Each spring Baseball Prospectus publishes our Annual, which contains essays on all 30 teams. With the World Series beginning tomorrow, we thought you might enjoy a look back at the 2023 Diamondbacks essay as a free sample. You can purchase the book directly from the distributor here. Don’t forget to check back soon to pre-order our 2024 edition.
About 272 miles west of Phoenix, the desert rises into a tormented pile of sun-baked rocks. Swallowed by a landscape that feels more like the moon than earth, air feels like a pleasant surprise. Anything more, anything actively encouraging, would seem too much to ask. But you’re here because more is promised.
Carving through the arid terrain on a dusty path, only miniature crimson cacti cling to the hillsides—until you look up after a deep descent and notice a rush of green peeking above the jagged land ahead. Further down, in a narrow pocket, luscious palm trees burst out of a thriving oasis.
Now a feature in Joshua Tree National Park dubbed Fortynine Palms Oasis, this is one of several points of refuge that once helped Native Americans—and still helps many animal species—survive high in the harsh Mojave Desert. It is a blip of awe-inspiring natural prosperity achieved in the shadow of California’s more fertile coast. And it really is in the shadow: The Mojave exists because mountain ranges block the rain that might allow more life to thrive here, save the region’s scant precipitation for the more favorably situated areas to the west.
This is a place where existential challenge and reality bleed into one. It’s a place the Arizona Diamondbacks know well. They also live in the daunting shadow of resource-rich California powers—the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres. And their path to success in the National League West can appear similarly remote.
Now five seasons removed from their last postseason appearance, the D’Backs are scanning that space that may or may not exist between the immense natural barriers and the horizon—seeking that unlikely, almost-inexplicable haven where they can thrive despite the conditions.
The stars assembling in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego are clearly visible in Arizona. Buoyed by recent 100-win seasons and playoff runs, the division’s top powers are behaving as if they intend to stay there, year in and year out. Two division rivals are likely to enter the season among MLB’s top 10 payrolls, as the Padres continue their fireworks show and the Dodgers remain the Dodgers. The Giants clearly have the intent to flex financial muscle as they head into a new era and the patience to follow the plan, no matter the pains of building a consistent contender.
The D’Backs work on a less perennial timeline. Their payroll, under team owner Ken Kendrick, hasn’t ranked in the top half of the league on Opening Day since 2014. Last year, slashed down to pre-2016 levels, it ranked 24th. Fans appear unhappy with the latest drift toward irrelevance, with seasonal attendance falling short of the club’s 2,000,000-fan projection by nearly a fifth. Potential issues with the cables that open the roof were discovered too close to last season’s onset to address; throughout the summer games were played in literal as well as metaphoric shadow as the roof remained closed, the most obvious of a slew of issues piling up at Chase Field.
We have seen teams faced with similarly challenging divisions take extreme measures: The Baltimore Orioles used the controlled burn of a multiyear tank; the Washington Nationals traded off a World Series core in less than three years; the Tampa Bay Rays live in a spin cycle of their own creation. Despite bottoming out with a 52-win bruise of a campaign in 2021, the Diamondbacks have made relatively few sudden movements. (The franchise’s rare momentous pivots have not proven rewarding: Zack Greinke’s $206 million deal only covered one playoff berth, whereas discarded face of the franchise Paul Goldschmidt won NL MVP for the Cardinals in 2022 on a cheaper contract.)
Adapting to life in the desert can look a lot like doing nothing. The enormous Saguaro cactus native to Arizona grows at a glacial pace. Even though they can stretch to 60 feet in height, they might stand only an inch and a half high at age 10. The real development is happening below the surface. And that has been the story of the recent D’Backs under general manager Mike Hazen.
They’ve been collecting and storing talent. Conserving and growing potential. They agreed to a contract extension with Ketel Marte prior to 2022 that pays the positionally flexible All-Star a reasonable $15.2 million per year through at least 2027. They signed starting pitcher Merrill Kelly to an extension that could keep him in Arizona through 2025, just as his velocity ticked up and he embarked on the most successful season of his late-blooming big-league career. They held onto emerging contributors, like powerful first baseman Christian Walker and out-of-the-blue relief ace Joe Mantiply, who certainly would have had trade suitors.
Heading into last winter, Hazen signaled the team’s focus by insisting that a sudden surplus of major-league outfielders wouldn’t be exchanged for future value. “We’re kind of moving past the prospect stage,” he told The Arizona Republic, saying the intent would be to bring back immediate contributors.
Like stones marking off a navigable, if tenuous, way forward, there’s a promise embedded in there: Something is going to rise from the nothingness.
Oases in the wasteland that separates Arizona from their glitzy rivals are fueled by groundswells. Really deep, really old groundswells. Movement along fault lines in Southern California is responsible for pushing water to the surface and sustaining palm trees, bighorn sheep and a bevy of other life forms that wouldn’t seem to stand a chance. The first outward evidence of a groundswell in Arizona bubbled up in 2022.
Several existing major leaguers took significant steps forward: Zac Gallen reasserted himself as an ace with a headline-grabbing scoreless streak, 2.54 ERA and career-best 75 DRA-. Walker put up a line worthy of the cold corner, crushing 36 homers while slashing his strikeout rate and chase rate. Daulton Varsho completed a dumbfounding dance around the top of the defensive spectrum by shifting his primary position from catcher to the outfield…and immediately rating as the most valuable outfield defender in baseball by Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric. The superlative metrics stem largely from excellent reads and excellent range, especially tracking down would-be extra-base hits whacked toward the wall. Josh Rojas, the most anonymous prospect the D’Backs landed when they traded Greinke halfway through his contract, evolved into a useful utility player who stole 23 bases.
Then the prospects started sprouting. Some of them were very much fledgling, far from final products. Outfielder Alek Thomas and shortstop Geraldo Perdomo took their lumps, especially at the plate, as they adjusted to the majors. Others announced their presence more forcefully. The brightest glimmer of hope emanates from Corbin Carroll. The 22-year-old outfielder rebounded from a 2021 shoulder injury to torch Double-A and Triple-A, en route to a promising 32-game MLB debut. The 5-foot-10 lefty hits, walks and runs—and maybe strikes out a tad more than you’d expect, looking at his compact physique. He will enter 2023 as the rookie to beat in the NL, and a threat to go 20/20.
Three or more rookie arms figure to be in play for the major-league rotation, most notably Brandon Pfaadt and Drey Jameson—a fireballer who already impressed in a cup of coffee. More top picks, largely on the position player front, are marinating lower in the system.
While Varsho and fellow OF/C Cooper Hummel ended up on the move, the players for whom they were traded, Gabriel Moreno, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Kyle Lewis, are at least as geared toward present-day relevance. Gurriel (entering his walk year) and Lewis are the established names and bats, but it’s Moreno on whom hope is pinned: The Blue Jays’ top-ranked prospect coming into 2022, the catcher checked every box at Triple-A before impressing with the bat (113 DRC+) in a short big-league sample. Hazen said he expected that after a year in the big leagues, “I make a phone call on this player and I don’t get a response.”
The roots are in place. Growth is expected now; Hazen and manager Torey Lovullo have a wizened guide on hand who’s helped to develop a young team before. Brent Strom, the 74-year-old master pitching coach whose fingerprints are all over the Astros’ recent success, joined Arizona in a bit of a surprise move after the 2021 season. In his Houston days, Strom famously advised pitchers to prey on hitters’ homer-focused uppercut swings: High fastballs, with the spin to impart the appearance of “rise.”
It was a simple insight that took a lot of complex knowledge to relay and execute. In full effect, it altered the trajectories of several careers—most notably Justin Verlander’s and Gerrit Cole’s—and ultimately the entire environment to which it was originally reacting.
The line between surviving and thriving can get hazy in the heat of intense competition. And at the extremes—of earth’s environment, of baseball’s bewildering season—the distinction often depends purely on timing. Ask the Padres, after a validating NLCS run followed a tense slog of a season. Or the Dodgers, after the bottom instantly fell out of a 111-win season. Ask the humble cactus, which wildly varies its water intake and storage based on the time of year.
There’s also more cosmic timing at play. The D’Backs are assembling their promising collection of potential stars as the Dodgers and Padres spend hundreds and hundreds of millions to stockpile confirmed stars, yes, but they’re also doing it as MLB switches to a balanced schedule. In 2022, Arizona went 5-14 against the Dodgers, and 5-14 against the Padres. (They managed a healthy 10-9 mark against the Giants in San Francisco’s return to the realm of normal gravitational laws.)
In 2023, and moving forward, every MLB team will play all 29 other teams. To make room, they will see each divisional foe 13 times instead of 19. In their place, Arizona will have more games against the AL West, and the weak AL Central, but also matchups with the similarly difficult AL East titans (whom they didn’t face at all in 2022). The Texas Rangers will be their “natural rivals” for a four-game interleague slate, which may have been a luckier draw ahead of their momentous offseason. It could be worse: The Colorado Rockies wound up tied to the Houston Astros.
It’s borderline impossible to project the strength of individual season schedules in advance, but in a longer view, the balanced schedule—combined with the expanded postseason format that took effect last season—gives Arizona precious breathing room. Finishing sixth in the NL is more than attainable. Placing a distant third in the division and nevertheless reaching the World Series, as the Philadelphia Phillies did, doesn’t feel any less glorious. Even winding up fourth in the division and making the postseason is now technically possible, if unlikely.
That’s not to say the D’Backs should limit their ambitions or curb their dreams. Ideally, success breeds the resources to ensure more success—just as the humans once sustained by a precious oasis worked toward its preservation. But as many current MLB ownership groups prefer, the Diamondbacks are going to rest the bulk of their hopes on hope, on the promise just over that next bluff.
Products of time. Products of careful cultivation. And yes, products of chance.
After you reach the Fortynine Palms Oasis, after you get a full sense of its triumph over the elements, you retrace your steps. Successful baseball teams do this, too. Winning sets a more urgent clock, poses more direct questions. The youngest, brightest stars—will they accept long-term extensions? The veteran additions—are their contracts up? The original core reaching five, six years of service time and free agency—are they decamping for greener pastures?
It’s painful but gratifying. When, in bygone eras, hopes were fulfilled in the oasis—by MVP awards or Cy Youngs or champagne celebrations—the faces and numbers and batting stances seared themselves into place. Even in their seasons of absence, they remain affirmations of possibility—once-questionable seeds that undeniably bore fruit. It can be done. In that place. In new forms.
On the trek back, the natural instinct is to peer over your shoulder. Your eye can’t help but catch on the palm fronds. Up and up you climb, and the flash of green still hovers above the threat of the rocks. Winded, you stop and fully turn around, immediately alighting on the oasis from a vista where you’d swear there was nothing but desert visible before.
Thank you for reading
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Funny how that worked out this year!