Happy Father’s Day
Roster move
The Arizona Diamondbacks made the following roster moves:
- Recalled INF Josh VanMeter and C/OF Daulton Varsho from Triple-A Reno.
- Placed C Carson Kelly (fractured right wrist) on the 10-day injured list.
- Optioned RHP Kevin Ginkel to Reno following last night’s game.
It seems we’re back in the bad old days of roster churn, when it seemed every preview had another movie to consider. None of these are much surprise. Kelly was always going to need a move, and Ginkel has been flat-out awful this year. His ERA is 6.35, and he has walked 14 in 28.1 innings. There had been an extra reliever after yesterday’s move, so replacing him with VanMeter brings things back to normal. In reality, VanMeter replaces Ildemaro Vargas, who was recently DFA’d. Josh has been destroying the ball there – .388/.538/.881 for a 1.419 OPS – but as ever, I doubt we’ll see anything like that at the major-league level. Everyone has been destroying the ball there: In their last six games, Reno has scored a total of 88 runs.
Last night, Jake Faria became the 29th pitcher to take the mound for Arizona this season. The degree of roster churn has been startling. With 90 games left, we are just one off our all-time high for pitchers in a year (30 in 2018). The Diamondbacks are tied with the Mariners for the most pitchers used in 2021. The team has already had 12 starters, also tying our most for a season – again, we’re not even half-way through it yet. This included a spell of barely three weeks (May 6-27) where the rotation included TEN different pitchers. There have been fifteen full seasons in Diamondbacks history where the team used fewer starters than those 22 days.
No pre-game audio from Torey Lovullo. Jack and I have apparently lost the will, at least for today. Or we just want to give Torey some alone time. 🙂