Remember when the Dodgers looked unstoppable and eventually made it to the World Series? Those memories sure seem distant as May gets going, and not just because star shortstop Corey Seager is now out for the year after an elbow injury that requires Tommy John surgery. The Diamondbacks aren’t the lone reason Los Angeles finds themselves 12-17 and in fourth place in the NL West, but they’ve certainly had a hand in all of that.
The Diamondbacks? They’re good.
Wednesday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at the D-Backs taking down the Dodgers for the seventh time in 2018 already.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
The D-Backs are 21-8, the first time they’ve ever managed a record that good in their first 29 games. They’re 21-8 partially because they’ve faced the Dodgers eight times already in 2018, and have gone 7-1 in those games, including Tuesday night’s 4-3 victory in a game Clayton Kershaw started for Los Angeles.
These are the same D-Backs who lost slugger J.D. Martinez this offseason while barely making an effort to retain him, the Martinez who was such a crucial part of Arizona’s second-half push for a postseason spot last summer. While they have some issues in the lineup at the moment — Alex Avila, Ketel Marte, and Chris Owings are all struggling — there is plenty of offense coming from the rest of the bunch in the meantime. Or, at least, enough offense to support a team that currently boasts a 148 ERA+, which is [does intense and labored calculations] good.
The D-Backs aren’t perfect — those bats will need to pick things up eventually, because even with A.J. Pollock setting the world on fire, the offense overall is below-average. Their strong pitching was a major piece of the puzzle last year, however, and it looks like they’re picking up where they left off in that regard. On the other hand, at least the D-Backs aren’t the Dodgers right now: Los Angeles has the talent to catch up, of course, because as you likely remember, it is May 2 and there are a few games left on the schedule. They are also nine games behind the Diamondbacks already, though, with just 11 games remaining against the team that is clearly the biggest threat to their streak of NL West championships.
Arizona could falter just enough as the Dodgers return to normalcy, where normalcy is their dominance of everyone around them. That game gets just a little bit tougher each time the Diamondbacks take a W from the defending NL champs, however, and Arizona has two more chances for wins against Los Angeles before this week is over.
- Whatever lovely things Dexter Fowler is doing for his wife, he should do more of them, because she rescheduled a C-section so that her husband wouldn’t miss a series against the Cubs, which would have cost him a chance to hang out with Anthony Rizzo.
- Christian Vazquez made a mistake during Tuesday’s Red Sox/Royals game, but it was not a catcher’s balk as the umpires said it was.
- Bryce Harper asked people to imagine the Capitals in the Stanley Cup Finals, which is even funnier than imagining the Nationals in the World Series.
- Sorry, Mina.
- R.J. Anderson wrote about the lessons to be learned from the rebuilding of the 2003 Tigers, and did so with extensive reporting.
- Jon Bois tackled the career of Adam Dunn, which he believes to be the weirdest in MLB history.
- Trevor Bauer accused Astros’ pitchers of cheating, and he was mercilessly and deservedly dunked on by the Astros because of it.
- Jorge Soler looks like he’s finally coming around to be the player the Cubs, and now the Royals, hoped he’d be.
- The Giants placed Johnny Cueto on the disabled list with elbow inflammation.
- Lookout Landing checks to see just how lucky the Mariners have been.
- Alexis Brudnicki wrote about her time at scouting school for Hardball Times.
- Craig Edwards wrote about that Josh Hader game for FanGraphs. You know the one.
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