Diamondbacks Gameday Thread, #82: 6/29 vs. Rays

Roster moves

The Arizona Diamondbacks made the following roster moves:

• Recalled RHP Brandon Pfaadt from Triple-A Reno.
• Optioned RHP Justin Martinez to Reno following last night’s game.

Farewell, Justin. We hardly knew ye... Sure you’ll be back! Anyway, that’s 81 games in the books, marking the half-way point in the 2023 season. If the D-backs play the same way they have to date, what numbers will we be looking at, come the end of the season?

• Diamondbacks wins: 96. I take you back to Place Your Bets, where I said, “A 75.5 win line seems almost ludicrously low. If I bet real money on stuff, I’d be all over that.” The D-backs are on pace to end up more than 20 wins above the Vegas spread. They only need to go 28-43 in the second half to nail the over.
• Corbin Carroll: 34 HR, 48 SB. At this point, it feels like membership of the 30/30 club is very likely for Carroll. There has only been one rookie member of that previously: some guy called Mike Trout, who had 30 HR and 49 SB in 2012. Whatever happened to him? Oh, and the D-backs have never had a 30/30 hitter of any age.
• Zac Gallen: 20 wins. It does seem the team is trying to maximize Gallen’s outing. He started Tuesday, so on regular schedule that’ll mean he pitches Sunday and then Saturday before the All-Star break. He’d then be able to start the first game after it, in Toronto the following Friday. Every five games thereafter would give him 34 games, the last on the final day of the season. Can he get ten wins in seventeen starts? We’ll see...
• Scott McGough: 0-12 record. That would shame even Mark Melancon’s losses from last year (11). McGough had a rough start, with three losses and a 5.87 ERA through May 6. But since then? Even including last night’s meltdown, over 26.2 innings, he has a 1.35 ERA. While there have been three more losses, two of those were extra-inning ones, where Scott only allowed the Manfred Man to score. He really has not been that bad.
• Pavin Smith: -1.4 bWAR. Last night, I think I was finally broken by watching Smith take three called strikes in the bottom of the ninth. His performance is on course to be the worst by a D-backs position player since Eric Byrnes in 2008. That’s almost impressive, considering he wasn’t on the Opening Day roster. Of course, that depends on whether he stays here for the full season. But if he hasn’t been sent to Reno yet...

Also: shamelessly copy-pasted from samath.

48-33 is tied for the sixth-best half-season in Diamondbacks history, and tied for the third-best first half to a season. Both of those ties are with the 2002 team, which went 48-33 in the first half and 50-31 the rest of the way to win the division. The first halves of 2001 and 2017 and the second half of 2011, all three playoff seasons, were also 50-31.

And then way out at the top was the second half of that magical 1999 season, when the team went an astounding 56-25 to reach 100 wins in just their second season ever. Some cautions lurk below, though: Both the 2000 and 2018 seasons were just a game worse at this point, at 47-34. Both of those teams would have losing second halves and miss the playoffs, even under today’s rules.