Kuzul

There’s a new star duo in town in Arizona. Determined to upgrade their starting pitching, the Diamondbacks aggressively added ace right-handers Zack Greinke and Shelby Miller to their rotation earlier this winter.

But, meh. While those two should help the Diamondbacks get to where they want to be in 2016 and beyond, the heart and soul of the team remains the other, more underappreciated star duo.

Before Greinke and Miller, there was center fielder A.J. Pollock and first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. And, granted, the two of them are hardly invisible on the national landscape. Both were All-Stars in 2015, and Goldschmidt has been the runner-up for the National League MVP in two of the last three seasons.

However, you’re not going to punch their names into Google and see anybody glorifying them the way past star duos have been glorified. You know, like Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire or Simon and Garfunkel.

Which is a danged shame, really, as the Pollock-Goldschmidt duo is arguably the best in the sport.

If you think back to 2015, maybe it’s Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista or Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant who come to mind first as the league’s most dynamic position player duo. But with a combined 16.2 wins above replacement, Baseball-Reference.com WAR actually puts that honor squarely on Pollock and Goldschmidt.

And lest anyone think that they’re strictly a 2015 success story, over the last two years, they actually reign supreme among the star duos that are still standing:

This isn’t all Goldschmidt, either. As awesome as “America’s First Baseman” is, he actually hasn’t been that much more productive than Pollock. Goldschmidt has produced 13.3 WAR over the last two years. Despite being limited to 75 games by injury in 2014, Pollock has produced 11.3.

Skeptical of WAR? That’s OK. The popular opinion may be that it’s a flawless measure of value, but there are flaws. The Citizen Kane of baseball statistics it is not.

But in a case like this one, WAR does have the right idea.

For position players, WAR is all about encapsulating all-around value. With a few quirks, checks and balances, and bells and whistles aside, its focus is on hitting, baserunning and fielding.

And those, of course, are otherwise known as three areas where Pollock and Goldschmidt excel.

It’s no secret that Goldschmidt‘s bat is legit. He’s hit .309 with a .968 OPS over the last three seasons, putting him behind only Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera in adjusted OPS. And in hitting .321 with a 1.005 OPS and 33 home runs in 2015, he made a strong case for himself as baseball’s best hitter.

Pollock is a darn good hitter in his own right. He’s coming off a .315 average, an .865 OPS and 20 dingers in 2015, and has hit .311 with an .861 OPS over the last two seasons combined. Among his fellow center fielders, adjusted OPS puts him behind only Trout and Andrew McCutchen.

Pollock also showed in 2015 that he can be one of the most productive baserunners in the sport. He stole 39 bases and finished in the top 10 in MLB in overall baserunning value, according to FanGraphs. For his part, Goldschmidt has averaged roughly 15 stolen bases per season over the last four years, allowing him to rate as the game’s top baserunning first baseman by a significant margin.

And then there’s the defense. Goodness, is there defense.

Pollock just led all National League center fielders in defensive runs saved, and Goldschmidt owned his fellow first basemen in that same department. And though defensive metrics have indeed been known to be inconsistent, they seem to have firm opinions on the quality of Pollock’s and Goldschmidt‘s defense. There’s also the fact that each just won a Gold Glove, proof that they pass the eye test as well.

That’s especially true of Pollock, who is capable of such feats as this:

We mentioned a few awesome hitting duos before, but pairs of players that are living, breathing highlight reels in all three phases of the game are decidedly rarer. To find two teammates as good as Pollock and Goldschmidt, you might have to go all the way back to Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez in the 1990s.

This naturally raises the question of why there isn’t more buzz surrounding the Pollock-Goldschmidt duo, and there are a few readily apparent answers.

One is the fact that they play in one of Major League Baseball’s more obscure markets. A second is the fact that the Diamondbacks have seemed more interested in upholding baseball’s unwritten rules than in playing good baseball in recent years. As a result of that, only Goldschmidt has gotten postseason exposure. And even when he did, it was only four games.

But another explanation for why Pollock and Goldschmidt aren’t bigger superstars is that they were never supposed to be superstars.

Baseball is in an age when the best prospects are not only hyped more than they used to be, but they are more likely to find success than perhaps ever before. It’s no wonder that many of the league’s brightest stars were famous prospects who simply became even more famous once they made good on all the hype in the majors. Think Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Andrew McCutchen, Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa, and so on and so on down the line.

In an environment like this, the road to superstardom is naturally going to be a little longer for players that arrive in the big leagues amidst relatively little fanfare. And in both Pollock’s and Goldschmidt‘s prospect days, fanfare was pretty hard to come by.

Pollock was Arizona’s No. 17 pick out of Notre Dame in the 2009 draft, but Baseball America noted that there was a “debate as to whether he’s a true first-round talent.” Goldschmidt, meanwhile, was taken out of Texas State way down in the eighth round. 

Their stock didn‘t rise much in the years following the draft. Neither Pollock nor Goldschmidt ever appeared in an annual top 100 list at Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus or MLB.com. In fact, eventually they both got to a point where Baseball America didn‘t even consider them among the top prospects in Arizona’s system.

After the 2010 season, Baseball America rated Goldschmidt as Arizona’s No. 11 prospect, with a note that he might “at least have a solid career as a platoon player.” After the 2012 season, Baseball America rated Pollock as Arizona’s No. 10 prospect, with a note that some scouts were seeing him as “a solid regular in center field and others thinking he profiles best as a fourth outfielder.”

Knowing what we know now, a hat tip in the direction of whichever Diamondbacks executives and coaches believed in Pollock and Goldschmidt is appropriate. But a hat tip is also owed to the two players themselves, as they have defied expectations precisely because they had the will to do so.

As former Arizona scouting director Tom Allison told Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic about Pollock: “Guys don’t play above their tools — they maximize their tools. For someone like A.J. Pollock, his drive and his intangibles helped him maximize his tools more than other guys might.”

And as Alan Zinter, Goldschmidt‘s rookie ball coach, told Tyler Kepner of the New York Times: 

A lot of kids have so much pride that they want to show the coaches and the front office that they know what they’re doing, and they don’t need the help. They don’t absorb the information because they want us to think they know it already. Goldy didn’t have an ego. He didn’t have that illusion of knowledge. He’s O.K. with wanting to learn.

Being willing to put in the work to get better has gotten Pollock and Goldschmidt much further than most of them expected to go. And after all they’ve done in the last couple of years, here’s presuming the many doubters they once had are now true believers.

Now all they have to do is get Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Baseball Fan to come around.

To that end, it may be as simple as Pollock and Goldschmidt continuing to be themselves in 2016. If they can do that while Greinke and Miller elevate the Diamondbacks’ pitching staff, there might be some winning baseball going on in Arizona for a change. 

That would put more eyes on Pollock and Goldschmidt, and those eyes would see what they’ve been missing.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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The San Francisco Giants traded right-handed pitcher Cody Hall to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday in exchange for cash considerations or a player to be named later, announced Arizona. 

The Giants had designated Hall for assignment on Monday to make room for recently signed outfielder Denard Span, per Chris Haft of MLB.com.

Hall, 28, made his MLB debut this past season, appearing in seven contests and posting a 6.48 ERA, 1.68 WHIP and seven strikeouts in 8.1 innings of work. He’s spent his entire pro career coming out of the bullpen, posting a 2.58 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and 323 strikeouts in 289.0 innings pitched across all levels in five professional seasons.

Hall has flashed potential during his minor league career, and the Diamondbacks will be hoping he can live up to that potential and bolster a bullpen that was solid if unspectacular last season.  

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After shocking the baseball world by agreeing to sign with the Arizona Diamondbacks last week, superstar pitcher Zack Greinke was introduced as part of a highly anticipated press conference Friday.

The 32-year-old righty put a bow on his new, six-year, $206.5 million contract by donning a D-backs jersey for the first time, as seen in this GIF, courtesy of Major League Baseball:

Many expected Greinke to return to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2016 and beyond after enjoying the best season of his career, but he instead decided to join forces with an NL West rival.

Per MLB.com’s Joey Nowak, the prospect of signing with the Diamondbacks immediately appealed to Greinke: “As soon as (agent Casey Close) told me the D-backs called, it got me excited, and just went from there. It happened pretty fast, but it was a team I had a lot of experience with and knew really well, so it wasn’t like I needed a bunch of extra time to get to know people or get to know the city.”

According to MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert, however, the deal with Arizona nearly didn’t come to fruition:

Money obviously played a big role in Greinke’s decision, but he revealed Friday there were some other factors at work as well.

Per Gilbert, the former Cy Young Award winner views the Diamondbacks as a team on the rise after admiring their play last season:

More specifically, Greinke cited their aggressiveness as something that drew him toward the desert, according to Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times:

It turns out the D-backs are also aggressive off of the field, as evidenced by their ability to poach Greinke from the Dodgers.

Diamondbacks chief baseball officer Tony La Russa also spoke at the press conference and explained the rationale behind throwing such a massive contract at Greinke, per Nowak: “We were looking for a true No. 1, a true leader of the staff that would take the ball on Opening Day, and every day in the toughest game (he) would want to be out there. We’re very fortunate. This young man’s in the midst of a great career, and now the next six years—he’ll be having them with us.”

Arizona has a great deal of ground to make up in 2016 as it finished 13 games behind the Dodgers, but landing Greinke is a move that should help close the gap.

He went 19-3 with a 1.66 ERA in 2015, and while it will be difficult to match that output, right away he becomes the ace Arizona has lacked for quite some time.

If Greinke can stabilize the pitching staff and pair it with a potentially dynamic offense that includes All-Stars Paul Goldschmidt and A.J. Pollock, then the Diamondbacks have a chance to be one of 2016’s breakout teams.

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.

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Former Washington Nationals manager Matt Williams has accepted his former job as the third-base coach with the Arizona Diamondbacks, according to John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports. 

The D-backs haven’t formally made the announcement of Williams’ hiring, but Steve Gilbert of MLB.com speculated that could come as early as Wednesday:

Williams was the D-backs’ third-base coach from 2010-2013 before taking the Washington Nationals’ managerial job. In Washington, he was the NL Manager of the Year in 2014, but the team fell well short of expectations as unanimous World Series favorites last year, per Odds Shark, which led to his firing on Oct. 5.

The Nationals replaced Williams with Dusty Baker last week, and the team’s NL MVP favorite, Bryce Harper, wasn’t shy in expressing his excitement over the change with a slight jab at Williams’ expense while speaking on MLB Network (h/t Chris Johnson of MASN):    

I think you see that smile on my face. I’m definitely very excited to have him. Being able to play for a guy like Dusty, somebody that’s been there, been around the game for a long, long time.

[…]

I’m very excited to have the team that we do. We finally have an All-Star staff and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Williams played 17 seasons in the majors, including his final six with the D-backs in which he was a member of their 2001 World Series team.

The D-backs finished and improved 79-83 in 2015 but still well out of contention in the competitive NL West. They’ve quietly been building to what could be a promising 2016 with young pitching and offense centered around MVP-caliber first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. 

The reunion with Williams may give the D-backs an additional push they need in the clubhouse to make a hopeful run next year. 

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The criticism has been shot with impunity, mostly because everyone with an Internet connection has done it, and the targets have been easy to hit.

Arizona Diamondbacks chief baseball officer Tony La Russa and general manager Dave Stewart have a reputation for resisting Major League Baseball’s move into an analytics era, per USA Today‘s Jason Lisk. They are not entirely different from the previous regime of Kevin Towers and Kirk Gibson, and their controversial payroll-slashing trade of the organization’s 2014 first-round pick in June, followed by curious and baffling comments by Stewart in defense of the deal, led to a war cry from critics, per ESPN’s David Schoenfield.

Rightfully so. This is a franchise that does not look like it can afford to jettison promising pitchers for cash, and it’s moves like that that can create distrust among a fanbase.

Then again, showing immediate promise and potential does much more to retain it. The Diamondbacks are quietly growing into one of the most promising teams in baseball, building to become a potentially legitimate National League contender in 2016 with a potent, youthful offense and a pitching core with upside.

“We kind of look around the clubhouse, and the players like the players that are in here,” center fielder A.J. Pollock told Dave Lumia of Fox Sports Arizona last week. “We feel like we’re very capable of turning heads. Some people are surprised, but we’re not.”

And maybe nobody should be. The Diamondbacks have a plus-29 run differential. Based on that, the team should be around six games over .500 by way of Bill James’ Pythagorean win-loss predictor. The reason the club sits two games under .500 is because its pitching staff gives up more than four runs a game on average. 

The offense has saved the team from being an embarrassment because of its pitching. It’s scoring more than 4.5 runs per game, the fourth-highest average in the majors behind three American League East teams going into Thursday.

In that same time frame, the Diamondbacks led the NL in runs (538), BABIP (.317), baserunning (12.7) and ranked in the league’s top five in OBP (.324), slugging (.405), OPS (.729), Weighted On-Base Average (.316) and Weighted Runs Created Plus (96).

They are also the youngest lineup in the majors with an average age of just under 27 years old—they started the year as the second youngest (28.04 years), according to Stats LLC (per ArizonaSports.com). At the start of last season, the team had the sixth-oldest lineup in baseball.

“Maybe it’s because everyone is so young and so hungry and still trying to make a name for themselves. But you should see how hard this team works behind the scenes, the time spent in the weight room and the (batting) cages,” Paul Goldschmidt, the team’s MVP candidate, told Dan Bickley of AZ Central.

“And we have to be one of the most prepared teams in the league when it comes to scouting reports. It all shows up on the field.”

With guys like Goldschmidt, Pollock, Welington Castillo, David Peralta and Yasmany Tomas as mainstays in the lineup, not to mention top overall pick in last June’s draft Dansby Swanson set to join that infield in the next few years at the latest, the offense seems set.

The team’s problem is its rotation, and everyone, including manager Chip Hale, understands that.

Robbie Ray, acquired from the Detroit Tigers in the three-team deal that sent shortstop Didi Gregorius to the New York Yankees over the offseason, has been the most promising arm in Arizona this season. He is 23 and has a 3.38 ERA and 3.29 Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) in 15 starts. He has also been far better on the road and away from hitter-friendly Chase Field, putting up a 2.75 ERA in nine starts, as opposed to a 4.45 ERA in six home starts.

Patrick Corbin looks like he can be a valuable starter since returning from Tommy John surgery last month. In his nine starts, the 26-year-old has a 4.09 ERA, 3.72 FIP and is striking out 9.2 hitters per nine innings.

Other than those two, the Diamondbacks have not gotten much in the way of optimism from their other starters, including Rubby De La Rosa, Jeremy Hellickson or Archie Bradley, though Bradley is only 23 years old and has fought shoulder issues this season.

Plus, Cuban signee Yoan Lopez is on the minor league disabled list with elbow stiffness/tightness, which can be a precursor to Tommy John surgery. Lopez cost the team more than $16 million to sign because of taxes, and he was the organization’s No. 5 prospect, according to MLB.com.

This is why it was so curious, and infuriating to some, that the front office would move last year’s top draft pick, Touki Toussaint, for money when he was rated the team’s No. 3 prospect by ESPN’s Keith Law. This doesn’t seem like an organization that can get rid of promising pitching prospects as if they grow through the rock lawns of the Arizona valley.

If La Russa and Stewart take the $10 million they got for Toussaint and deploy it in a deal for a front-line free-agent starter, then fine. Because for the Diamondbacks to become true contenders in the NL West, their rotation will have to greatly improve from being one of the league’s bottom dwellers, according to FanGraphs.

“If Dave Stewart can fix the pitching,” Joel Sherman of the New York Post said on MLB Network, “this team can be something.”

For now that “if” remains prominent, but so does the fact that the Diamondbacks have a great foundation of young position players poised to give opposing pitchers fits in 2016 as the team makes its way back to relevancy.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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Hall of Famer Randy Johnson played in the league for 22 years, eight of which were for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He won a World Series with the club in 2001.

On Saturday, the Diamondbacks retired his No. 51, and they made the Big Unit a 51-inch corndog. That’s a lot of calories, but he deserves it after an epic career. Eat up, Randy!

[Arizona Diamondbacks]

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Last season, the Arizona Diamondbacks finished with the worst record in baseball at 64-98. There were many glaring weaknesses with the team, but it was the 8-22 start that likely buried the D-backs’ playoff hopes before the month of May even began.

This season, Arizona looks much different. The players are healthy, there are fresh faces and new management. Entering Saturday, the D-backs are on a season-high three-game winning streak as their record sits at 13-14.

But it’s not just their record that has improved so far in 2015.

Here are three ways in which the Diamondbacks have already improved this season.

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The first month of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ season has shown a little bit of everything. 

The 2015 D-backs have gotten off to a much better start than the 2014 team, which started the season 5-18 through 23 games. This Arizona team sits at 10-12 entering their 23rd game this season.

There are areas in which the Snakes have improved from 2014, but there are also some recurring themes that could possibly limit the possibility of a postseason run.

Here are the three biggest takeaways from the first month of the D-backs’ season.

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The Arizona Diamondbacks had a relatively busy offseason entering 2015. Besides cleaning house in several areas of management, they made a number of acquisitions via signings and trades that have had an impact thus far.

The D-backs sit at 8-8 entering Saturday and have showed signs of improvement from their abysmal 2014 campaign. Some of the new players have assisted in that regard.

Here are the early grades for Arizona’s offseason acquisitions.

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First base is one of the deepest positions in all of baseball, possessing an eclectic crop of talent including power hitters such as Edwin Encarnacion and Anthony Rizzo, high-average hitters like Joey Votto and Jose Abreu and some who are just pure hitters—Miguel Cabrera and Paul Goldschmidt come to mind.

But if you could pick any of them right now to play first base for a season, who would be the best choice?

The obvious selection would be Cabrera. After all, he won the Triple Crown in 2012 and was the American League MVP in both 2012 and 2013. He is the best pure hitter on the planet, possessing the unique ability to hit for both average and power.

But Cabrera’s 2014 performance really makes him stand out from the rest of the pack. That year, he hit .313 with 25 home runs and 109 RBI in what was labeled a down year. Anybody who can hit over .300 and pass the 25-homer, 100-RBI plateau in a “down year” must be an absolute stud at the plate.

While Cabrera definitely is that, he would not be my choice this season. My selection would be Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, the best all-around first baseman in the league right now.

Not an overly heralded prospect coming out of Texas State, Goldschmidt broke out in 2012, hitting .286 with 20 homers in his first full big league season.

He improved on that in 2013 with MVP-caliber production, racking up a league-leading 36 home runs and 125 RBI while hitting .302. He also led the league in slugging percentage, OPS and OPS+, according to Baseball-Reference.com.

Goldy was on his way to similar numbers last year, but he suffered a fluke injury when he was hit by an Ernesto Frieri fastball in early August, which forced him to miss the final two months of the season. He still finished with a .300 batting average, 19 home runs and an All-Star Game appearance, though, and he was primed for a huge year in 2015.

As expected, he has started this year on a tear. Through 15 games, the slugging first baseman has already hit five home runs, driven in a league-leading 16 runs, scored 13 runs and stolen two bases. He is also getting on base at a stellar .415 clip.

Cabrera is off to a hot start, too, hitting .367 with two home runs so far in 2015. But that doesn’t change the fact that I would want Goldschmidt as my first baseman right now.

Goldschmidt, 27, is five years younger than Cabrera and does not have the injury history that the Tigers slugger has. Cabrera had core surgery after the 2013 season to repair muscles in his groin that connect to the abdomen, and he had ankle surgery this past offseason to remove bone spurs in his right ankle and repair a stress fracture.

While Cabrera seems to have recovered from these injuries without much difficulty, the threat of injury is always there for him. Goldschmidt, however, has not been injured, except for that fluke last year, courtesy of a Frieri fastball.

Goldschmidt is also a better fielder than Cabrera is. Goldy won a Gold Glove in 2013, when his 5.4 Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) was the sixth best in the league among first basemen, according to FanGraphs. Cabrera, on the other hand, has never won any kind of defensive award and has recorded mediocre-at-best defensive metrics throughout his career.

And don’t forget Goldschmidt‘s ability to steal bases. It’s not like he’s Billy Hamilton on the bases, but he stole 15 bases in 2013 and likely would have matched that in 2014 if not for his injury. That’s a high number of steals for a first baseman, and it’s another way that Goldschmidt separates himself from the rest of the pack.

Cabrera is undoubtedly the better pure hitter, but that doesn’t make up for the other areas.

So, taking into account his younger body, his fewer surgeries, his better defensive ability and the fact that he is a legitimate threat to steal bases, Goldschmidt is a better all-around player than Cabrera is—and he is the player I would want at first base for one season.

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