Diamondbacks get Matt Gorgen as PTBNL in Qualls trade

beginning to consider that flyball pitchers are going to be more successful in chase (in these next couple of years at least) rather than groundball pitchers because

1) our outfield defense as a whole is a lot stronger than our infield defense
2) chase field has become less and less home run friendly in recent years. in 2006 we lead MLB in HR park factor, but the past two years our HR park factor was at 104 (barely above the median)
3) our problem seems to be that we give up a significant number of doubles and triples. our walls aren’t very high, so it’s not likely that these extra base hits come from deep fly balls that hit the wall (only place where this is possible is deep center), which means that our defense can get to most “fly balls” and the problem is more the line drives we give up (corroborated by stories from hitters of how good our batter’s eye is, which leads to hard hits). a quick look at the leaderboards on fangraphs doesn’t show much of a connection between line drive rates and groundball/flyball rates, though i tend to wonder if the hard grass allows for more doubles down the baseline at chase than in other parks
4) since hard hits seem to be the main problem, and it seems we can’t control for it well, then the comparative advantage seems to go to pitchers who can limit walks. flyball pitchers tend to walk people a lot less than groundball pitchers

granted, if we get one of those strike-throwing ground-burners a la the tim hudson mold, i’d be pretty happy too. but i feel like those are a lot rarer than just normal flyball pitchers who can limit their walks

gorgen’s walk rate is too high

can still generate 1-2 WAR though……or even more

that’s better than many other prospects

just look at luke gregerson, or matt thornton, or mike adams