D-backs fans liked our first draft pick

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Diamondbacks fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

Do you approve of your team’s 2019 1st draft pick? 87% YES

That initially seems quite an enthusiastic thumbs-up for the front office. However, when looked at across the board, it’s somewhere in the middle of the pack. Across all 30 teams, the only ones where there was less than 75% support for ‘Yes’ were the Angels (68%) and Pirates (69%). I think it’s kinda hard to be against your team getting a player who is likely among the top 50 (at worst) at the high-school or college level. Complaining seems kinda churlish, especially considering we’re talking about people we’ve almost certainly never seen play. Any complaints are typically based on second-hand information at best.

What I particularly liked about this year’s draft, not surprisingly, was the sheer volume of high picks the Diamondbacks enjoyed. More so in baseball than the other main sports, the draft is a long-term and far from certain process. Players typically won’t reach the major-league level for at least three or four years, and may or may not pan out as intended. Because of this, it becomes a numbers game. The bigger your net, the better you chances of landing that big fish who can be a franchise player. Though even that is no guarantee of team success. How many playoffs wins has Mike Trout enjoyed?

Are you confident in the direction of the team: 55% Yes

Do you approve of the job Torey Lovullo is doing as manager? 78% YES

No surprise to see both these numbers turn down, with the team kinda lucky to escape with the series win over the Mets, then dropping the first two games against the Dodgers in brutal fashion. Team confidence was down thirteen percent from last week’s figure of 68%, and is just five percent above where we were on Opening Day. Managerial confidence was also down, though not by as much: seven percent jumped off the Lovullo bandwagon, from the previous check-in at 85%. As promised, the chart below shows how both team and manager confidence have changed over the season so far. You can see they are linked, but Lovullo has always been rated higher than the team in fan confidence.

Finally I’ll just leave this here:

Should MLB extend netting to the foul-poles? 60% YES

Great, those 60% can go and sit in the seats which are already protected, and leave the rest of us to take our lives in our hands, of our own free will...