This team, amiright? One of the streakiest teams I can remember for a while. Can a team this streaky maintain its long term status and get into the playoffs, or will the streaking eventually catch up?
C. Wesley Baier: It is very easy to forget how long a 162 game season is and even easier to fall into the trap of recency bias. By the time this roundtable is published, the D’Backs will still have over 90 games left to play. I honestly can’t answer that question until we have a better idea of what this lineup and roster is going to look like by the end of the month..
Spencer: We aren’t even the streakiest team in MLB this season (hello North Side little bears). I think a streaky team has a better than average chance to make the playoffs because they rack up wins. But the ones that do make it on the back of 1-3 top tier skills. I don’t think this Arizona has those skills.
James Attwood: It is going to largely depend on how often the negative streakiness of the offense and pitching line up with each other. This team still has some serious issues that need to be addressed, including left-handed power and reliable starting pitching. It will be difficult enough to address one of those, much less both. The best chance the team has of keeping things going in the right direction is if the youth movement continues to develop and impress.
Makakilo: Yes, they can reach the playoffs. This season, the longest losing streak is 4 games. This is favorable because in 2023, when the Diamondbacks made the playoffs, they had three 6-game losing streaks, a 5-game losing streak, and at least three 4-game losing streaks.
Justin:I think we end up right around 81-81. We will have some stretches where we look like we can take on anyone and other stretches where we….won’t.
Ben: I don’t know if this team is really that streaky or if they’re just inconsistent. The current iteration of the Cubs feels like a more accurate representation of streaky with multiple 10-game streaks of winning or losing. This D-Backs club I think more likely just took advantage of some softer parts of their schedule that might have been more of a mirage than anything else.
Jordan Lawler is back. Do you think its more likely we get the Lawler we saw the first couple cups of coffee or more what we saw at the start of the season
C. Wesley Baier: I’m confident that the Jordan J.J. Lawlar we’re seeing this season is the real deal, because that’s the hitter I saw when the Dbacks drafted him. Every first round prospect has the raw talent to succeed, but not all of them have the makeup to overcome multiple injuries or being terrible for the first time in their life like like Lawlar has. Triple-J always seemed like he had that special “Je ne sais quoi” to eventually figure it out.
Spencer: Lawlar is an immensely talented player who gets hurt constantly. He’s Royce Lewis and Byron Buxton. I think we get the good version for however long he stays on the field. He’s turned a corner and is finally capable of hitting MLB pitching.
James Attwood:I figure it will be somewhere in-between, but leaning towards the opening of this season. He is going to have to stay healthy though, which might be his single-biggest challenge.
Makakilo: With the caveat that 25 PAs is a small sample size, the following stats indicate that he can maintain his excellent batting. .311 xBA, .479 xSLG, .386 xwOBA, 27.5% squared up, and 40.0% hard hits.
Justin: I think he needs an extended look. 34 PAs in 2023 and 74 last year. I might be in the minority, but I am not ready to write him off.
Ben: I suspect he’ll get off to a slow start as he works back from his injury, but I think he showed enough at the start of the season to give me confidence that he can be a productive part of the lineup which would feel like a victory in and of itself after his injury history.
Puk took a step back in his rehab, seemingly continuing a trend of Dbacks players to do so. Is this a concerning pattern or just noise?
C. Wesley Baier: It’s just noise at this point. I do think the organization should look to improve though, and one of the ways they can do that is improving in this area, even if they’re not anywhere near the worst in this regard. It might be a good idea to take a look at all the IL setbacks over the last few seasons and identify what, if any, external causes of those setbacks might be, and try to eliminate them from happening again, if possible. Maybe they need to take a look at what the “healthiest” organization do to keep their players off the Injured List?
Spencer: Concerning pattern brought on by a desperate team. But it happens and it is what it is.
James Attwood: At this stage, going back more than a year now, it is difficult to see this as anything other than a pattern. Exacerbating the issue is that this is a make-or-break season for a number of Diamondbacks, including Mike Hazen and Torey Lovullo. That means guys pressing (or being pressed) to come back as quickly as possible. Expecting Burnes to return before mid-August was always optimistic in my opinion, and that was before he suffered his recent setback. Now, he’s out until September. The reality is, he should be out until 2027, to make sure he returns 100% healthy. A.J. Puk’s timetable was a more rapid one as he underwent a different procedure, but still a major one. Given Puk already has one foot out the door, the push to rush him back did more to help him with showcasing himself for the trade deadline (or free agency) than it did to help the team win more games over the rest of the season. At this point, especially as the team continues to hover around the .500 mark, they should be slowing recoveries, not accelerating them.
Makakilo: Injuries (and reinjuries) will always be somewhat unpredictable (noisy). Nevertheless, my view is that the ratio of supinated to pronated pitches will impact the frequency of pitcher injury. A fan perspective of pitcher injuries follows:
Justin: It speaks to the depth, or lack there of, where we were depending so much on renforcements arriving. Puk will get back when he gets back, JMart. Burnes might as well not even come back as far as I am concerned.
Ben: I think it’s likely just noise/function of pitcher delivery. As far as I remember, there was no setbacks for Pavin Smith or Jordan Lawlar in their respective rehab and Lourdes Gurriel Jr came back earlier than expected. I understand fans are frustrated by setbacks because the process feels so opaque and they want to blame the training staff, but I think that’s just misdirected anger.
Jack brought up an interesting suggestion, that he believed MLB should allow therapeutic corticosteroids for rehabbing players. Is that something you would agree with, and is that something MLB could allow and manage in such a way that it would not be abused?
C. Wesley Baier: Doctors and other licenced healthcare professionals should be able to treat their patients with whatever is in the best interest of their patient’s health. Banning substances that have legitimate medical uses, that are medically appropriate for a patient’s condition is legal and ethical landmine, and unsurprisingly something I have a problem with. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is commonly treated with various amphetamines, which players already can get a medical exemption for, because it’s what is medically appropriate more often than not. I mention that specifically because MLB has quite the history of its players abusing Amphetamines (along with literally every single stimulant known to humankind, see my last article for some examples), and that’s most often to combat the fatigue that comes with an extremely long season, or to mentally focus, because you have undiagnosed ADHD.
James Attwood: MLB has a very sticky situation on their hands that is 100% a problem of their own making. By turning a blind eye to players going from being administered HGH as part of their recovery process (hello Barry Bonds) to more than 50% of the league on HGH or related steroids (still here Barry?), the integrity of the game’s hallowed records has come under constant attack. Now, to try and clean up their mess, MLB is forced to implement rules that do not have the best recovery outcomes for players in mind. Instead of allowing closely-regulated treatment of rehabbing players, they are forced to put players in the position of less effective treatments in order to “keep the game clean”. One of the problems here though, is that as the players are getting bigger, stronger, and faster, they are needing more and more aggressive therapies to rehabilitate from injury. It is something that, if they were smart and honestly interested in the long-term health of their rank and file, the MLBPA would be addressing in the upcoming CBA. It might well be that we have come to the point that MLB is going to need to allow modern medicine back into the sport, but closely regulated and with strict oversight. Perhaps an independent rehabilitation panel that answers only to the Commissioner’s Office instead of the team could be created. I’m sure there are issues with that as well, but it at least starts the conversation. Baseball fans want to see Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Tarik Skubal Jacob Misiorowski, et al on the field not on the IL.
Makakilo: My impression (I could be wrong) is that doctors can submit pre-treatment paperwork to MLB to request approval to use PEDs, including corticosteroids. My opinion is based on these two quotes about the investigation of the Dodgers team doctor.
“MLB players, like UFC fighters, can receive a special exemption to use certain banned substances.” link: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/dodgers-doctor-neal-elattrache-performance-enhancing-drugs-conor-mcgregor/
“[Neil] ElAttrache [Dodgers team doctor] told the NYT that after McGregor [UFC fighter] saw the specialist, the doctor wrote a letter to support McGregor’s application for a special exemption, which would’ve allowed him to use performance-enhancing drugs without facing a penalty.” link: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/dodgers/2026/06/11/mlb-dodgers-doctor-connection-conor-mcgregor-treatment/90517303007/
Justin: I guess I agree with. Like the question asks, they would have to figure out a way to manage it so it isn’t abused.
Ben: I’m not a medical expert so I won’t pretend to understand what corticosteroids do on a molecular or medical level, but I’m on board with any strategy that might ease the pain of the actual participants in my favorite sport. If they can find a way to apply them to either improve rehabilitation times without abuse or giving some players an advantage, then I’m all for it. But I suspect there would be some significant side effects that would need to be dealt with before MLB would approve it.