Snake Bytes, 2/16: The gang's all here...

[Arizona Sports] Zack Greinke feels good, believes the Diamondbacks will be good - It’s Greinke’s preference to throw to one catcher, as he did last season when he was paired up with Welington Castillo. It helps with the communication, Greinke said. In the offseason, however, the D-backs non-tendered Castillo, who eventually signed with the Baltimore Orioles, leaving Greinke without a familiar face behind the plate. "I’ll be fine with whoever. I like Welly, though. He’s not here anymore," he said, adding when asked if the D-backs made a mistake in letting Castillo go, "I wouldn’t say that. There’s money involved in this game. You can’t keep everyone. But I liked him. I like a lot of guys, but I liked him."

[dbacks.com] Zack Greinke has high hopes for Diamondbacks Today, it's the turn of the position players to report to Salt River Fields- "I'm not used to it," Greinke said of being injured last season. "But I still feel really healthy and strong. I'm not feeling real old. I feel pretty good. I feel like they were semi-fluky injuries, not anything long-term, issue-wise." From May 17-June 18 he won seven consecutive starts and had a 1.90 ERA. "It was really good," Greinke said. "Then I got hurt and then I didn't do that good when I came back. I kind of didn't pitch as good as I probably could have or should have."

[dbacks.com] D-backs' Shelby Miller out to rebound in 2017 - "I had such a bad year, it just had a snowball effect," Miller said. "I learned a lot of things. I learned how to deal with struggling a lot. It was weird, because I had never performed that bad before in my entire life. To have to deal with it, you learn a lot of things, and you just hope to build off of that and never have it happen again... Once I got back up last year, I felt like I did a decent job pitching. Still not the best I could have pitched, but I did a lot better than I did in the first half. Obviously, this year I want to get off to a better start. That won't be that hard to do."

[FanRag] D-backs Believe In Starting Rotation Entering 2017 - "He’s been one of the top young starting pitchers for awhile," Hazen said of Walker. "He came onto the scene very quickly at a very early age … we talk about that word expectations in a lot of cases. I don’t know what the expectation should have been. I’ve said this many times with a lot of young players, those expectations are very, very unfair. Every young major leaguer is going to transition to the major leagues in his own way. He’s been very successful in that. We are hoping to continue that climb with him. That’s why we acquired him. We see him being a big piece to this ball club moving forward."

[AZ Central] Diamondbacks’ bullpen a land of opportunity - That sort of uncertainty likely will create drama during spring training while also leaving open the possibility for change throughout the year.  "I think the bullpen can be very fluid at times," Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen said. "Bullpens are pieced together in different ways. You can have a bullpen like Cleveland or Kansas City has over the last few years, where you have these dominant guys at the back of the pen sometimes from the get-go. Or sometimes you add those guys in the middle of the year. The bullpen can change, I think, and be a little more fluid than probably any other part of your roster."

[FOX Sports] D-backs' Hazen expects bounce-back year from rotation - Struggles in the bullpen also were a big part of the Diamondbacks’ 5.09 ERA, worst in the majors. Hazen thinks the team helped address that issue with the signing of right-hander Kevin Jepsen and left-hander Brian Matusz to minor league contracts this week. "We’re pretty excited that they were still around," Hazen said. "These guys have been good relievers in the past. … Obviously that’s something we’ve talked about through the course of the offseason, wanting to add to our club. We had a lot of good young arms, a lot of good young reliever candidates. We wanted to add a little bit more experience to that group."

[Arizona Sports] Former D-backs GM Dave Stewart regrets trading Dansby Swanson, calls firing unfair - “I had to deal with three people above me, which makes it real, real difficult to do your job,” Stewart said of La Russa, Kendrick and Hall. “Even in the end, after the season, I think I would get what I call a tie-breaker season. We had a good (2015) season coming in, last year was not a good season — we did have injuries but I wasn’t using that as an excuse, neither was Chip Hale, injuries are part of the game — but I thought that I would have an opportunity in the third season and come back and see what would happen if we were a healthy team.”

[2080Baseball.com] 2017 Organizational Review: Arizona Diamondbacks - After emptying the clip trying to compete in 2016, the Diamondbacks are now tasked with reloading their farm system, while simultaneously not wasting the prime years of right-hander Zack Greinke first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, or center fielder A.J. Pollock. With several big-time decisions looming, what the new front office and player development staff in Arizona do in 2017 will have a large impact on their ability to return to relevance over the next few seasons.

[Inside the 'Zona] 2017 Spring Preview: All the (New) Catchers - Space is at a premium and perhaps no one has a bigger Spring Training ahead of them than Chris Herrmann. Can he force the team’s hand and make the Opening Day roster? Mathis is a better receiver, Iannetta is a more established bat and both have guaranteed deals in place. Herrmann has no remaining minor league options, so if he is sent down, he’ll have to be DFA’d and exposed to waivers where he could get scooped up by another team.

[AZ Central] Why Diamondbacks' Taijuan Walker is wearing No. 99 - Last season with the Seattle Mariners, Walker wore No. 44 – the number he had worn all his life, the number he had been waiting to become available with the Mariners. But once the deal went down that sent him to the Diamondbacks in November, he knew he wouldn’t be wearing that number again anytime soon... But he said he didn’t really have a good reason for choosing No. 99.  "It was either 99 or 32," he said. "That was my second number in the big leagues. It’s crazy. I feel like I’ve had a new number every year since I’ve been in the big leagues. I feel like 99 is good. No one really wears 99. I shouldn’t have a problem sticking with that."

VIDEO: #Dbacks Archie Bradley, sporting facial hair,has not shaved since Oct 31st, reports to spring training. See https://t.co/qu00DRY5tE pic.twitter.com/Z4YA7RtUxh

— azcentral (@azcentral) February 15, 2017