Dirt, Dingers, Flowers, and Hope

I have more hope that this year’s iteration of the Diamondbacks can be defined as “good” than I did about 10 days ago. The hope meter isn’t totally filled, as there’s still an entire season to go, but the outlines of Dave Stewart’s mad visions can be seen if you squint a little. The soil is totally scorched, and if you dig deep enough, the dirt can possibly grow flowers.

Where the theoretically “good” Diamondbacks fall in the Major League Baseball hierarchy remains to be seen, it’s probably unlikely we’ll see a Diamondbacks-Twins World Series this coming autumn (though that would be metal as hell), but a 7-3 stretch, against a team that’s usually pretty good and the defending AL Champs, is something that previous teams didn’t get to enjoy, so there’s some vague empirical evidence to that.

Of course, this could all shatter very quickly, as a good short stretch of the season can easily be wiped out by a bad, but as frightening as the future may be, fans have been waiting a long time for something, anything, to hold on to. I read your comments on this site. You people are vacillating between angry and sad sometimes. You guys could use a good team.

However, I’ve said it in a few podcast hits and other places, but it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine the Diamondbacks being at least a decent team. Better health from A.J. Pollock and David Peralta could be worth a few extra wins. For his part, Pollock has shown flash with the bat and glove as a sort of karmic payback for suffering through the Failure Cerberus of Center Field last year. The starting rotation is intriguing enough and has enough upside to possibly lead a team far. (Another way of putting this is: “Well Miller and Greinke can’t be as bad”) The bullpen is... Hey look, a weird thing!

But really, I also crave the release of a good season. While I would accept competence leading to a possible playoff appearance, I’m greedy. I want the Diamondbacks to be so good they’re on National TV all the team, and the second a bunch of people act shocked about some minor uniform detail that’s been there for a year so it’s their fault for not noticing earlier on twitter, Paul Goldschmidt hits a mammoth dinger off of Clayton Kershaw in a game of importance. In a shocking break of character, Goldy does a bat flip so elaborate it would get a Bronze Medal in Rhythmic Gymnastics in most Olympics.

It’s the imagination of someone with possibly unrealistic expectations, but it doesn’t seem as unlikely as it did last year. Hope doesn’t seem so foolish. There’s a little inkling of a rose growing from what previously had been thought as scorched earth and dead soil.