Diamondbacks Gameday Thread, #38: 5/11 vs. Giants

The Diamondbacks come into tonight’s game batting a collective .270 for the season. That’s the highest figure through the first 37 contests since all the way back in 2006, when they were hitting .272. The only other time they have had a higher average to this point was in the 100-win season of 1999, when AZ were batting .274. Part of that is a general uptick in hitting anyway. NL averages are up seven points on the total for last season, no doubt due at least somewhat to the ban in shifts. However, that’s still only .250. The D-backs have improved their average by FORTY POINTS on the whole of last year. And, you may recall, they slumped early on. 37 games into the 2022 schedule, Arizona was hitting just .202.

The improvement hasn’t been anything as drastic in the other parts which make up the triple-slash figures. Their on-base percentage is .329, which is the same as it was in 2017, for example. They’ve drawn 31 fewer walks than they had last year (107 to 138) despite having fifty more plate-appearances. The same goes for home-runs: the number there so far is exactly the same as in 2022 (39). All told, the 191 runs scored is a vast improvement on last year: 57 more, or an additional 1.54 runs per game. But the wheels are definitely up on the bases. The 31 SB so far are the most by the D-backs since 2017, and are almost twice as many as the 16 stolen bases last year.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the pitching figures, and see what tale they tell...