Legit marquee matchups in a key division battle!

Everybody wants to be the Arizona Diamondbacks. Just squeak in and you have a chance to win it all. Of course, the Dbacks didn’t get there out of pure luck: timely hitting and above average hitting helped them make a deep postseason run, but that’s what also set them up for a great start to 2023 (49-34 through June 30).

This year, they’re off to a bit of a slow start (9-10), and that’s in part because their stars aren’t yet starring. Reigning NL Rookie of the Year Corbin Carroll is hitting .225/.345/.296 through the team’s first 18 games and, as MLB.com’s Mike Petriello notes:

Corbin Carroll has to get some strikeout back in his game. All this contact isn't working. pic.twitter.com/MBcGkKzwIV

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) April 18, 2024

His average exit velocity is 83.1 mph, which is in the bottom 3% of the league. Carroll emerged as the face of the franchise last year and one of the fresh faces for the league itself, and because the Giants did not draft him when they had the chance (have you heard of this? Have you seen this?), he’s one at least I will always keep an eye on. That said, let me just go over here and look at...

What’s... what’s this? Could this be the left-handed centerfielder for the San Francisco Giants, Grandson of the Wind himself, Mr. Jung Hoo Lee? And, what’s this? .270/.317/.338. Folks... we’ve got a competition going on here. Arizona’s young and exciting centerfielder (who is, admittedly, 2 years younger) vs. the Giants’ young and exciting centerfielder.

It’s not yet a 1:1 comparison. Lee’s 6 walks against 9 strikeouts and 2/4 in stolen bases pales in comparison to Carroll’s 12 walks against 6 strikeouts and 8/10 in stolen bases. This is Carroll’s third season (second full), while it’s Lee’s first. Look at Corbin Carroll’s heat map from 2023 — LOOK AT IT:

That’s going to be hard to match for any player and it’s already been tough to replicate for Carroll. Here’s his start to 2024:

And here’s Lee’s for comparison:

I’m presenting you with information gathered from a small sample size when I really should be appealing to your gut: this feels like an interesting matchup for the Giants now because they would seem to now matchup better on paper against these Diamondbacks, who’ve won the season series in each of the past two years.

For all of Carroll’s struggles, the Diamondbacks five players with OPS+es well above league average — Joc Pederson (191), Ketel Marte (170), Blaze Alexander (136), and Christian Walker (122). The Arizona clubhouse has taken to pusoy very nicely, it would seem. The Giants counter with five of their own: LaMonte Wade Jr. (181), Tyler Fitzgerald (157), Michael Conforto (152), Jorge Soler (123), and Patrick Bailey (119). As you’d expect, the Diamondbacks still have a better overall lineup (107 team OPS+ vs. Giants’ 98), but that’s a narrowed gap if ever I saw one.

Joc Pederson wasn’t their biggest offseason acquisition, that was LHP Eduardo Rodriguez, who was just transfered to the 60-day IL yesterday. His left shoulder strain landed him on the IL the day after Arizona announced their signing of Rangers playoff hero Jordan Montgomery, who was also one of the “Boras Four.” That one-year, $25 million deal would seem to indicate that Arizona knew the deal with Rodriguez and could use the insurance claim money on that injury to help them out with Montgomery.

Montgomery dumped Scott Boras right after the deal, so it’s clear that he’s not sticking around in Arizona for very long, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be a problem for the Giants. I was perhaps too interested in Montgomery signing with the Giants in the offseason, but I stand by this statement as solid comparitive analysis:

The best way to think of him is as a left-handed Logan Webb. Although their groundball rates are not the same (Webb’s was 59.9% 2021-2023, Montgomery’s 44.5%), they limit home runs and are more pitch to contact than strikeout guys (both have 8.3 K/9 over past three seasons). Webb has been better, of course, but Montgomery has been a top 20 pitcher in the past three seasons and pairing him with the team’s pitching plan will only make the World Series winner that much better.

Instead, the Giants added Blake Snell, who won the Cy Young in the NL last year, but has still been worth one fewer win above replacement than Montgomery since 2020 — at least, as of this post. Montgomery actually got a bit of a Spring Training rather than get dumped into major league action unceremoniously, so he has the chance to widen the gap this year, but Baseball is weird, and maybe Snell locks in on start #3 rather than start #9 or #10.

The Giants will be fighting for the third Wild Card all year, and if the San Diego Padres manage to compete in the way that they have in the season’s first month (a bad bet to make, I’ll admit, because that’s not usually how Baseball works), then the Diamondbacks will be, too, and that means every one of these 13 games in the season series matter a lot.

It’s just interesting how the Giants have a lot of similarities with the Diamondbacks this year. That was not something I would’ve imagined after last year.

Series details

Who: Arizona Diamondbacks vs. San Francisco Giants

Where: Oracle Park, San Francisco, California

When: Thursday (6:45pm PT), Friday (7:15pm PT), Saturday (1:05pm PT), Sunday (1:05pm PT) National broadcasts: FS1 (Thursday), Apple TV+ (Friday)

Projected starters

Thursday: Ryne Nelson vs. Logan Webb

Friday: Jordan Montgomery vs. Blake Snell

Saturday: Zac Gallen vs. TBD

Sunday: Merrill Kelly vs. TBD

Where they stand

Diamondbacks, 9-10 (3rd in NL West), 106 RS / 87 RA

Giants, 8-11 (4th in NL West), 79 RS / 91 RA

Dbacks to watch

Joc Pederson: He picked up his first two home runs of the season over the past two days, but before that he was still hitting a respectable .310/.447/.379. His home run yesterday was against lefty Drew Smyly. The clown prince of cup checks has a career .881 OPS in April, career .837 OPS against the Giants, and career .835 OPS in Oracle Park as well as against right-handed pitchers — however! The Giants are likely to start just two righties in this four-game series, with Blake Snell and Kyle Harrison potentially being cause to keep him out of the lineup for stretches, though this could be a good test for Harrison if Torey Lovullo decides to roll the dice and challenge the rookie’s reverse platoon splits. Will he be booed or cheered?

Ryne Nelson: The Giants seemed to have Nelson figured out when they faced him for the very first time last May (4 ER in 4.2 IP), but his next two starts against them showed he’d made a significant adjustment: 3 ER in 13.2 IP. Now, that could be because those next two starts coincided with the lineup going from one of the best in the sport to the worst or it could be that he’s now a guy who’s going to be a challenge whenever they face him. His first three starts suggest the latter: after a rough season debut at home against the Yankees (5 R/ 4 ER in 2.2 IP), he’s been great (4 ER, 11-1 K-BB in 11 IP) against Atlanta and St. Louis.

Ketel Marte & Zac Gallen: Look, these are the two stalwarts, sort of the anchors of the whole team. The guys who it should go without saying are ones you need to watch, but I’m mentioning them because Zac Gallen’s 3-0, 1.64 ERA start to the season is a real “picking up where he left off” situation. Meanwhile, Marte, who’s always good, has been flat out terrific. To put it in terms we’ll all immediately get: he’s been CJ Abrams great to start the season (.411 wOBA on a .323 BAbip). You don’t want Carroll to get hot and beat you, but even if the Giants contain him, the Diamondbacks have more than one way to deliver venom. #snakes

Giants to watch

Blake Snell: I ditched a post criticizing Scott Boras for agreeing to put his client in this awful situation that has hurt both the player and the team because, well, it’s Baseball, and for all I know, Snell is able to provide 4 clean innings against a tough lineup and the Boras client vs. former Boras client winds up being a good one. But I’m skeptical! If it took him 4-5 starts in the regular season to lock in last year, and he needed four Spring Training starts to get ready for that, then we’re still a couple of months from him being any sort of contributor. Meanwhile, that’s two months’ worth of starts flushed down the toilet. Again, it’s Baseball, and maybe it won’t take that long.

Matt Chapman: I wouldn’t say that I’ve seen Chappie have better at bats recently, but it’s undeniable that he’s had better results. On the 6-game Florida trip, he was 5-for-24 with 2 home runs and 1 walk against 9 strikeouts, but that was an improvement of sorts from the 6-game homestand prior: 4-for-23 with 0 home runs, and 1 walk against 3 strikeouts. He’s been a fine defender at the hot corner so far, he’s been faster than average by Statcast’s Sprint Speed measure, and, he’s made lots of hard contact: his 93.6 mph average exit velocity is in the top 2% of the league and right in line with his career norms — his 52.6% is in the top 8% of the league and also equivalent to his career norms. He’s Matt Chapman! Can this be a breakout series that improves upon his season line of .208/.256/.416?

Nick Ahmed: Revenge against his former team??? One thing I’ll say about his numbers is that he’s 95th percentile in Outs Above Average (+2) and his contact data is right in line with the “best” years of his career, which means if the Giants get a performance equivalent to Nick Ahmed’s best seasons, somehow, then they’ll get a Gold Glove shortstop who hits .244/.303/.424. I would hope that wouldn’t mean the end of Marco Luciano as a Giant, but that would sure help them stay competitive for that 3rd Wild Card as deep into the season as possible, and maybe even win it!

Mike Yastrzemski: He’s hit 12 career home runs against the Diamondbacks, his most against any team and he’s yet to homer in 2024. There’s nothing special about a 33-year old corner outfielder who doesn’t regularly slug home runs, so if he were on any other team people would be writing him off — I get why fans don’t want to do this (the affinity!) but a deeper look at the numbers show why the Giants don’t want to (not yet, anyway), either: he’s still a great defender and he’s a left-handed hitter.

Series details

Where they stand

Diamondbacks, 9-10 (3rd in NL West), 106 RS / 87 RA Giants, 8-11 (4th in NL West), 79 RS / 91 RA

Dbacks to watch

Giants to watch

Prediction time

Diamondbacks, 9-10 (3rd in NL West), 106 RS / 87 RA

Giants, 8-11 (4th in NL West), 79 RS / 91 RA