April 23, 2014

Getting the Outs Backwards

The Diamondbacks lost their fourth straight game Tuesday night, falling to the Cubs 9-2. Arizona is now 5-18, a .217 winning percentage, by far the worst in the majors. The game was a microcosm of the DBacks season. The offense went 6 for 31 with no walks, a .194 OBP. Meanwhile, the Cubs collected eleven hits and four walks for a .385 game OBP. The Diamondbacks currently allow the highest OBP in the NL, .347, while the offense comes in 14th at .291. To make matters worse, Arizona has four players doing a bang up job of getting on base. Paul Goldschmidt, Miguel Montero, Chris Owings, and Cliff Pennington all do well. Owings and Pennington, however, work out to one player as they are both shortstops, and no one else on the team is even close to .300. If they even had slightly below league average players supporting the above, the offense would be okay.

The pitching staff, of course, suffered serious injuries to front line starters, leading to a .373 OBP allowed by the remaining starters. The bullpen has done a decent job, posting a .223/.309/.343 slash line allowed, but they are under constant pressure to perform.

Things are a mess. The team can wait for the rest of the offense to move toward more respectable OBPs, or maybe they can start looking for pitchers somewhere. It will remain very difficult to win games, however, with that kind of spread in the OBP. The team is in a deep hole early, and they don’t seem to have the talent on either side of the ball to climb out.

(Note that the Padres, who own the offense with the worst OBP on offense, has one of the best allowed on defense, so they are around .500.)

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