Cammy, Gonzo and Finley had gotten on the sauce sooner we could have made some noise. At the least we could have gotten a better return when they were salary dumped.
I would have loved to see a roided up Myles Straw. Dude might have crushed 5, maybe even 6 home runs. Could have been a legend.
Luis Gonzalez was a Hall of Famer on the juice - 8 years with the D-Backs. 30 WAR 240 homers 300 doubles more walks than strikeouts --- 920 OPS and a 130 OPS. All of that after age 30 with the Diamondbacks. 5 All Star games Made 52 of his 65 million dollars in the 8 year span Beat the greatest relief pitcher ever in the World Series. The "sauce" worked really well for Luis Gonzalez........ it seems like it made the guys life a lot better.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/is-a-yainer-diaz-breakout-coming/ Article about Yainer Diaz, the summary is that Diaz is one of the very best hitters in the league at punishing pitches over the plate, but is not great at not chasing balls (resulting in a low walk rate) and hits a lot of hard grounders (limiting his xbh). If he is able to get more selective and improve his launch angle even slightly, he would likely be one of the 10-20 best hitters in baseball. I personally don’t expect that. I think he is who he is for the next 3-4 seasons: an aggressive ground ball hitter who makes a lot of contact and destroys meatballs, which makes him sit somewhere between above average and excellent, but prevents him from being a superstar. On a contending team, he’s best as a 5 or 6 hole hitter, and if he’s a teams 7th best hitter then they probably have one of the 2-3 best offenses in baseball. But if he’s hitting in the 3-4 hole then he’s probably not on a very good team.
Nobody has mentioned Willie Taveras yet? I had forgotten about Fisher who was pretty damn fast when it mattered most. (Obvious, but great coaching decision)
We still don't know exactly what he is offensively while catching full time. He improved his obp in his sophomore campaign from .308 to .325, but his slugging % dropped massively from .538 to .441. If you take his improved obp from '24 with his slugging from '23, he would post a .863 ops, which is hof production, up there with the best catchers in mlb history. Even his ops from his rookie year .846 would lead the league most years among catchers.
Anyone else bummed that todays game is on tape delay on 740? No offense to Matt and Ross but I'd much rather listen to the game live.
Alot of you guys probably wont know who he is, but Stone Garrett, George Ranch HS standout, just was waived by the Nationals. He is a family friend of ours (as is Nick Hernandez, who he's boys with), and he trained my son in hitting for about 3 years before and during COVID before he got picked up by Arizona. He had a debilitating injury back in 2022 trying to rob DJ Lemaheui of a HR. If he didnt have that injury, he'd probably still be on the team. Awesome glove in the OF. @Nook
I have an MLB.tv account. I get the subscription for free through tmobile but that doesn't start until the last week of spring training so not sure why I am able to listen. I just clicked on the 3 dots on the top right of the GameDay screen and the 790 broadcast is the only one listed.
He had a .828 OPS in the second half of last year. One would imagine last year was a huge learning curve for him on the defensive side of things - we know what this team demands of its catchers. It’s not surprising he struggled early on in the season. If he ever is hitting 7th in a lineup something went wrong.
He hit around .360 with runners in scoring position. He is a pure hitter and he is really clutch. I see 30 homers for him this year.
