Arizona Diamondbacks: (almost) April confidence poll

Yes, it’s not quite April yet, but with the early start to the season, it makes sense to pull the confidence poll forward a couple of days and see how people feel, now that spring training has been completed. This’ll keep it in line with previous seasons. But, first...

March results

When we last ran the confidence poll, we were just getting under way for spring training, and fans were enjoying the arrival of Jarrod Dyson and Steven Souza. How did that affect the level optimism?

• 2% - 1 (not confident in the slightest)
• 0% - 2
• 0% - 3
• 2% - 4
• 7% - 5
• 25% - 6
• 33% - 7
• 21% - 8
• 10% - 9 (very, very, VERY confident)

That’s an upward trend almost all across the board. While there wasn’t much there to begin with, the bottom third has been cut in half, from 4% to 2%, and the percentage at five or below is down to 11% from 17%. The “six” votes have remained steady; “seven” has dropped from 38% to 33%, and “eight” is the big winner, almost doubling as it surged from 11% to 21%. [You can see this in the chart below, where the green band is those votes] “Nine” also saw a small uptick.

Below, you can see the breakdown of voting for the past year. Time progresses from the top down, beginning with the March 2016 poll.

The overall result is an increase from 6.50 to 6.81. That’s interesting, because of the similarity to a couple of previous scores. It’s very close to the figure after the 2017 season had completed (6.89 at the start of November). It’s also very close to the optimism at the same stage two years ago: the value in March 2016 was 6.83. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, that seems rather misplaced. But it’s kinda impressive how Mike Hazen and team have sustained the same level of confidence without a marquee signing like Greinke. Though on the other hand, overall team payroll is considerably higher than it was in 2016... Here’s the chart showing all the average scores.

(Almost) April poll

Plenty to chew over since the last poll. We’ve had the traditional scare about Zack Greinke’s velocity, concern about his groin, a more significant injury to Steven Souza, and the departures of Chris Herrmann and Yasmany Tomas from the major-league team. But we’ve also had good spring performances from Zack Godley and a number of others, and a chance to see how Yoshihisa Hirano has looked. What has that done to your confidence? Here’s the poll: as usual, please explain yourself in the comments.