Time for a Friday Fish Fry!
A big sigh of relief to see Eugenio Suarez’s name back in the line-up for the series opener against the Marlins. His injury did not initially seem very promising, but here we are. I’m still a little tentative, remembering that both Gabriel Moreno and Corbin Carroll remained active on the roster for a considerable time, after their X-rays were also negative, before it was eventually decided to put them on the IL. Moreno even started games. So we’ll see if Suarez ends up going down the same disappointing route, or if he did indeed dodge becoming the latest addition to the casualty wing at Chase. Hopefully the latter, for since arriving, he has been the closest to an ever-present on the Arizona roster.
Indeed, those two games Suarez missed in Chicago – his first of the season – bring his total of absences to a mere six since Opening Day 2024. The figure of 236 appearances puts Eugenio among the top twenty for games played in the majors over that time (it’s led by Pete Alonso, at 244 games). Among the D-backs, only Corbin Carroll (230) and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (207) currently sit at better than 190 before play starts this evening. And it looks like Suarez’s lead over Carroll is going to be increasing for a while, going forward. But after the game where it seemed like we could potentially lose both Eugenio and Josh Naylor, things could definitely be worse.
While the Marlins are out of the picture, they’ve been playing well of late. They’re 9-4 over the last fortnight, including road sweeps of both the Nationals and – more impressively – the Giants. Only the Dodgers have more wins than the Marlins out of the National League in that time. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Dodgers are now six games clear at the top of the NL West. At the half-way point, Fangraphs already gives them a 95.6% chance of winning the division, the highest odds of any team. After some early flattering to deceive, it seems like the second half probably will end up as the procession many expected pre-season. Predictions of Arizona finishing twenty games back of LA currently look about right.