Arizona Diamondbacks: May confidence poll

April results

The last poll was held, technically, in late March as I wanted to get a benchmark before the start of the regular season, and see whether spring training had had any impact on fan confidence. tl;dr - not particularly. The team posted a record of 16-14 in Cactus League play, which seemed to be generally in line for what most people were expecting from the regular season. [In our pre-season poll. 58% were in the 80-85 win bucket] The team didn’t suffer any particularly concerning injuries; indeed, the loss of Mark Melancon may have been the very definition of addition by subtraction. So, it was very much as case of “steady as she goes,” and that was reflected in the poll results.

• 6% - 1 (not confident in the slightest)
• 3% - 2
• 8% - 3
• 11% - 4
• 8% - 5
• 30% - 6
• 25% - 7
• 5% - 8
• 6% - 9 (very, very, VERY confident)

This works out as a slight uptick on both ends of the scale. “1” and “9” combined for 12.5% of votes in April, compared to only 5% in March, so those changes basically canceled each other out. Oddly, “5” took a bit of a bath this month too, being cut almost in half from 15.0% down to 7.8%. Go figure. All told, there was a slight downtick by 12 ticks, dropping from 5.67 to 5.55. But it’s still within the same half-point range, between 5.25 and 5.75, where it has been circling for seven consecutive polls, since the end of last season.

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.

May poll

How’s the view from the top of the National League West? I think what’s most impressive is that the team has got off to a good start, without particularly firing on all cylinders. There have been some over-achievers - hello, Geraldo Perdomo - but if you’d told me the team would be comfortably above .500, despite our starter’s ERA being considerably worse than last year (4.65 vs. 4.05), I’d have looked at you very oddly. The team is clearly in “win now” mode, at least in the sense of not tolerating poor performance. The exit of Madison Bumgarner, despite being owed $32 million, shows that. But how far will that take them? Are the weaknesses addressable? Or will they come home to roost?

That would be what the poll is for. As ever, feel free to explain your choice in the comments, especially if it has changed from the previous one.