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If I weren’t obliged to have a Twitter account for SnakePit purposes, I’d stay far, far away. It’s the ultimate in social media bubbles, whose structure results in a strong accentuation of the hive-mind mentality, and is a place where the mob and their outrage literally rules. It’s great for breaking baseball news. Otherwise, it’s largely a morass of ill-informed opinions and trolls, and all but completely unsuitable for any meaningful conversation.
Even if (as I certainly tried to) you limited your circle to Diamondbacks fans, this season was an immensely wearing one on social media. You’d perhaps think that, with the team having their best season in six years, and that coming when expectations were close to zero, social media would be brimming with happy, excited fans, delighted by the pleasant surprise of a contending team, and fully behind them,
If so, you don’t know Twitter, do you? Instead, it was a near-perpetual stream of way-too much negativity, which was relentlessly wearing. Now, this certainly wasn’t unique to Twitter. Some of our Gameday Threads were so bad, I suggested in May that there were people who needed simply to enjoy the ride. But the inability and/or reluctance to do so, likely reached its nadir on the Twitter. Here are just a few of the gems I collected over the course of the season, beginning just a couple of weeks in. I can only imagine what it might have been like if the 2017 Diamondbacks had actually sucked...
Premature ejaculation of the year
Its hard to win when both Pollock and Goldschmidt are slumping. Goldschmidt is now a shadow of his former self, much like Greinke. https://t.co/Qrhf6zOWYe
— Skeptical Daryl (@Daryl16519C) April 15, 2017
I hate to be that guy, but you appear to have mis-spelled “third-place MVP” and “fourth in Cy Young voting”. And I’ll give this Tweet an honorable mention.
This sucks. Even if Robbie Ray escapes with just stitches and a minor concussion, odds say his career is over. https://t.co/ruaxw44nGT
— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) July 29, 2017
Torey Lovullo and line-up construction
He was the National League Manager of the Year. He has been involved in the game professionally for more than 30 years. He has access to far more information than any of us. But it’s amazing how many fans still thought they knew better than Lovullo, from the comfort of their armchairs... #DoritosAllRound
IDC care what anybody says, it seems like Lovullo doesn't want to win with these awful lineups. The hot start was a fluke this is who he is
— Roy Arrieta Jr. (@ArrietaRoy) July 23, 2017
I wish Torey Lovullo would stop punching the team in the face with his lineups
— Dan Magness (@realdbacksfan) July 24, 2017
I will never understand Lovullo and his crap lineups.
— Philip Lindblom (@Blomphil) August 6, 2017
Lovullo's coaching strategies starting to look like Gibby! Fans can make better decisions!
— Chuck Militti (@thatsmrm) August 20, 2017
But no-one was more doggedly relentless in knowing better, and his hatred of Chris Herrmann, than this man. It was so wearingly monotonous, he ended up being a rare person on Twitter I had to mute.
Torey is actively undermining his team's chance to win important baseball games at this point guys and gals. Letting CH hit there is absurd.
— Jonathan Zaun (@JonathanZaun) July 23, 2017
Starting to think maybe Torey Lovullo's "loyalty" to busts like Corbin and Herrmann is really just him not having a fucking clue
— Jonathan Zaun (@JonathanZaun) August 2, 2017
Patrick Corbin’s ERA the rest of the way = 2.80.
Torey just giving up on this one too, huh @AZSnakepit? Could be his worst lineup of the year, and that's saying something...
— Jonathan Zaun (@JonathanZaun) July 20, 2017
The D-backs “worst line-up of the year” actually won the game 12-2. After which Mr. Zaun muttered that we “can’t be results oriented.” LOL. Fortunately, Torey Lovullo appears to have proved highly “results oriented”. And that’s why we reached the post-season, folks. Oh, a fun fact: the team had a better record when Chris Herrmann starts (33-21) than when he didn’t. [His catcher’s ERA was best on the team...] And it continued all the way to the end of the season.
Torey Lovullo is a bad manager.
— Jonathan Zaun (@JonathanZaun) October 7, 2017
Don't care if #Dbacks win it all, he's just a very substandard manager who loses more games than he wins.
Pay no attention to the 24-game turnaround under Lovullo’s control! That’s just being “results oriented”! But let’s count those “2017 National League Manager of the Year” awards!
- Torey Lovullo: 1
- @JonathanZaun: 0
All hope gone
More generally, reports of the death of the Diamondbacks’ season were frequent, and appear to have been greatly exaggerated.
Falling faster than the twin towers
— baseballislife (@baseballisgod2) July 20, 2017
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Hang on... That name looks familiar. Twitter, search me: “dbacks season over from:isaacfromCT” See also:
90 losses no playoffs, season over, the start of the big collapse #dbacks
— Isaac Rodriguez (@isaacfromCT) July 7, 2017
Season over
— Isaac Rodriguez (@isaacfromCT) July 16, 2017
Season over, no playoffs, rebuild #dbacks
— Isaac Rodriguez (@isaacfromCT) August 11, 2017
16-26 since the 50-28 start, season over #dbacks
— Isaac Rodriguez (@isaacfromCT) August 17, 2017
The Dbacks will lose the wildcard spot by the end of the month, season over, time to rebuild for 2020
— Isaac Rodriguez (@isaacfromCT) August 20, 2017
Y’know, saying something frequently doesn’t make it true...
Too bad charts don't show the actual cliff they're falling off of
— David Munter (@Dwmunter) August 2, 2017
Fun fact. The D-backs’ playoff odds didn’t “fall off” even to 75% at any point after June 15.
(coroner checks watch) time of death of the @DBacks season is 6:41 pm on August 16th
— Clue Heywood (@ClueHeywood) August 17, 2017
Even little more than a month before we clinched home-field advantage in the wild-card game, the nattering nabobs of negativity were still out in full force, thanks to the Twins series. Dear god, that was a brutal weekend on social media, with people fleeing the Diamondbacks bandwagon.
@Dbacks we suck. Seasons over, was fun while it lasted. Almost hockey season, THANK GOD.
— Johnny Clements (@Dbacks4thewest) August 20, 2017
— Dillionaire (@dillon_182) August 20, 2017
And, of course, our busiest Chicken Little:
The Dbacks will not only crumble out of wildcard spot but finish with worse record than Marlins #rebuild
— Isaac Rodriguez (@isaacfromCT) August 20, 2017
The Diamondbacks ended up sixteen games ahead of the Marlins.
#Dbacks lose today & it's over. We may still be ahead in wildcard, but I think we all know it won't last. Worst collapse in dbacks history.
— Josh (@UofAJaC) August 20, 2017
They lost. It lasted. And I hate to be that guy, but you appear to have mis-spelled “Most fun regular season”...