Short-term and long-term, and the fixes for them are different. We don’t want to do anything in haste to repair the issues seen in a dozen games, that will hamper us in the long-term. I’m working on a short-term issues post that’ll go up this evening, though it’s more listing the problems than supplying any direct answers.

Looking at the suggestions here, it seems you are talking more about the long-term than anything, and I would be very cautious on over-reacting to what we’ve seen so far. Not having Webb about is a significant difference-maker: as I will be mentioning, he’d won three games by this point last season, and if you drop them onto our current record, we’d be at 7-5, and things would look a damn sight rosier.

With hindsight, there were a couple of horrendous mis-steps that cost the team dearly. Most obviously, the long-term extension to Eric Byrnes, which then played into the decision to dump MVP candidate Carlos Quentin, and came right on the heels of trading Scott Hairston. This almost forced the team to bring up Justin Upton, at age 20, almost certainly before he was fully ready to play in the majors. The team also should have got a lot better haul for Jose Valverde – most saves in 2007 – than someone to replace him in Chad Qualls, and Chris Burke [though Gutierrez may be the diamond in that deal]. If we couldn’t get a better haul, we should have hung on to him. And I still reckon letting Juan Cruz leave this off-season was idiotic.

How to fix it. Sad to say, the only real chip we have that I can see us using is Brandon Webb, and if we’re out of the race by mid-season, I imagine we’ll be listening to offers for him. The sooner he goes, the more valuable he will be, because the more he’ll have left on his contract, but I do not want a repeat of the Valverde trade. He should get us a good haul, and we should also listen to offers for Doug Davis and Jon Garland at the trade deadline, since neither will (almost certainly be with us next season).

I’d like to see us getting a solid left-handed bat who can play everyday, at one of the corner positions. I dunno why Chad Tracy isn’t getting the chance to settle in and be that guy. I am not convinced, on performances thus far, that Mark Reynolds will ever be a good full-time player in the National League, unless he can improve his defense significantly. His offense has power, no doubt of that, but it comes with a lot of baggage in the form of K’s and errors. We need to get hitters who are better at putting the ball in play and getting on-base: we have currently too many K-friendly batters, so when we do get someone on base, they stay there more often than not.

Clark is toast. Waive him. Byrnes needs to go back to being a fourth outfielder, with the other three playing everyday, unless his performance justifies more than that – which it certainly doesn’t at the moment. But most of the rest of the team, I can see as being useful: Jackson, Snyder, Drew, Young and Upton are a solid core of players, and are affordable for the next few years: we should be looking to fill the gaps around them with equally solid players.

That’s just some brainstorming thoughts off the top of my head, which may or may not make sense in the cold light of morning. :-)

Whilst the POTENTIAL is clearly there for some players, I can’t see the logic in basing two thirds of your lineup on potential.

We all were looking forward at the end of 2006 for the future when we started bringing up the kids that everyone in baseball agreed had a bunch of talent. Many felt that 2007 would be that year where they got their feet wet and get that experience and that starting in 2008, we would be the power in the NL West; for many years to come.
What happened? Did all the scouts have it that wrong?
We’ve seen all of them struggle mightily at times with the very basics of the game. Hitting, fielding, base running. Everyone else in the league made adjustments to them, but yet, they can’t seem to find that groove again and adjust back. To me, this speaks to a flaw in our system. We can dump our current load of players, but I don’t have the confidence bringing in a new batch will be any better. Quentin seems to be doing well as is Ugglia. It would be a stab to the heart to throw in the towel on this bunch only to watch them take off with another team.
I say find this flaw in our player development and deal with that first, then look at other options. I would hate to bring up Whitesell at this point in time and then watch his talent and potential be wasted and go for naught.

Quentin is on pace for 82hrs. I know if they were to give up on upton in saw 2 or 3 years he would blow up in another uniform. 40/40 guy, trade him, he looks like he is home sick or something, trade him to rays for crawford. So he can be with his bro

" I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend[s]"

As Jim pointed out, the ’01 World Seires team was in the same spot we were at 4-8 and they had both Johnson and Schilling, in fact the all of the 4 wins were started by either of our aces. Otherwise, the pitching that year had been horrendous.

To me, while the offensive struggles are certainly concerning and frustrating, I am happy to see that our pitching, especially the starters have been fairly sharp (save an outing or two). Andall of this has been without the guy that finished in the top two in Cy Young voting the past 3 years. As long as the pitching remains a constant (and all signs seem to point to that happeneing) this team has a chance.

The ’01 team was able to turn it around quickly, getting back to .500 a mere 8 games after their 4-8 start, and this team can too. Lets all just take a deep breath and give the 2009 season a chance to unfold before we…

“Cut ties with all the lies that we’ve been living in”

Well, I think our only option is to just ride out the season and then make moves in the offseason. I don’t see any hitter out there that we can get that would make a difference. There isn’t an Adam Dunn that we can trade for, out of the free agents this year one that I think could help our team is Adrian Beltre, but he’s not going to be the difference maker that makes our offense go from bad to good. So there is not point in giving guys up for him.

One option I thought of was Nate McLouth, but some thing with Beltre don’t think he would be the difference in our offense going from bad to good, so there would be no point in giving guys up for him.

This is why I say wait until the offseason, maybe a good hitter will demand a trade and we can get him by using Webb or prospects.

the opinion before the season, and I still hold it now: if the Diamondbacks aren’t contending this year we can expect the Baby Backs 2.0 experiment to be over. That doesn’t mean every player will be booted, but I would hope and imagine that the FO would be willing to seriously consider rebuilding. Going back through the standings, there are quite a few teams that have charged out of nowhere to win a division once, and then completely such the next few years or more when they realize their “golden team” had considerable flaws or was too lucky.

We still have starting pitching, but the offense is too inconsistent to back them up. This might more acceptable if we could build a bullpen, but that seems to be as about a sure thing as playing Russian roulette. Do we risk moving one of our better players to get another “sure thing” like Rauch?

After saying all that, however, I do think there should be a period of seeing precisely what kind of team emerges for the long term season. After two weeks we can see how bad the slumping Diamondbacks are, now let’s see if they can balance that out. Of course, the leash needs to be kept pretty short otherwise the Diamondbacks could find themselves completely out of any race by the end of May.

Keep playing like last night.

I’m also in the “concerned players perform better away from the club” camp. I hope that the first two weeks were just a slow start and the team will get the kinks worked out – I’d love to see the play more consistent. This isn’t last April and it’s not last September either.

The fact that the players seem unable to reach their full potential points to a coaching issue for me. It’s not one player struggling, it’s everybody. Now, low morale can explain somethings, especially if the guys are expecting to lose. But there is a possibility that coaching isn’t where it needs to be and players are not imptoving or are being allowed to keep bad habits (see: Grace’s comments about Upton wrapping his bat too far back over his shoulder).

since the Dbacks couldn’t keep up with what I said they should do…

Fire Bob Melvin, overhaul the coaching staff, and get rid of Rauch and Tony Clark. Yes, I can see where TC is considered “veteran leadership” but he could do that as a bench coach and open up a roster spot for Whitesell.

I have no idea what to do about the bullpen. I get the feeling that if we had a decent manager that recognized his players’ weaknesses (Rauch CANNOT pitch when we’re up by one; Schoenweis CANNOT pitch to righties; etc) things might go a bit better, but the bullpen has just been the suckage that causes all our problems. Focus the draft on relief pitching, maybe? I honestly do not know anymore.