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Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen was at home one evening in December when the text message arrived. It was from Scott Boras, his agent. Boras said he had big news.
Gallen knew it wasn’t about him — if it were, Boras would have just called — but he figured it had something to do with the Diamondbacks. When he was told the club was signing right-hander Corbin Burnes, Gallen said he didn’t believe Boras, who represents both pitchers. Gallen said he then let out a handful of excited expletives.
“I never thought,” Gallen said, “it would be a possibility.”
Burnes’ six-year, $210-million deal sent shockwaves throughout the baseball world. It also upped the Diamondbacks’ payroll for this season into the range of $200 million, a level hard to imagine not so long ago.
But the signing did not do much to change the outside perception of the Diamondbacks within their division, the National League West.
The Diamondbacks might have a strong rotation and deep lineup. They might have speed and power and defense. They might have pitching and position-player depth. And they might be better than the team that just two years ago reached the World Series.
But the Los Angeles Dodgers also exist.
All of those attributes the Diamondbacks have? The Dodgers also have them — and more. They are more talented. They are deeper. They have a payroll nearly twice as large, one approaching $400 million. They are everyone’s pick to win it all — again.
The Diamondbacks are a $200 million baseball team. They are also $200 million underdogs.
“I see that (Dodgers) team and it could be arguably the best roster I’ve ever seen,” Diamondbacks outfielder Randal Grichuk said. “Lineup, starters, bullpen — if anybody could think of a better one, truly better, I’d be interested in seeing an argument.
“They’re super talented, clearly. But I think we are, too, and it’s baseball — so it’s going to be fun.”
Grichuk’s sentiments are mostly echoed throughout the Diamondbacks’ clubhouse. Players are not stubborn to the reality of what the Dodgers have done, building a lineup with three MVPs at the top and a rotation that is multiple waves deep, filled with both Cy Young winners and those with Cy Young-type stuff.
“Everywhere you look,” Diamondbacks reliever Joe Mantiply said, “their roster is loaded with superstars.”
A cornerstone of the Diamondbacks' future agreed.
“It’s felt like each year that I’ve played against those guys, they’ve always added,” right fielder Corbin Carroll said. “It hasn’t just been in the margins. It’s been some incredible players.”
But the Diamondbacks do not hesitate to point out that talent is not everything. They are more qualified than most to speak on this subject. Two years ago, they took down the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Championship Series despite having a team that did not stack up on paper. They did it, in part, by virtue of execution, but they also know baseball lends itself to unpredictability in other ways.
Diamondbacks pitcher Merrill Kelly points to the many, seemingly random aspects that can affect the outcome of a particular game. A softly hit ball that falls for a hit. A dropped third strike. A bad pitch that a hitter pops up instead hitting out.
“I think there’s just a lot of nuances that go on in baseball,” Kelly said. “In the other sports, it’s like, if you have a more talented team in the NFL or purely more talent in the NBA, nine times out of 10 you’re going to beat the other team.”
The same is true in baseball over long stretches of time — like, say, 162 games. It is why the best teams tend to reach the postseason year after year. But once there, the game becomes more randomized, outcomes more chaotic.
“Do they have the upper hand on paper going into most series?” Grichuk said of the Dodgers. “I would say yeah. But it's baseball. Any night anybody might be feeling not like themselves on the mound or in the box and literally anybody has a chance any night.”
As a team that shares the NL West with the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks are at something of a disadvantage. They can still find their way into the postseason by claiming one of the NL’s three wild-card spots, but they are likely shut off from one path to October: a division championship.
When asked about this reality, Carroll shrugged.
“You’re going to see those guys at some point, most likely,” he said. “I think there’s a benefit to playing meaningful, competitive baseball games, and we play a lot of those in this division.”
The Dodgers, coming off their second World Series championship in the past five seasons, appear to have a significantly better team than last year.
They added left-hander Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, on a five-year, $182 million deal. They convinced Japanese sensation Roki Sasaki — a 23-year-old who some believe has the best pure stuff of any pitcher on the planet — to sign with them for $6.5 million.
They brought in two of the better closers in baseball last season, lefty Tanner Scott and right-hander Kirby Yates. They re-signed slugger Teoscar Hernandez and brought in veteran outfielder Michael Conforto.
That is on top of the additions the Dodgers made the previous offseason, when they acquired two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto and right-hander Tyler Glasnow. In the past two winters they have guaranteed more than $1.8 billion in free-agent signings and extensions.
Gallen said the Dodgers’ moves never seem to rise to the level that causes him to remember where he was when he first learned of them.
“Only because they feel inevitable," he said. "It’s like, ‘All right, they signed another guy.’”
Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick bemoaned the Dodgers’ ad nauseum spending, saying the payroll disparities in baseball today lead to unfair advantages. He pointed to the Dodgers’ 11 division titles in the past 12 seasons.
“Are their baseball people and their owners smarter than all the others? I don’t think so,” Kendrick said. “Our game, by virtue of how playoffs work, evens the playing field by some degree in the playoffs. But the regular season is not a necessarily even playing field and I think it should be — more even than it is.
“I believe in those who are brighter than the next guy being more successful than the next guy. But when you see one team with a payroll that is 5x their competitor, the chances over time of that team at 5x over the less financially supported team, they’re going to win.”
What the Dodgers are doing is unlike any run in recent memory. They are not solely the product of their financial clout, nor are they a result of a lengthy teardown/rebuild process.
Most teams in recent decades that have spent lavishly on free agents have been unable to sustain success. The Dodgers are spending wisely, but they are also drafting, trading, scouting internationally and developing talent at impressive rates.
The team that “wins” the offseason rarely wins the World Series. The Dodgers did it last year and look capable of doing it again this season.
“I think the teams that are able to develop players and then at the same time spend money when they need to tend to be the teams that are the most sustainable, in my mind,” Gallen said. “I would say probably the Yankees of the late-'90s/early-2000s are comparable to the model the Dodgers have been using the last 10 to 15 years.
"Like, OK, we have the money to spend, but we’re also going to develop the players.”
The Diamondbacks still have many of the players who helped lead them to their surprise World Series run in 2023. After winning only 84 games that year, they won 89 last season but fell one game shy of a wild-card spot. Many of them think this year’s team is better than either of the previous two.
“I think you can appreciate what the teams outside of us in our division have done — appreciate it while still saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a really good team over here and we can absolutely go out there and match up with anyone on any given day,'” Carroll said. “I feel really good about this team. I think it’s pretty easily the most talented team out of the three years that I’ve been up.”
“When you add Corbin (Burnes) to the mix in the rotation, it adds a whole different dynamic," Kelly said. “I would put our rotation up against anybody in the league when you add him.”
The Diamondbacks lost first baseman Christian Walker but replaced him with Josh Naylor. Burnes gives them a dominant starter with a Cy Young Award on his mantel. They are hoping Pavin Smith can help offset the loss of slugger Joc Pederson, and that better health in the rotation can help them improve a pitching staff that ranked among the worst in the majors last season.
To their credit, the Diamondbacks have succeeded in many of the same ways as the Dodgers when it comes to roster construction. They have developed a star position player in Carroll and augmented the roster with a number of players, including shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, starter Brandon Pfaadt and reliever Justin Martinez.
The Diamondbacks have made shrewd trades to land Gallen, star second baseman Ketel Marte, catcher Gabriel Moreno and reliever A.J. Puk. And they have spent aggressively — not to the Dodgers’ level, of course, but more than most mid-market clubs — to round out their team.
The Diamondbacks do not have the collective individual hardware that the Dodgers have, but they have players more than capable of contending for major awards. Marte finished third in MVP balloting last year and Carroll finished fifth in 2023. Burnes has his 2021 Cy Young Award and Gallen has twice finished in the top five.
“I think overall, from top to bottom depth, looking at that team that went to the World Series and looking at the team now, it’s a much more well-rounded (roster), a much deeper talent pool,” Kelly said.
Being the underdogs does have its benefits. The Dodgers will have a target on their back all season and will be expected by many to stomp the competition on a nightly basis.
“Obviously they’re really good players, but there’s pressure that comes with that,” Grichuk said. “They’re expected to win every night. If they go on a four-game losing streak, it’s going to be like everything is going up in flames. Everyone’s going to say, ‘What’s going on?’”
Said Mantiply: “Pressure makes everything a little harder to deal with.”
Still, the Diamondbacks have expectations of their own. Their payroll is at a franchise high, ranking just outside the upper-third of major league teams. It has been more than a decade since they spent this much relative to their competition.
The payroll is expected to be supported by strong attendance numbers at Chase Field, and a disappointing summer could lead to financial losses.
“I’m enthusiastic,” Kendrick said. “You don’t win on paper. We all know you got to go play 162 and then see who gets to play in the playoffs. We think we have the type of team that, if we are fortunate enough to be in the playoffs, can be, as we were two years ago, a very, very competitive team.
"Getting there is the challenge. Winning when you’re there is the next challenge. And I’m hopeful.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks a $200M underdog chasing World Series champion Dodgers
Continue reading...
Gallen knew it wasn’t about him — if it were, Boras would have just called — but he figured it had something to do with the Diamondbacks. When he was told the club was signing right-hander Corbin Burnes, Gallen said he didn’t believe Boras, who represents both pitchers. Gallen said he then let out a handful of excited expletives.
“I never thought,” Gallen said, “it would be a possibility.”
Burnes’ six-year, $210-million deal sent shockwaves throughout the baseball world. It also upped the Diamondbacks’ payroll for this season into the range of $200 million, a level hard to imagine not so long ago.
But the signing did not do much to change the outside perception of the Diamondbacks within their division, the National League West.
The Diamondbacks might have a strong rotation and deep lineup. They might have speed and power and defense. They might have pitching and position-player depth. And they might be better than the team that just two years ago reached the World Series.
But the Los Angeles Dodgers also exist.
All of those attributes the Diamondbacks have? The Dodgers also have them — and more. They are more talented. They are deeper. They have a payroll nearly twice as large, one approaching $400 million. They are everyone’s pick to win it all — again.
The Diamondbacks are a $200 million baseball team. They are also $200 million underdogs.
“I see that (Dodgers) team and it could be arguably the best roster I’ve ever seen,” Diamondbacks outfielder Randal Grichuk said. “Lineup, starters, bullpen — if anybody could think of a better one, truly better, I’d be interested in seeing an argument.
“They’re super talented, clearly. But I think we are, too, and it’s baseball — so it’s going to be fun.”
Diamondbacks chasing the Dodgers again?
Grichuk’s sentiments are mostly echoed throughout the Diamondbacks’ clubhouse. Players are not stubborn to the reality of what the Dodgers have done, building a lineup with three MVPs at the top and a rotation that is multiple waves deep, filled with both Cy Young winners and those with Cy Young-type stuff.
“Everywhere you look,” Diamondbacks reliever Joe Mantiply said, “their roster is loaded with superstars.”
A cornerstone of the Diamondbacks' future agreed.
“It’s felt like each year that I’ve played against those guys, they’ve always added,” right fielder Corbin Carroll said. “It hasn’t just been in the margins. It’s been some incredible players.”
You must be registered for see images attach
But the Diamondbacks do not hesitate to point out that talent is not everything. They are more qualified than most to speak on this subject. Two years ago, they took down the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Championship Series despite having a team that did not stack up on paper. They did it, in part, by virtue of execution, but they also know baseball lends itself to unpredictability in other ways.
Diamondbacks pitcher Merrill Kelly points to the many, seemingly random aspects that can affect the outcome of a particular game. A softly hit ball that falls for a hit. A dropped third strike. A bad pitch that a hitter pops up instead hitting out.
“I think there’s just a lot of nuances that go on in baseball,” Kelly said. “In the other sports, it’s like, if you have a more talented team in the NFL or purely more talent in the NBA, nine times out of 10 you’re going to beat the other team.”
The same is true in baseball over long stretches of time — like, say, 162 games. It is why the best teams tend to reach the postseason year after year. But once there, the game becomes more randomized, outcomes more chaotic.
“Do they have the upper hand on paper going into most series?” Grichuk said of the Dodgers. “I would say yeah. But it's baseball. Any night anybody might be feeling not like themselves on the mound or in the box and literally anybody has a chance any night.”
Corbin Carroll: It's a 'benefit' playing in NL West
As a team that shares the NL West with the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks are at something of a disadvantage. They can still find their way into the postseason by claiming one of the NL’s three wild-card spots, but they are likely shut off from one path to October: a division championship.
When asked about this reality, Carroll shrugged.
“You’re going to see those guys at some point, most likely,” he said. “I think there’s a benefit to playing meaningful, competitive baseball games, and we play a lot of those in this division.”
The Dodgers, coming off their second World Series championship in the past five seasons, appear to have a significantly better team than last year.
They added left-hander Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, on a five-year, $182 million deal. They convinced Japanese sensation Roki Sasaki — a 23-year-old who some believe has the best pure stuff of any pitcher on the planet — to sign with them for $6.5 million.
They brought in two of the better closers in baseball last season, lefty Tanner Scott and right-hander Kirby Yates. They re-signed slugger Teoscar Hernandez and brought in veteran outfielder Michael Conforto.
That is on top of the additions the Dodgers made the previous offseason, when they acquired two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto and right-hander Tyler Glasnow. In the past two winters they have guaranteed more than $1.8 billion in free-agent signings and extensions.
Gallen said the Dodgers’ moves never seem to rise to the level that causes him to remember where he was when he first learned of them.
“Only because they feel inevitable," he said. "It’s like, ‘All right, they signed another guy.’”
Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick bemoaned the Dodgers’ ad nauseum spending, saying the payroll disparities in baseball today lead to unfair advantages. He pointed to the Dodgers’ 11 division titles in the past 12 seasons.
“Are their baseball people and their owners smarter than all the others? I don’t think so,” Kendrick said. “Our game, by virtue of how playoffs work, evens the playing field by some degree in the playoffs. But the regular season is not a necessarily even playing field and I think it should be — more even than it is.
“I believe in those who are brighter than the next guy being more successful than the next guy. But when you see one team with a payroll that is 5x their competitor, the chances over time of that team at 5x over the less financially supported team, they’re going to win.”
What the Dodgers are doing is unlike any run in recent memory. They are not solely the product of their financial clout, nor are they a result of a lengthy teardown/rebuild process.
You must be registered for see images attach
Most teams in recent decades that have spent lavishly on free agents have been unable to sustain success. The Dodgers are spending wisely, but they are also drafting, trading, scouting internationally and developing talent at impressive rates.
The team that “wins” the offseason rarely wins the World Series. The Dodgers did it last year and look capable of doing it again this season.
“I think the teams that are able to develop players and then at the same time spend money when they need to tend to be the teams that are the most sustainable, in my mind,” Gallen said. “I would say probably the Yankees of the late-'90s/early-2000s are comparable to the model the Dodgers have been using the last 10 to 15 years.
"Like, OK, we have the money to spend, but we’re also going to develop the players.”
Diamondbacks rotation among tops in MLB
The Diamondbacks still have many of the players who helped lead them to their surprise World Series run in 2023. After winning only 84 games that year, they won 89 last season but fell one game shy of a wild-card spot. Many of them think this year’s team is better than either of the previous two.
“I think you can appreciate what the teams outside of us in our division have done — appreciate it while still saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a really good team over here and we can absolutely go out there and match up with anyone on any given day,'” Carroll said. “I feel really good about this team. I think it’s pretty easily the most talented team out of the three years that I’ve been up.”
“When you add Corbin (Burnes) to the mix in the rotation, it adds a whole different dynamic," Kelly said. “I would put our rotation up against anybody in the league when you add him.”
You must be registered for see images attach
The Diamondbacks lost first baseman Christian Walker but replaced him with Josh Naylor. Burnes gives them a dominant starter with a Cy Young Award on his mantel. They are hoping Pavin Smith can help offset the loss of slugger Joc Pederson, and that better health in the rotation can help them improve a pitching staff that ranked among the worst in the majors last season.
To their credit, the Diamondbacks have succeeded in many of the same ways as the Dodgers when it comes to roster construction. They have developed a star position player in Carroll and augmented the roster with a number of players, including shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, starter Brandon Pfaadt and reliever Justin Martinez.
The Diamondbacks have made shrewd trades to land Gallen, star second baseman Ketel Marte, catcher Gabriel Moreno and reliever A.J. Puk. And they have spent aggressively — not to the Dodgers’ level, of course, but more than most mid-market clubs — to round out their team.
The Diamondbacks do not have the collective individual hardware that the Dodgers have, but they have players more than capable of contending for major awards. Marte finished third in MVP balloting last year and Carroll finished fifth in 2023. Burnes has his 2021 Cy Young Award and Gallen has twice finished in the top five.
“I think overall, from top to bottom depth, looking at that team that went to the World Series and looking at the team now, it’s a much more well-rounded (roster), a much deeper talent pool,” Kelly said.
Being the underdogs does have its benefits. The Dodgers will have a target on their back all season and will be expected by many to stomp the competition on a nightly basis.
“Obviously they’re really good players, but there’s pressure that comes with that,” Grichuk said. “They’re expected to win every night. If they go on a four-game losing streak, it’s going to be like everything is going up in flames. Everyone’s going to say, ‘What’s going on?’”
Said Mantiply: “Pressure makes everything a little harder to deal with.”
Still, the Diamondbacks have expectations of their own. Their payroll is at a franchise high, ranking just outside the upper-third of major league teams. It has been more than a decade since they spent this much relative to their competition.
The payroll is expected to be supported by strong attendance numbers at Chase Field, and a disappointing summer could lead to financial losses.
“I’m enthusiastic,” Kendrick said. “You don’t win on paper. We all know you got to go play 162 and then see who gets to play in the playoffs. We think we have the type of team that, if we are fortunate enough to be in the playoffs, can be, as we were two years ago, a very, very competitive team.
"Getting there is the challenge. Winning when you’re there is the next challenge. And I’m hopeful.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks a $200M underdog chasing World Series champion Dodgers
Continue reading...
