D-backs fans are all about the future...

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.

What interests you the most about the rest of the Diamondbacks season?

This week’s Diamondbacks’ specific question asked what you were watching with greatest interest over these final forty-odd games. Was it the wild-card chase, Ketel Marte’s MVP battle, the young players development - or have you abandoned baseball entirely, and turned your attention to other sports? And here are the results...

With 74% of the vote, it’s clear Arizona fans are keen to see how players like Zac Gallen, Carson Kelly, Kevin Ginkel, Josh Rojas and the others which represent the future of the team perform. Can they contribute towards the team in 2020 and beyond? And how do the pieces fit together towards our next window of contention - whenever that might be? There is still a small rump (11%) of fans who are still holding out hope for a late surge to bring the team back into wild-card contention. I imagine everyone else is waiting to cheer on the NotDodgers in the playoffs... The balance were evenly split between #Marte4MVP and those more interested in other sports - yet who still found the energy to fill in the survey!

Are you confident in the direction of the team: 65% Yes
Do you approve of the job Torey Lovullo is doing as manager? 79% Yes

Not much change in either of these figures over the past fortnight. I guess we have mostly gone through the five stages of grief with regard to this season, and come out the other side into acceptance. Team confidence dipped slightly both weeks, sliding first from 69% to 67%, then another two percent this week. But managerial confidence ticked up slightly, going from 77% to 81% before settling back down, also dropping two percent to stand at 79% as we head towards the end of August. Of course, the static nature of team performance - the Diamondbacks now having played 54 consecutive games while within two of an even record - likely plays into the lack of variation in fan confidence.

Is a “juiced ball” good or bad for baseball? 74% No

What? But I was ASSURED that fan love the long ball? I mean, the whole point of the “juiced line-up”, including the DH, was to increase offense and attendance. Never mind that the National League continues to out-draw the American League every year... But if we presume that the juiced balls this season were not an accident, it seems like MLB may have badly miscalculated their tactic of appealing to the kids of whatever. For it seems the kids - or, at least, the ones reading SB Nation sites, are unimpressed with the way the change has impacted the game.

I can’t argue with the results here. Home-runs are like swearing: the more often you do it, the less impact it has. Baseball is supposed to be hard. What has happened this year is the equivalent of flipping the difficulty level on your video-game to “novice”. Sure, you can smack the ball around with no trouble. But where’s the challenge? Entertainment is not just about how easy something is, the same way that the most efficient way to play baseball is not necessarily the most fun, e.g. defensive shifts and strikeouts. If the game is to survive as a spectacle, it may need to suppress the analytical approaches, purely for the sake of entertainment. And I’d be quite fine with that.

What about you? Please share your thoughts on this week’s questions: if you responded, give us an explanation for your answers. And if you’d like to be asked your opinion going forward, here’s that link again!