The D-backs offense is a two-headed beast
Another day, another blowout win. Last night was the D-backs third win by 13+ runs this season, and there’s still a week left in April. There had only been one previous season where Arizona has won more than a single game by that margin – 2019, when they beat the Giants 18-2 and the Rangers 19-4. Yet they still have a losing record. The problem is, the team has scored 40% of their runs (59 of 148) in just four contests. Unsurprisingly, they won all of those games. But Arizona have scored fewer than four runs eight times, and are 1-7 there. They have also been winning the blowouts (5-2) but losing the close games: the Diamondbacks are 5-10 in games decided by a margin of three runs or below.
Through 25 games, the team has tied a franchise record by scoring 148 runs, matching the total from 2001. However, the D-backs’ overall OPS of .749 is not in line with that offensive output: it’s very much mid-table, ranking 13th of 27. For example, their triple-slash so far of .261/.339/.410 is in line with what they produced to this point in 2005: .252/.331/.409. But in 2005 they scored only 109 runs, thirty-nine fewer than this year. Arizona has so far scored more runs than would be expected, mostly because with runners in scoring position they are hitting an MLB-best .317/.409/.517 for an insane .926 OPS. That’s not sustainable, so we should brace ourselves for regression – and it’ll take our run production with it.