Musings from a Thirsty Snakepitter

I write this during a bit of a lull in the office and will likely finish it over a pint or two of beer at the tap room next door. Either place seems like a fine one to pen my thoughts on this abysmal few weeks we’ve endured as a fan club.

To start I, like EddBiggHead and my other fellow Brute Squad bruti, tend to focus more on the passion of the game than the cold hard numbers that so inundate it. So the rambling that follows will not be backed up by stats; I’ll leave that to my other fellow editors to jot down in the comments or other articles that will surely follow.

April started off with essentially everything working out perfectly. Truly everything. Runs were timely, starters sharp and the bullpen seemed to close the door every day on every team we faced. These were halcyon times in the 2018 season. Yea, Goldy was scuffling, Ray looked human and Lamb/Souza were injured, but we kept winning day in and day out. We all agreed our torrid pace was unsustainable, but we were all fairly certain our team was at the very least “good”.

Fast forward to May 23rd and despair reigns supreme in the house of Dback. Specifically our timely hitting that was there in April is no longer in May. Pitching is still very solid, and even despite some shakiness in the bullpen they still remain good as well. Yet good pitching and solid late inning arms mean absolutely nothing when no one, and I mean NO ONE, deigns to hit one iota. Goldy, Avila, Marte, Dyson, Ahmed, Owings and everyone not named Murphy or Peralta are beyond awful at the plate. I’m at the point we’re I’m shocked opposing teams haven’t thrown a perfect game, or at the very least a no hitter against us. Our batters are befuddled at every pitch thrown their way and almost all of them are WAY below their career averages.

So with that in mind I’ll quote one stat, just one: We’re #2 in all of baseball in team ERA but we’re #30 in batting. Madness, pure and simple madness. Even the Chaos gods recoil in terror at such nonsense. That eye-opening stat shows quite simply what I stated earlier: our lack of production at the plate is murdering this team faster than a machine gun crew at the first day of the Somme. The problem is I just don’t know what could or should be done. Because excluding maybe Ahmed all of our hitters are better than this, way better, or at least we are familiar with all of them being better.

It’s simple Dbacks. Hit the &$^%ing ball!

End rant.

[Bonus rant: Angry Dad discusses sitting Goldy, letting players fight (hockey style), Puig and more.]