Colorado Rockies: NL West Preview Series – Arizona Diamondbacks

As a comparison, Colorado’s starters performed considerably worse than Arizona’s even before the addition of Bumgarner, finishing with just 6.5 fWAR and a 5.87 ERA that was the worst in baseball by more than 0.2 runs.

The Diamondbacks also made a couple moves to shore up an offense that finished in the bottom half of the league in 2019 if you look at park-adjusted wRC+. Their mark of 94 signified a below-average offensive unit by six percent, and their team on-base percentage, .323, ranked 16th in baseball.

General Manager Mike Hazen addressed the obvious need in this area by trading for Pirates center fielder outfielder Starling Marte, and signing catcher Stephen Vogt and outfielder Kole Calhoun to Major League free-agent deals.

https://twitter.com/Dbacks/status/1221903299755929601?s=20

I expect Vogt and Marte to have the largest impact on their new club. Vogt, who appeared in 99 games with San Francisco last year, provides a sizable offensive improvement over Alex Avila behind the plate.

The former Giant bested Avila’s .774 OPS with his .804, and according to Baseball-Reference, was 11 percent better than league average by OPS+, while Avila finished with a league-average mark of 100. Vogt didn’t play in the majors in 2018 but from 2014 through 2017, his OPS+ was 103. Avila’s OPS+ from 2014 through 2018 was 94.

Vogt also brings valuable experience working with Bumgarner in his lone season with the Giants. He was behind the plate for four of Bumgarner’s 34 starts and was excited to hear that his new club had landed the southpaw when the news broke, according to Jake Anderson’s story on ArizonaSports.com.

“We’re comfortable with each other. We know each other very well since we spent a year together in the clubhouse and talked about pitching in between starts, just different things like that.”

Marte and Calhoun join a solid outfield group, including Tim Locastro, Ketel Marte (no relation to Starling), and David Peralta. Overall, the D-Backs outfielders produced an fWAR of 11.0 in 2019, tied with the Mets for 8th-best in baseball.

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A lot of that production stemmed from Ketel’s breakout season that saw the former Mariner explode for a .981 OPS in 144 games, demolishing his previous career-high of .768. He clubbed 32 home runs, also a career-high, and finished 4th in National League MVP voting.

Starling brings a hot bat to the desert following a productive final season with the Bucs. He slashed .295/.342/.503 with a .845 OPS in 132 games last year, and gave the Pirates a boost of 3.0 wins, according to FanGraphs‘ fWAR. His 119 wRC+ was his highest mark since 2016, and he swiped 25 bases as well.

Calhoun rebounded nicely from a dreadful 2018, slashing .232/.325/.467 with a 108 wRC+ and 2.5 fWAR. Those last two are drastic improvements from two years ago when he posted 79 and 0.0 in those categories, respectively.

If this were shaping up to be a normal season, I would expect Arizona to improve upon their 85-win total from a year ago. With the season currently on hold due to COVID-19 concerns and no estimated start date on the horizon, it’s difficult to know how many games we will see played in 2020, and what the postseason structure will look like.

Before Spring Training started, though, Arizona was viewed as a trendy Wild Card pick, and I believe their offseason moves make another postseason berth in Phoenix very likely in the next few years.