Arizona Diamondbacks October confidence poll

September results

Welcome to another edition of Ow! My Balls! in which confidence in the D-backs takes hit after hilarious hit! Okay, maybe “hilarious” isn’t quite the word. But when we last checked in, at the start of September, the Diamondbacks were more or less in free-fall. They were deep in a streak which saw them lose thirteen of fourteen games, dropping from possession of a post-season spot, to playing #TankForKumar. You will not be surprised to learn that this was reflected in the the confidence poll which was posted on September 2. Here are the results. Nervous readers should look away.

• 37% - 1 (not confident in the slightest)
• 24% - 2
• 17% - 3
• 9% - 4
• 5% - 5
• 3% - 6
• 0% - 7
• 2% - 8
• 3% - 9 (very, very, VERY confident)

On the plus side, we did get 119 respondents: more than in July and August combined, and the highest number since the glorious, pre-pandemic days at the start of February. On the other hand... more than three-quarters of those came in at a “three” or lower, with a relentless decrease all the way up to “seven”. That dragged the overall average down by 1.2 points to 2.61 - a collapse of more than three and a half points in just two months. There have been worse scores. Just not for some time. Indeed, the last time we sank this low was the hell of August 2016, when the last days of Dave Stewart resulted in a figure of just 1.47.

Below, you can see the breakdown for the past 12 polls’ results, followed by the line graph showing the trends over this and previous seasons.

October poll

Things didn’t exactly start off well last month, the D-backs dropping eight of their first nine games. But there was a bit of a turnaround down the stretch, Arizona going 10-6 the rest of the way, a record beaten only by the Dodgers and Reds in the National League over that time. Admittedly, the opposition wasn’t the greatest, but as I said: it’s better to beat crappy teams than lose to them. The D-backs still found themselves outside the playoffs, and will be pressing their noses against the post-season glass.

So, as we head into an off-season which promises to be interesting - to what extent does the team want to over-react to the small sample size of barely one-third of a regular season? - how do we feel? As ever, give us your explanation in the comments.