Talk amongst yourselves.

2007 Predictions

Runs Scored – 820

Home Runs – 175

Runs Allowed – 755

Run Diff  + 65

W/L    86-76

Team ERA 4.35

ERA Rank  6th

(photos courtesy of devon.gov.uk and mlb.com)

While alarmed D*Backs fans assume full fret mode over the anemic offense on the heels of Saturday’s Zito-led shutout, Diamondhacks turns away from such stale news in favor of examining a latent, less discussed worry with the staff. We certainly can see the 82 walks and fifteen homers coughed up to date, well worse than league average.

In 2005 and 2006, between 55% and 58% of home runs yielded by the Arizona staff came with empty bags. I havent bothered to research the normalcy of this, but, for now, let’s assume it’s a reasonable baseline.

This April, thirteen of fifteen total homers(87%) allowed by the Arizona staff have been solo shots. Despite the small sample, what’s eye opening about this imbalance is that, with empty bags, D*Backs pitchers have the second highest OBP against in the league(.367). Now, part of the high OBP is those thirteen homers themselves, but beyond that, opposing runners are still getting on regularly, reducing residual potential for solo homers, and increasing opportunities for homers, or any other outcome, with men on. But that hasnt played out – not by a long shot.

How odd is this? Well, examining "OPS against" and factoring in historic park effects just off the top of my head, it’s not an exaggeration to say that, with the bases empty, Arizona’s staff is the worst, or very close to the worst in the league, constantly putting runners on – but – as soon as runners reach base, that same staff magically morphs into the best in the league. Or, again, darn close to it.

Intuitively, this makes some sense, as Doug Davis and Livan appear to have been conceived in the stretch position (as opposed to a breach birth), while demonstrating an uncanny ability to avoid further trouble once in it. But an entire staff, including relievers, worst in the league from the windup and the NL’s best from the stretch? Over 165 innings?

Wow. That’s a freaky, unsustainable discrepancy if I ever saw one.

We assumed certain starters might be predisposed to excel in "jam" situations, however looking at the career stats of the Diamondbacks rotation, only Davis has established any such history. It’s not a huge discrepancy, but over more than 1000 innings, it’s fair to conclude that Doug succeeds a bit more with runners on (in terms of OPS against). The others, Webb, Livan (and Randy Johnson) all yield lower OPS against from the windup, and the collective effect of all pitchers combined, stretch vs windup, is neglible.

In other words, we cant expect our delicious little disparities to last. Let’s not sugarcoat anything here. These pretty little morsels have a short shelf life and somebody’s gonna be left holding the bag.

It says here Arizona pitchers, beginning with today’s starter Yusmeiro Petit, are overdue to give up some three run taters.

Maybe even a four spot. 

(photos courtesy of openhand.org and http://www.valdyas.org/~irina/blog/graphics/jam2.jpg)

We recently expounded on the state of the Diamondbacks offense and today take a look at the sustainability of the staff, based on April’s results.

Everyone seems to agree that Arizona’s pitching, particularly the rotation, has exceeded expectations. Webb’s been off, of course, but three other starters’ ERAs are in the ones, and the bullpen has, somehow, been even better than that.

Despite such individual dominance, team ERA currently only ranks seventh in the NL; last year, Webby and his supporting cast that nobody wanted ranked sixth. Today’s team ERA, an unsustainable 3.11, would normally lead the league, but most NL pitchers are still ahead of the hitters. You’ve basically got an entire staff pitching at the level of our 2006 NL Cy Young winner, which wont last long at all.

IOW, that #7 league ranking might stick or improve, as all the staffs are jockeying around their eventual norms, but rest assured Arizona’s numerical ERA is going way, way up – not even the second coming of Randy Johnson will stop that.

Any fan who’s thrilled to Livan and Dougie’s mystifying Penn and Teller escape acts knows that something "funny" is going on. Let’s look underneath the sterling ERA, to see if we cant find the true humor in all this. Much has been made of the staff’s league leading strikeouts, however only hapless Washington has issued more walks or yielded more homers or total bases in the entire National League than the Arizona Diamondbacks. That’s right, Arizona ranks 15th by all three of those measures. Team WHIP (1.46) ranks 12th, as does hits per nine innings. OPS against is higher(worse) than the league mean.

So how do you reconcile all that ugliness with a 3.11 ERA? Let’s step away from the numbers and speak plain English about what’s transpired in Colorado, Washington, and against the Reds at Chase Field. 

This staff throws alot of pitches, puts alot of guys on base, gives up alot of homers, yet to date hardly gives up any runs.

We’d the first to acknowledge, and even celebrate, that Livan Hernandez is something of a WHIP antihero, making a fine living escaping his self-inflicted little hells, and Doug Davis has a better putaway arsenal than most, after he’s walked half the Western World. But there’s no getting around the fact that the Dbacks’ staff hasn’t pitched nearly as well as their ERA would indicate. These underlying stats also dont account for any of Cincinnati’s rally ending line drives destined for Diamondback gloves, of which there were so many this week I lost count.   

The eventual arrival of Randy Johnson, who apparently hasnt walked a batter all spring, should help rectify several of these underlying problems and stabilize the staff, but it’s difficult to say by how much. He wont walk people, but the homers – and even hits – allowed are still somewhat of an open question, as is his increasingly murky return date.

Micah Owings might be this staff’s saving grace. His recent loss takes some of the luster off his "winning" mystique and aura, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He throws strikes, has confidence in his pitches, and doesnt fart around like half this staff does – his approach would fit in nicely with Leyland’s Tigers. He looks like a six inning pitcher out of the gate, which is pretty rosy for a #5. This could all come crashing down as hitters make inevitable adjustments, but so far it’s nearly impossible to not like what you see from this relative "unknown".

We’re concerned that Edgar Gonzalez gave up three homers in his first start away from RFK, especially after such a dominant spring. It’s not like you can say he doesnt have his stuff yet, or he’s returning to competitive form. This is, it appears, the best he’s got, as a tougher schedule looms on the horizon.   

For some reason, the bullpen has been this team’s scapegoat for a while. The truth is, and was last year, that it’s serviceable; neither a big asset nor a glaring liability.  After adjusting for park effects, it was the fifth or sixth best pen in the league in 2006, but to hear people talk, it was terribly overtaxed and/or combustible. This year’s version looks about the same, now that J.D. Durbin is out of the picture: a fairly deep bunch of reasonably competent, hard throwing horses. Dont be alarmed by the absence of Francisco Rodriguez and Mariano Rivera – all these guys can throw. It’ll be Bryan Price’s charge to ensure that they pitch.   

Much like the team’s early hitting numbers, two variables are pulling pitching projections in opposite directions. The pitchers have certainly exploded out of the gate in encouraging fashion, yielding less than four runs per game in a park context that has slightly favored the hitters. But they wont jump on hitters like this forever. Hitters, especially veteran hitters, adjust – and will make this staff pay dearly for some very weak, underlying peripherals, to they extent those continue.

How do you tell?

On a team level, runs scored (44) and runs yielded (33) so far, translates to a 6-3 expected W/L via Bill James’ pythag theorem, not quite up to the actual 7-2 mark, but still sufficient to lead the "expected" National League West.  IOW, they’ve lost a close game and won a few close ones. According to this, you might say they’ve been lucky, but not unusually so.   

Beyond that, examining individual 2007 stats against a player’s established performance level also gives a feel for sustainability. Today we’ll focus on the state of the offense. Quickly eyeballing Dback hitters’ current OPS, we draw the following conclusions, based on players’ recent histories and generally regarded upsides:

Unable to sustain: Hudson, Byrnes

Less likely to sustain: Snyder

Guaranteed to improve: Drew, Jackson

Likely to improve: Tracy, Young

About the same: Hairston 

Too soon to call: Callaspo, Montero

Injured: Quentin, Davanon

It’s a mixed bag. Yes, Huddy Headquarters and Norma Desmond are carrying the offense, but Stephen Drew, last year’s doubles and triples machine, doesnt have a single XBH yet – not one. Chris Young is hitting below .200 and hasnt drawn a walk – and Jackson and Tracy should add to the mix as the season wears on. Mushing all these guys together yields a team ops of .716, below last year’s .755, but currently good enough for NL middle of the pack.

Conclusion: The team is currently hitting worse than last year and two factors are pulling projections in opposite directions. On the one hand, as individual performances gravitate towards expected norms, we can expect team hitting to improve. But we’re extrapolating from a bizarre nine game competition sample, where Arizona has played under unusually favorable hitting conditions. Three games at Coors (admittedly it was cold), four games in DC vs the worst staff in baseball by far (admittedly it was cold), and two more at the Chase launching pad (one v. Bronson Arroyo).

Under those circumstances, this year’s model is plating 4.9 runs per game, but they havent visited Florida or Shea, or any team stronger than the Rockies, and all 29 games in California pitcher’s parks are still to play. These trips will pull that 4.9 figure down, which is of some concern, because the 2006 Diamondbacks, the ones who supposedly couldnt hit much, scored 4.77 rpg over the balance of the entire season.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the defense and staff.