SnakePit roster updates for 2018

As the circle of life turns, it moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love. But enough Lion King nonsense. What this means for the SnakePit is that, as usual, there will be some new faces around the place in the coming season. So, please join me in welcoming the following new faces (or, at least, keyboards!) to the SnakePit for 2018. On Monday recaps we have Dano_in_Tucson and Alex Boswell: the former should be familar from his guest recaps last year. Joining the preview rotation will be Cumulus Choir, and returning to the SnakePit after a sabbatical is Xipooo. Finally, Wesley Baier (who has been around forever) will be helping out Michael on the minor-league front.

Here are bios of the new faces (not including Xipooo, since he was already part of the “Who’s Who on the SnakePit” anyway!).

Dano_in_Tucson: I went to junior high and high school in Phoenix, but that was long before the Diamondbacks were even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. The team first caught my notice when I was living in NYC in 2001, and they made it to the World Series against the Yankees (who I hated and hate and will hate for all time, partly because I lived for awhile up in the Bronx in between the 4 train and the D train, which are the two trains that service Yankee Stadium, and their fans who actutally go to the games in person suck so very, very much, and I had to ride with them whenever I wanted to go anywhere in the summertime). Autumn of 2001 was a hard time in NYC, and I wound up watching every game of the the 2001 World Series in bars in various places in Manhattan. Still couldn’t bring myself to root for the Yankees, though, and my mom still lived in AZ and had been talking up the Dbacks since they started up, so I rooted for the good guys, vocally and emphatically, thoughout that epic seven-game saga. That World Series was an enormous spectacle for NYC, and provided healing and comfort for all of us who lived there, and I had a lovely time talking congenial yet passionate trash with Yankees fans during every game, and it made a lot of people feel better than they had in awhile. It gave us all something else to focus on besides the big smoking pile of rubble in Lower Manhattan.

After game seven ended, too, despite all the cries of lamentation from most of the people in the bar, hugs were exchanged all around, and most of the folks, Yankees fans included, conceded that their team had been outplayed, and the Dbacks deserved it more, and that it had been a hell of an ending and it was all good. I didn’t get punched in the face even once. And I’ve been a Dbacks fan for real ever since. I think NYC is maybe the best city in the world, but our boys are the best team to root for in the entirety of MLB.

I started claiming guest recap spots for the Snakepit at the very end of 2016, if I recall correctly, and had a ball with them. I tend to use my phone mainly as a phone, so I’m not terribly well-known in the comments on the gameday threads, even for games I’ve recapped--I’m generally sitting in front of the TV with a 2x2 sheet of graph paper in front of me, scoring the game by hand (it’s old school, baby). I have been, however, an avid lurker, and since I moved back to AZ in 2013 the Snakepit has been my go-to place for Dbacks coverage, insights and hot takes. I read everything all of you lovely people post, even though I don’t always comment.

Anyway, I’m really happy to have been invited to join the team as a regular contributor (thanks, Jim!). I’m not an advanced stats guy, for good or ill (when I was a kid, all I had were the backs of baseball cards and a subscription to Baseball Digest, a print publication that I suspect doesn’t exist anymore--all of which, back in the day, made me something of a stats nerd, go figure), but I’ve been steeped in the game since childhood, and I’m gradually getting a better grasp of the advanced metrics stuff, mostly by reading the official posts and the fanposts that folks on the Snakepit post. You all rock, and I hope you’ll enjoy/appreciate my periodic Monday game recaps. Cheers!

Cumulus Choir: A native Texan and aspiring Arizona transplant, I’m a sophomore at an inner-city high school in Houston, Texas. I started following the Diamondbacks during the waning days of summer 2016 shortly after I began getting back into sports. Houston teams had been ruined for me by my stepdad, so I had branched out to find new teams to follow, eventually settling on the Arizona Cardinals to be my new NFL team. I soon fell in love with the Valley, the Valley’s teams (there’s that word again), and the entire state of Arizona.

I’m a member of the series preview staff and active most-types-of-post-but-especially-game-threads commenter, so expect to see me around the ‘Pit pretty often. During my previews I’ll highlight one key contributor, one under-the-radar player to be wary of, and an especially notable aspect of the team I’m covering, injecting a bit of humor here and there to keep things interesting.

When I’m not pitting I’m either caught up in practice for some kind of extracurricular, finishing some homework, or doing some gaming on *insert any Nintendo console*.

Wesley Baier: has been around the Snakepit since almost the beginning, under a million different names, but you probably know him now as ‘the poster formerly known as Zephon’. He’s a formerly classically trained chef who had to switch careers due to health problems. Having written for the Snakepit in the past, providing prospect analysis and minor league coverage, coming back to do the same was an obvious no brainer. A native Arizonan, Wesley was born and raised in Tucson, and has been fan of the Diamondbacks since 2001, after betting it all on the Dbacks to win. As a fan of the Dbacks old AAA affiliate, the Tucson Sidewinders, he’s a little jaded about the move to Reno and is still mad about MLB Spring Training leaving Tucson.

Alex Boswell: My SnakePit story started when I left the East Coast just 2 years after I was born. Without ever having had “a team” I gravitated towards the Arizona Diamondbacks. I first got the snake bite after a game against the Chicago Cubs (when Sammy was still just a slugger). My passions in baseball have changed as the world was introduced to the Moneyball trend. This peaked my interest at an early age. While I am no math-wiz, I firmly believe that data can give great insight into actual performance. I am currently a Senior at the University of Oklahoma and continue to further my education at Grand Canyon University while pursuing a Master of Science in Business Analytics. I am also the former President of the Brandon Drury fan club so….well its only member actually. Along with some Monday recaps, I look forward to sharing a deeper dive at our favorite ball club.