I appreciate your frustration but you guys are expected to produce at the plate. Tonight was a vast improvement, you can keep the trend going by improving the hits with RISP.

mister .094 batting average – i think when they called this guy a sleeper pick in fantasy this year they meant sleeping pick. he’s officially playing bingo instead of baseball: “O – Ninety Four! Bingo! We have a winner!”

makes me fear for the development of our young players. Gotta admit your faults before you can correct them Chris.

The problem here is perception. Things seem largely unchanged from everything except April, so it’s more than just the first three weeks of the season that are burned into people’s minds. And until the hitting comes around, even for just a few series or so, that perception is unlikely to change.

See, I really dont mind him saying this. And I kind of agree with him. Yeah, they are professionals and are expected to produce; but he is playing pretty good defense and I think he calls a good game. Most pitchers seem to think so to (all 6-10 left-handed future HOFs excluded). And its not as if this team has given up or anything. I have not listened to a game where it seemed they went quietly and gave up (there might have been one, I have not followed them all). Sure its been frustrating, but what other team has had their whole team slump at once on offense, like it appears the DBacks have? And I think Jim may be right in that Webb going down is worse than our offensive slow start. There may be something to the BABIP thing. The hardest part of the season, besides Webb being hurt, for me so far is the unforced errors. Not just the E, but the base running blunders and mental mistakes. Sending guys from third on a shallow pop out to right; or ill-advised attempted steals; those just really hurt (especially when most of the offense is struggling).

I guess the bottom line for me is; for as high as I was last year after April and how rough the season went at time from there; I am not about to give up on the team after 2-3 weeks. I am not ready to trade Webb, or blow the whole team up. I rode out 1998 and 2004, goodness knows we can ride out a poor start to the season.

Just my 2 cents worth. Tear it apart with facts and metrics as needed.

to a certain extent. It’s early enough in the season that if a guy or two is still trying to find his swing then it’s not too big of a deal. When the entire team is cold as ice and exhibiting the same tendacies on a near-nightly basis? Well, you can’t be surprised if people are going to start critiquing.

If I recall, Snyder always starts off slow, and considering the position he probably should get a pass, but that should excuse the entire team.

almost sounds aimed more at Bordow than the fans. Scott’s posted some pretty heavy dumps at the org lately, and Snides is letting him have it. Read Bordow’s column – it’s much harsher, for example, than anything Piecoro would write.

Snyder knows the game with the press. I really think he understands the fans’ frustrations too. Perhaps emboldened by popular response to Dan Haren’s recent blow up, I think Chris is dealing with a particular reporter here, basically saying, “Back off, A-hole”.

I agree Chris doesnt come across nearly as well as Haren, but I really dont think his wrath is aimed at the fans.

The criticism is obviously OTT. Even the mild Piecoro wants to blow up the team and rebuild.

I know our hitters strike out a lot, but they also have a very low BABIP, which will certainly go up. And also, two guys who don’t strike out, Tracy and Jackson, are not pulling their weight either.

And going back to Piecoro, he said the other day we have “too many streaky hitters who are hot and cold at the same time”. What?? Are you suggesting we should dump Chris Young for being cold at the same time as Upton and Snyder? What a silly thing to say.

I’m as frustrated by our offense as the next guy, but please, try and have some perspective.

Having chewed over the quotes, I am something in two minds about them. Sure, the team faces Zambrano, Peavy and so on – but most critics will take that into account. Mark Grace said something on a broadcast, to the effect that he didn’t make his living off aces, it was the #4 and #5 in the rotation, the mid-inning relievers, that’s where you get your hits. But Arizona has struggled equally as much against the Randy Wolfs, Eric Stults’s and Jonathan Sanchezs of the pitching world – scoring one, two and zero runs respectively.

It certainly is the case that it’s only 18 games this season, but as Nick P pointed out, this has largely been going on since May last season, without anyone – coaches, front-office or players – apparently doing much to correct it. Perhaps most unfortunate is the tone of the quotes: I see exactly what Snyder is trying to do, step up and defend his team-mates, but to be frank, it comes across to me as whiny and entitled. Eric Byrnes earns far more this year than most Americans will make in a lifetime: I think few sports fans really want to hear comments from any pro sportsman about how “hard” their job is.

The far better approach would be to admit the team’s performance, on the most basic level of run-scoring, has been inadequate – then go out, as they did last night, and do better. Put together a decent winning streak [and, no, two doesn’t count!], get back above .500 and go from there. You and your team-mates have the absolute power to make the criticism stop. See my SIG for details.

And I am willing to bet a large sum Snyder didn’t say “ticks me off”. :-)

I’m still behind the team! You guys drive me nuts, but I’m still there cheering ya on.

between how he starts his statement and how he finishes it. The first paragraph drives me absolutely nuts. The Diamondbacks hitters are struggling. Getting angry because people are saying that they’re struggling doesn’t help. It sounds, like Jim said, whiny and entitled. And it sounds like they’re incapable of acknowledging a serious, long-lasting problem.

Snyder’s statement reminds me of Mark Reynolds disappointing “just the kind of hitter I am” excuse from last year. And that’s what makes me think we we aren’t doing a good job of player development. The team is quick to offer excuses and platitudes and slow to acknowledge problems. That’s a great way to solidify bad performance, not to help young players improve.

The rest of Snyder’s statement is a helpful reminder. Sure, they’re frustrating to watch right now, but the D-Backs are trying. We are (or at least I am) too quick to equate ugly results with lack of effort. The team hasn’t given up, and that gives us some hope for improvement.

that the players and coaches are unable to correct their on-field mistakes is widespread , here certainly, and at the heart of an interesting philosophical debate.

I think it’s fair to say most pitters accept BoMel’s #1 above (our team is very talented) as a given, and gravitate toward #2 as the root of most problems. I’d like to explore the opposite possibility. Not to merely assess “tools” in the usual way, but to dig a little deeper and probe what “talent” really is.

I mean, there’s baseball talents, like the god-given hand eye coordination to turn around a 95 mph fastball or recognize balls out of a pitcher’s hand, and there’s stuff I’d call football combine talents, like throwing a ball hard and running the forty. I wonder if we have an imbalance there (ie the best football team in the major leagues).

I heard Malcolm Gladwell on CSPAN this weekend, define talent as “the desire to practice”. He cited The Beatles, who drove themselves to play 8 hr sets, seven days a week, months on end, in grimy Hamburg – something very few young bands were driven to do. Anyway, he argues that’s what made them great, more than any inborn musical gifts.

I’m not sure I agree with that, but thought it was interesting, and made me look at talents like JUp and Max a little differently. Maybe there’s more to baseball “talent” than just these hulking football skills, reasonably good kids and reasonably good coaches. Maybe it takes an unsual kind of drive that only comes from inside. One you cant teach. One you cant tap, if it’s not there.