Snake Bytes, 7/12: Stanton bombs San Diego

Team news

[AZ Central] Goldschmidt lauded by All-Stars - Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado made his second consecutive All-Star Game this year, and he said Goldschmidt is one of his favorite players in baseball. He said he talks to Goldschmidt whenever he gets the chance if Colorado plays Arizona, peppering him with lots of questions. "Like, ‘What do you think about when you’re up there?’ or, ‘When things are going bad, what do you think?’ " Arenado said. "Because in the beginning of the year he got off to a pretty slow start and now he’s an All-Star, so he's special, and not too many guys can do the things that he does."

[Dbacks.com] Goldy ties club mark with 4th straight ASG appearance - "I definitely don't take any of the All-Star Games I'm in for granted," Goldschmidt said. "I'm excited to be here and looking forward to having fun, but you know how it goes. You get used to being here and seeing some of the guys again. But it could be my last time, so I just try to take everything in and go out there and play well."

[Inside the 'Zona] Improving Brandon Drury is Imperative for 2017 - With 2016 being clearly out the window, the Diamondbacks’ attention will shift to 2017. That likely means using the balance of the remaining season to run some experiments, something we saw plenty of last season. The key idea here is identifying who is and is not part of the team’s future as they continue to build towards attempted contention. Brandon Drury is squarely in the crosshairs as a promising bat that’s currently playing out of position defensively. But as the season’s progressed, Drury’s performance has varied.

[FOX Sports] What exactly did Diamondbacks get in Luis Alejandro Basabe, Jose Almonte for Brad Ziegler? - Bottom line: both Basabe and Almonte have potential but it could be years before either fully realizes it. Still, on the surface it doesn't look like a bad haul for the 36-year-old Ziegler, who will be a free agent at the end of the season.

[Arizona Sports] D-backs fans rank eighth in MLB for grammar - The D-backs were the only team in the NL West that made it in the top-10 for grammar with 1.68 errors per 100 words. The San Francisco Giants ranked 14th with 1.78 errors per 100 words and the Los Angeles Dodgers were 18th with 1.82 errors per 100 words. The Colorado Rockies ranked 24th with 1.91 errors per 100 words, and the San Diego Padres had 1.94 errors per 100 words, good for 26th overall.

And, elsewhere...

[FOX Sports] The impossible Giancarlo Stanton showed us how to 'make baseball fun again' in Derby win - In total, Stanton hit 27,187 feet of homers Monday night —€” more than 5 miles' worth of dingers, with the average distance coming in at a stupefying 445 feet. Stanton hit one straight out of the park Monday. He hit two balls 497 feet. He put one on top of the center-field batter's eye, and he made engineers cringe as he peppered the side of the Western Medal Supply Co. building in left field — would it be able to survive the barrage?

[ESPN] How the NL won baseball's star wars - If the All-Star Game is a time to celebrate star power, let's just come out and say it. You know where you find the brightest stars and the most star-studded franchises in baseball at the moment? In the National League, ladies and gentlemen. The NL has finally won baseball's star wars.

[FiveThirtyEight] Would Baseball’s All-Time All-Star Team Go 162-0? - Standing atop that group as the best All-Star team ever was the 1997 National League squad... Combined, the top players on the ’97 NL team produced 86.2 WAR; six of them reached the MVP level threshold of 6 WAR; their worst position player, Jones, ended up producing 3.7 WAR — still 23rd best in the NL. The 1997 NL All-Stars would have been predicted to win 87 percent of their games, or 140 times in a season. Even given the amount of luck in baseball records,6 the ’97 NL would hypothetically go undefeated only once every six billion seasons.

[WSJ] Baseball Remembers How to Score Runs - Mark Trumbo, who leads the majors with 28 home runs, offers another explanation: The rise of the infield shift has forced batters to make an adjustment. Since they can’t hit it through the defense as easily, they’re swinging for the fences and trying to hit it over the defense. "It’s less desirable than ever to hit the ball on the ground," Trumbo said. "I would assume most guys, myself included, are looking to drive the ball in the air a little bit more."

[AZ Central] Scherzer wants MLB explanation for home-run numbers - There were 2,521 homers hit at the All-Star break last season, so that's a 22 percent increase this season. "Usually you don’t see year-to-year jumps like this in the game," Scherzer said. "Usually everything kinda stays within itself unless something drastic happens. They start moving in the fences across the league, and that didn’t happen. What’s MLB’s explanation?" Scherzer was then asked if he thought the balls felt the same this year. "You can’t feel a change if they do make a change," he replied.

[AP] MLB scraps plans to play in London in 2017 - The players’ association says MLB has given up plans to play regular-season games in the British capital in 2017. Rob Manfred said in January that his staff was working hard at playing in London, and MLB officials looked at the renovated Olympic Stadium as a possible venue. "There was discussion about London early on," union head Tony Clark said Monday. "Unfortunately there were a number of moving pieces related to London that shortened our window in an effort to try to find common ground on that happening, and we weren’t able to get it done in time."