you’re assuming that Randy is coming back?

On the one hand, I didn’t see many signs that the young D-Backs can develop into credible hitters. On the other, I’d like to see what they can do with more developmentally-minded coaches. This year looks like a lost developmental season for Reynolds, Young and Jackson, but I don’t want to give up on them yet.

The last few weeks aside, I like our rotation. I’d be reluctant to diminish the D-Backs’ greatest strength until we know what we actually have on offense.

Trade Webb? Nooooooooooooooo!

They’re proven A-list starters except for recently, and I don’t think trading them is going to net us much of anything nearly as valuable.

I do believe, however, that the coaching staff is up for some serious overhaul, including Melvin and possibly some front-office staff. Melvin has gone way too long with being patient and complacent with this team. I sure hope they got a serious yelling after the game yesterday.

I think trading Webb would lead to a fan revolt of the highest order.

It’s 1 and a half games. Ask the 2007 Phillies if 1 and half games is hard to overcome.

it’s not over.

The only thing I want out of the coaching staff next year is fundamental baseball. I don’t care if they have to fire them all, though I don’t hate them, but then who would be brought in? I’m not sure if any of the usual suspects would be the answer.

As for the lineup, though there have been disappointing performances this year, I’m not going to advocate blowing it up yet. I do think we need to solidify the corner infield question, and we will need a 2nd basemen. They probably should answer these questions before anything else, and if packaging Reynolds and Tracy yields an excellent 3rd or 1st basemen, then awesome.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a crossroads for an organization. At 1.5 games behind the Dodgers, our season isn’t over, but taking into account how we are playing now and the fact that we need to win the division to play in October, it doesn’t look good. But what about the future of the team? I think there are two options that we can take at this point. First, we could just hope for one more good year (2009) out of our current team, maybe keep guys like Eckstein around for one more year, and then fold in our chips. Alternatively, we could really try to boost our club after the season, resigning Dunn, trading Tracy/Reynolds for a good 3B, and build this club to win in 2009-2010, and then endure years of suckitude as we are broke and our team slowly dissolves.

Personally, I dont wanna talk about 2009 quite yet, until I better grasp / bludgeon why we’re at where we’re at :-)

The essence of your post has an underlying contradiction, I think, or maybe I misunderstand your central thrust. You mention several times that this isnt (and wont be) a playoff team, as presently constructed, yet spend quite a bit of time wailing on Bob Melvin and Bryan Price. Now, that’s not an inherent contradiction, in that you can be dissatisfied with both the roster construction and coaching – and you certainly arent avoiding roster challenges in a post asking, “Is It Time To Blow Things Up?” – I just find it interesting, maybe more on a psychological level than a truly substantive one – that in such a detailed assessment the name “Josh Byrnes” doesnt come up once. Maybe pinning true responsibilities for personnel gaffes is inherently murkier than directly blaming the mgr for in-game strategy; nonetheless, the absence of any FO name in this detailed and otherwise very good essay strikes me as a bit unusual.

I like Josh. With very rare exception, I’ve admired his public style. I also try to cut him slack because I dont know the actual restraints on his finances or authority. But looking at Expected Wins since his arrival, across quite a few moves and the depletion of one of baseball’s best farms, this team’s year to year performance (RS/RA) hasnt moved much at all. In my mind, this season’s injuries balance out the Dbacks’ historically weak competition. More or less. From the start, he’s invested in proven innings eaters and a stable of hard throwing righties (sans Valverde) in the pen, at the expense of offensive investment, and has gotten by with it thanks largely to last year’s 11 game pythag gap and this embarrassing NL West field. Maybe that philosophy is simply running it’s due course. Haren and Webb (not to mention Randy and DD) have pitched alot of innings, and given they’re athletes and not machines, perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect that to continue. In any event, this team’s offense is clearly vulnerable to any kind of staff erosion, let alone the broader based pitching collapse recently witnessed.

Looking back, there is one turning point from which virtually all the team’s troubles stem – the extension of Eric Byrnes.

Given the assumption Moorad thrust this down everyone’s throats, this “root cause for most of our problems” mantra let’s Josh off the hook too easily, imo. In retrospect, I think the bigger turning point (certainly not the only one) was the glaring misevaluation – medical or otherwise – of Quentin. The price was certainly right to field a 2008 OF of Carlos, Young & Upton, but this penny wise FO (murky acronym intentional) worried about it in terms of production… and selling tickets. I think it’s fair to say this FO projected higher production for Eric than some of the services did, but I doubt that gap was as large as sometimes portrayed. The FO thought they could compete with a healthy, base-baggin’ Byrnes, approaching 100 OPS+, while building up this aggressive brand with which they are so infatuated. At any rate, the people who write the checks thought that was worth $30M over 3. In the end, with the benefit of hindsight, and not truly knowing the actual financial restraints on the FO, which was the bigger blunder? Thinking you can compete with a healthy Eric Byrnes? Or thinking you cant with a healthy Carlos Quentin? I lean towards the latter.

the offense needs to be doing a whole lot better than they have these past five months years :-)

Despite all this, Josh has been given yet another reprieve, courtesy of the NL West. If he can recobble some semblance of his pitching staff in the remaining four weeks, I give em a shot to overtake the Dodgers – maybe 40 percent. If Haren and Webb are toast, given LA’s pitching and remaining schedule, I cant see it exceeding 10 percent.

I don’t want to write that much as it’s already pretty much been said. However I wonder if it’s not time to sacrifice the payroll we are investing in 2 mid level pitchers (Davis and Randy) in favour of really spending on a top offensive stud. Our top two pitchers are sound and with Petit and Sherzer we can easily afford to dump the payroll of one or both of RJ and DD without losing that much in terms of pitching results.

For too long the organisation has banked on bits and pieces players liked Hudson and Tracy, or raw young talent like Young/Upton/Reynolds to provide the runs but it’s clear in the past 4 years that such an approach just isn’t working. I Find it somewhat ironic that they replaced Gonzo with EB, a player who is basically Gonzo V03-06. Moreover, whilst Young and Reynold have provided power in the past 2 seasons, it’s come at the price of more K’s then you can shake a stick at and some horrific OBP numbers.

Lets look at this in the cold hard light of day. If you are the Mets, Phillies or even the Dodgers which position player would you actually put in your side opening day 2009 that would be under the control of AZ? For my money I’d only pick Drew and Snyderman but even Drew is against Rollins and Reyes….. CoJack is a decent LF but a 2nd/3rd best outfielder for a top contending team, Young has been so hit and miss over 2 1/2 seasons that in a pennant race do you want to bank on him getting on base? not to mention his drop off in steals this season meaning that even when he gets there he isn’t being put to use. Reynolds is a K machine with sub par defence, Upton is still a relative unknown, nobody knows how Byrnes will come back from injury, Tracy looks finished as a defender and his offence is dying on its arse to boot.

Such comments are admittedly quick and are snap judgements yes but the point I was trying to make is that very few of our team are players you’d want in your dream team or if you were constructing a contending lineup on 40-50 million.

So yeah in my view the only untouchables in this team should be Drew, Snyder and CoJack and Upton, the rest are all trade bait. I’d like to keep Eckstein just to get us a settled leadoff hitter and also given the expected loss of the O-Dawg and whilst I’d love Dunn to be the stud player I mentioned I can’t see it happening.

the D’backs are thinking about resigning Dunn. I don’t know if I can believe that though. But if we did resign Dunn, the question mark next year would be 2nd, unless Reynolds goes there and D’Antona goes to 3b. It took Jackson a little while to figure out big league pitching, so give these guys next year, and if they don’t show improvement then get rid of them.

He wouldn’t cost much and we could give money to someone else.

No one has mentioned the cheapest source of OBP out there, ripe for the plucking. Barry Bonds could play first and turn all our solo homers into two run blasts. Heck, clogging the bases is a mute point when the ball never gets the chance to roll through the infield. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Ryan Braun style.

I have never wished I was Brewers fan more than I do right now. I have these happy little dreams of the same thing happening to BoMel and his merry band of misfits. In the meantime, I’m proud (and a little jealous ) of your good sense, Brew Crew!

The more I ponder Jim’s question of blowing everything up, the more I think the answer is a qualified “No”.

Looking at this young positional core (Upton, CY, Reynolds, Drew, and to a lesser extend CoJack & Snyder), I dont see unsalvagable failure as much as valuable players shy of expected peaks, who are already collectively hitting around league average OPS. Barring unforseen injury to Webb or Haren, the rotation, with Scherzer and Davis remains a clear strength, and the bullpen is far from the glaring structural weakness recently portrayed. (Even with all it’s issues, it’s loaded with arms and still one of the best five or six pens in the league, based on park adjusted ERA).

Our collective disappointment may stem from two centrally false expectations. First, misreading the readiness level (apart from talent level) of an inexperienced core to carry most of a quality offense. I’ve certainly been critical of how the FO has fielded this Not Ready For Prime Time crew on the cheap, but our structural offensive problem isnt that these guys havent performed, imo – it’s that the FO has unrealistically relied on them to carry too much of the offensive load too early in their respective development paths. At least until the Dunn acquisition. Eric Byrnes and Orlando Hudson, even playing career best ball prior to injuries, simply never provided enough oomph to counterbalance these youngster’s growing pains. Our offense doesnt stink because a host of individual players arent doing “their jobs” or are being improperly coached, imo. It’s because the FO (and if you want to bring Jerry C’s deferred excesses in the loop here, that’s fine) bought into the idea of a competitive offense without paying for one.

Second, this understandably tenacious misinterpretaion, by some, of 2007’s success. Considering relievers and pinch hitters are both disproportionately used in late inning, high leverage situations, dramatic declines in either area might help explain our actual W/L drop (not to mention 2007’s monster pythag gap), more than dumping on the staff or starting position players, who have, for the most part (Byrnes a glaring exception), performed comparably to 2007 counterparts. In 2007, we led MLB in pinch hit homers and were second in NL OPS off the bench; this year we’re 13th. Last year, Bob amazingly had five solid bullpen options (Valverde, Pena, Lyon, Cruz and Slaten). This year he has two (Cruz and Qualls), despite the fact the pen’s park adjusted ERAs both years are remarkably similar. Those dont sound like “blow up the core” problems as much as “random variation”, “leverage” or “augment the core” concerns, which is good news compared to fixing daunting structural problems.

I’m encouraged how our returning OPS leaders are the slightly older Snyder (age 27) and CoJack(26), and suspect now more than ever is the time to stick with the young core to reap their best ball, even if those peaks werent as lofty or as imminent as some projected. That nucleus, approaching its prime, doesnt need to be blown up. What needs to be “blown up” is the illusion that the young core, with help from Eric Byrnes, is good enough to sustain a quality offense. What the nucleus needs is what they’ve always needed: room to grow and Dunn-caliber augmentation. At this juncture, we’ve abandoned the illusion that our farm was full of Hank Aarons and Mike Schmidts. In the midst of this painful freefall, we mustn’t delude ourselves into thinking they’re Robby Hammock or Alex Cintron either. These are solid young players, with legitimate pedigrees and upsides who should be nurtured and valued, and once we abandon that principle on the altar of “the team isnt competitive enough” or “this kid is struggling”, stuff like Carlos Quentin happens. Each prospect is different, of course, but based on their histories and current age-specific production, it’s fair to expect these guys (CY, Reynolds, Drew) to blossom for at least a couple more years, and Upton for considerably longer than that.

This has essentially been a long term offensive rebuild brilliantly disguised as a competitive club, courtesy of poor competition, last year’s pythag gap, a capable GM and club investment on the pitching side. The Diamondbacks are trying to have it both ways – rebuild and compete – and who can really blame them in this environment? But if one tries to do both and you dont win, than you may also jeopardize the rebuild.

What Needs Fixing?

Second base is a huge issue with no easy, cheap solution – neither can this team afford to lose OPS at any position (from Hudson’s established 100-110 OPS+ base). Mark Ellis might not cost as much as Orlando, but he’ll be 32 next June. I think AZ may opt to migrate Reynolds to second, to maintain (or hopefully improve) that position’s OPS while removing Mark from his too hot corner. It’s a big competitive gamble, but it’s cheap, and I suspect this might be the FO’s direction. Either that, or they’re floating the prospect of Mark at second to prep him as trade bait for a real second baseman. The problem with buying Mark Ellis is that I dont think he’s gonna get you in the playoffs. If you had Adam Dunn and Upton breaks out big, then OK; but if a bunch of starters piddle around 100 OPS+ again, I’m not sure I see his marginal value to the team. But Sherriff would get you 20 or 30 homers there and open up third for a better hitter than Ellis who, presumably, also wouldnt make thirty errors.

The other thing that needs fixing is the lineup imbalance, and here I’m kinda contradicting my cry not to break up the nucleus. But having five or six right handed starters (out of 8) who dont hit RHP particularly well is a strategic gaffe, if for no other reason that two thirds of all IP are by RHP. This team hits lefties quite well, but a team that cant hit righties is tantamount to a team that cant hit. ( Chad Tracy’s injury and inability to hit RHP for the first time really hurt the team this year.). Someone on this team needs to consistently punish righties for this team to be successful, and with all due respect to Drew and Conor, they’re not nearly enough to accomplish that. The acquisition of a significant OPS v RHP boost (something of Dunn’s caliber) in exhange for cash and some combo of our four right handed “outfielders” (Byrnes, Young, Upton, Jackson) would be lovely. I’m afraid Josh has boxed himself in this regard. When searching for a second baseman, or third baseman, or any hitter at this point, can he even entertain the idea of yet another right handed bat?

The final area Josh has boxed himself in and which needs fixing is the bench. The bench just sucked. From Burke to Clarke to Romero and Sally to Ickstein, it was just terrible. Per above, maybe it’s not all JB’s fault – maybe it’s partly random variation, but the bench needs to complement the starter’s efforts much better in order for this team to win games not played on paper. Again, who on this entire team, as constructed, can hit RHP with authority?

your dumb first why would you ever trade webb and 2nd this team is very young and needs time to devlope we are spoiled with success we have been a franchise for 10 years and have already had so much success that thats just what we are used to but in reality no team makes the playoffs every single year especially a team in the middle of building mode most of our guys were rookies the last two years just give them time and they will be phenomanl