BREAKING: No Lefties for Opening Day in Diamondbacks' Bullpen

0:00Today, the Diamondbacks play their final spring training game before heading to Los Angeles for the much anticipated opening day, but have the last few days given fans a cause for concern. You are locked on Diamondbacks, your daily Arizona Diamondbacks podcast, part of the Locton podcast network, your team every day. Of bullpen arms, I consist exactly of zero left handed pitchers and we'll be finishing the show today with everyone's favorite segment hearing from you, which by the way we are

1:03going to be doing another segment, not on tomorrow's episode, but on Thursday's episode. So please leave your thoughts and comments in the comment section of the YouTube channel, the YouTube video, and we'll hear from you when the time comes. I'm here too. Also, I'm joined by Tate, my brother slash producer, and you can't see him if you guys are just listening to this. Don't worry. Nobody is being subjected to that. Anyway, just kidding. He's the handsome one in the family. Anyway, let's go ahead and talk about yesterday's game against the Cleveland Guardians. Now if you know, I didn't say that, I said, if you were watching, or if you just looked at the, whether you were watching or whether you just looked at the final score, there's, there's maybe a little bit of concern. Tate is pretty, is pretty worried, I would say. Not about Pave and Smith though. Pave and Smith is pretty alright.

2:03I think Pave and Smith is going to have a pretty good year, assuming he stays healthy. Two singles, baby. The only hits we had all day. So thanks to Pave and Smith for keeping us from getting no hit in spring training. That would have been a little while. Has there ever been a no hitter in spring training? Oh, yeah. As it has to have been. I want, I like, I think there was a combined perfect game this year. No way. Are you serious? I'm pretty sure. No hitter in spring training. Let's see what the AI tells me. Recent spring training, no hitters include Baltimore Orioles combined effort on March 22, 2025 against the pirates. So yeah, there you go, and yeah, just, or no, no, it's 2026 right now. So last year, there was a no hitter, and in 2023, there was a seven pitcher combined no hitter against the Padres in 2023. Wow. They're very interesting. AI. Thanks, AI. That's probably true, but I got that from AI. So don't. Did you know it's not all old anyway.

3:05Merrill Kelly got the start. And I know what, I mean, my initial thought was, oh, man, he's not doing very well. That's not good. He's not off of his alley, and he's not looking good. He's going to have a bad season, right? He gave up five earned runs, four hits. He had two walks, only one strike out, two home runs. So back to back, back to back home runs, is he is, is he a lost cause? Are we wasting $20 million a year on Merrill Kelly? The short answer, no. The long answer is no, and then I'll explain more. So basically, Merrill Kelly right now, and Bob Brenley mentioned this during the broadcast yesterday, normally when a pitcher is coming off of an injury like this, or when you're not injured, and you're in this point of a ramp up, oh, good point, or you're not injured and you're in your, you know, your second start or whatever of a ramp up, second or third,

4:09I don't actually remember. He, yeah, you're facing high A, double A, maybe triple A guys, maybe the occasional major leager, but you're not, you're not facing, let me scroll up, you're not facing Steven Kwan, you're not facing the louder, Chase the louder, Chase the louder, thank you. Jose Ramirez, you're not facing all these guys, Bo Naylor, you're not facing any of these guys, you're facing all the, you know, you're facing whoever Mooney is. I thought you were going to say Reese Hoskins, Reese Hoskins, you're facing, you're facing Michael Jordan, you know, when he played in the minors, Tim Tibo, Tim Tibo, Kyler Murray, maybe, did he ever play spring training, no, okay, maybe, but you know, you know, maybe he will, I don't know, we'll see how he does, but anyway, this isn't a, this isn't a Cardinals podcast. So it'd be a Vikings thing. He's not, or a Vikings podcast, but so he's

5:11not facing, so he's facing much more difficult players than he would be if he was in his ramp up phase at the beginning of spring, or if he's coming off of injury, he'd be playing back lot games and he'd be playing, he'd be playing in the minors, a game or two to kind of get everything going again. So not a huge cause for concern. The real thing that Merrill Kelly was working on during this outing was just, can I throw my pitches without hurting myself? Can I throw these and not be uncomfortable? Is there, is there any level of pain or discomfort right now? And if there is, we need to take a step back. And he reported that, no, he felt great. Everything was good. And, and it was a good outing. He faced 12 batters and didn't, didn't re aggravate anything. Nothing was cramping, nothing was doing bad. So really it's, it's a good outing. I know it doesn't feel like it, but again, it's not like they would put him out there in this situation if this was the regular season, you know, when games count. So there's a reason he's starting on

6:14the injured list. There's, there's, exactly, there is a reason he's starting on the injured list. And, and this kind of goes to show like, as much as we wanted Merrill Kelly to get the opening day start, as much as we want him to be on the roster for opening day, it's just not the right thing to do. And this kind of shows that. So kudos to Tori Lavello, Merrill Kelly and the rest of the team for recognizing that and doing the correct thing. So because the last thing we want is to throw him out there and one, he stinks and two, he injures himself again. So he is hoping to return in the Met series, which will be April 7th through 9th. So that's the hope is when he'll be back. But he is going to start a game. He's going to try and get to the fourth inning in a backlog game here in the next week or two. And then he's going to make a start in Reno. And then the hope is that he will be back after that. Now, is that going to happen? We don't know. But that's the, that's

7:15the plan. Aside from Merrill Kelly, Isaiah Campbell, Kevin Ginkgo, Paul Seewald, each pitch to clean ining John Lwysiga, Jonathan Lwysiga. I mean, me and John are close. We're friends. We're basically, yeah, he and I are like super close. Lwysiga, Thompson, they each gave up a, an earned run in one inning. Thompson gave up a walk and then a double. Lwysiga gave up a solo home run. Other than that, solo home run, Lwysiga pitched a good outing or a good inning. So take that for what it is, I suppose, not wonderful, especially considering both of them are now on the major league roster. And then offensively, just nothing happened. Pave and Smith got two singles. He got a single in his first at bat and his third at bat. Marta and Pradomo and Loller each drew a walk. But that was it. Nobody like, there was no production outside of that. There were nine.

8:18Hardouts. There were some hard outs. Yeah, Carol had a hard out. Sir, maybe I think Prado did. Marano probably. Yeah. Yeah. So there were nine strikeouts. It doesn't look like anybody struck out more than once. So that's good. But yeah, new big screen. I didn't, yeah, new big screen. That's cool. I'm excited to see it in person. Apparently, they, every time they announced the big screen, they made sure to mention the company that installed it. You got it. You know what? If, hey, if that gets a little bit of money knocked off the final price, I, you know, I'll take it. Anyway, is there a reason to be concerned here? Let's see how today goes. Well, today, the starters are getting one at bat and then they're, and then they're out. Which is fine. So I didn't think today is very representative of how the team is going to be. I want to see how, yeah, that's fair. No,

9:18I want to see how those starters do. I want to see, yeah, I want to see how everything kind of goes with that. And, and then we'll, we'll see, Michael Sorroca is likely getting the start. We'll see how he does. He's going to be a starting pitcher for at least one, two, maybe more outing. So we need to, we need to see how he does and how long he's going to be pitching. I expect him to pitch for, I, they're probably hoping he pitches for at least four innings. But we'll see how that goes. And then, and then we'll see how everybody else performs as well. That game is starting here in a few hours. If you're listening to this right as we post it. So, so be sure to follow along with that. It looks like it is not going to be broadcast, but you can't listen to it. And you can follow it on dbacks.com. Anyway, my dogs are barking, which means it's time to move on to the next segment, which is let's talk about our bullpen and how, uh, how all right

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13:35And now we got it. We're good. So big news for our bullpen. As of yesterday, there were two spots available in the bullpen with three arms trying for it. And the only one of those three that was a left handed pitcher was Brandon Garcia. And he was informed yesterday that he would be starting the season in triple A. Which means we have a bullpen of all right handed pitchers. That bullpen consists of Paul C. Walkeven-Ginkel, Taylor Clark, Ryan Thompson, John Athen Lawisiga, Joe Ross, Juan Mario, and Andrew Hoffman. When announcing this, Torrey Levello said, I know you guys are sitting there doing the math. We don't have a lefty in the bullpen. I'm very well aware of that. However, we feel very comfortable with some of the reverse split guys that can go out there and attack left handed hitters. So who are these pitchers that are going to be facing the lefties

14:37when needed? Well, those two pitchers, as right now, are Kevin Ginkel and Juan Mario. Their splits are actually, yeah, their reverse splits are better against lefties than they are righties even though they are right handed pitchers. And if you don't know, traditionally, it's harder to hit against somebody who throws from the same side as the plate that you're on. So a right handed pitcher tends to get face or tends to face right handed hitters so that it makes it harder for the hitter. However, Ginkel and Mario, it's flipped, which isn't totally uncommon, but it's not the norm. Against right handed hitters, Kevin Ginkel through opponents had a 328 average, batting average with a 137 OPS plus, but left handed hitters only hit for 220 and had a 90 OPS plus. So against right, so if you're a right handed hitter and you're facing Ginkel, you were 37 points higher than average. But if you're lefty, your 10 points below average,

15:41OPS plus is 100 is average, anything above that is better, anything below that is worse than average. So Ginkel actually does a pretty darn good job against left handed hitters. One Mario also does better against lefties, not quite as well, though, against right EC does a little bit better. Opponents are 320 average with a 154 OPS plus and against lefties that goes down to 264 average with a 113 OPS plus. So still a little better than average, but he is better against lefties than he has righties. So he gets the spot. Tate, what are your initial thoughts on all of this? I wonder how long it's going to last. In the sense of these two being are left handed in the sense of in the sense of all righties. Oh, I see. How long is it going to work for a while or is it going to be a week into the season,

16:47they go, okay, this was a mistake. Well, I'll tell you what, we're facing the Dodgers first. I don't know if you knew that, Tate. The first team we're playing this season is the Dodgers and they have, they're this team in California, but they have some actually some kind of under the radar really good left handed hitters, like Jason Kuble. No, well, you probably haven't heard of these guys. I'm like, there's this guy named Shohei Otoni, Freddie Freeman, Kyle Tucker, and Max Muncie. They're, I guess they're some of the best left handed hitters in the game or something, I don't know, but sleepers here. So, but anyway, in all seriousness, the dimebacks are going to be facing the Dodgers for three games to start the season, and they're going to have plenty of opportunities to face left handed hitters. So, they're putting, they're getting put to the test right out of the gate. Another picture that was considered for this is Jonathan Lwisega. He does have a better, he does throw well against left handed hitters, though 2025 not so great,

17:55but overall his career, he does a fairly good job against lefties. Toy Lavello is like, I don't, I'm not as familiar with Lwisega just yet. He just arrived. We're going to let him play, see how it does, and he may end up moving into that role. We don't know, but for now, that's where we're at. But that's a good question. I mean, we have Philip Abner. We have Branding Garcia. The thing with Garcia, and he talked about Branding Garcia as well in this press conference. He said he expected Garcia to be pitching out of the DBX bullpen at some point in the season. He just needs to show that he can throw more strikes at AAA. The reason for this decision, and this is what I told Branden, is that our main pillar is filling up the strike zone. I felt like it was a little inconsistent this spring, but with him going down and getting some quality work and taking care of business, filling up strikes, he'll get back to what he's capable of doing. He's going to be in our bullpen in no time. I think he's going to be the first

18:59one to get the call up if and when somebody is not available, whether they get sent down, or whether they're injured, or whatever, or if they stink, or if they stink, which I guess he was the next one in line after Hoffman and Mario. I think Garcia is going to be the next one to get the call up. I think Philip Abner was also a very recent send down as well. I think he'd get a call up as well. We also have AJ Puck as a lefty who will be coming back sooner than Martinez, but not until halfway through the season. We still got a little while to go for that, but that will be another lefty. Another thing to consider is that when Merrill Kelly comes back and is in the rotation, likely Michael Soroco will be the one moving into the bullpen, and that'll take up another spot as well. Even if Jonathan Lwysica gets injured, that's not a guarantee that Brandon

19:59Garcia is going to be coming up or that Philip Abner is going to be coming up. Again, it's a long season. As we know from last year, injuries happen. Players underperform. We're going to see a little bit of everybody. The question is also, are we going to sign anybody in addition? Are we going to trade for anybody? That can all happen throughout the season. We forget that you can sign people once the season starts, and you can trade for people during the season. I don't mean to bum you out, but Joe Mantoplai isn't available. Joe Mantoplai is not available. Where is he? Somewhere else. I should have probably that punk, the Blue Jays. Of course, it's the Blue Jays, that punk. Anyway, I want to hear from you guys, though. I want to see what you guys think. Again, leave your comments, leave your thoughts, leave your hot cakes, even your cold takes. Leave

21:01them in the comments below on the YouTube video. If you guys are just listening to this, the best way to leave your thoughts is to go to youtube.com slash blocked on Diamondbacks or just look up blocked on Diamondbacks. You should subscribe while you're there, by the way. Leave a comment on quite for any video, quite frankly, because they'll I'll be able to see them all. Let me know what you think. Anyway, let's go in here from you. But first, let's hear from the people who help make this show happen. Hey, this is Jeff Carr from Lockdown Reds. You know, I've reached the point in my life where my wife and I are looking toward the future. We've got the house. We've got the career. We even have an awesome dog. But now we need to secure that future. That's where ethos comes in for us. When I look at this insurance or that insurance and I try to pick one, I might as well be reading an entirely different language. Ethos clears up the noise and gets me set up with exactly what I need because ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy and it's 100% online.

22:04You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and get same day coverage. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos now by going to ethos.com slash locked on MLB. And as little as 10 minutes, you can get a free quote and up to $3 million in coverage at ethos.com slash locked on MLB. That's ETH OS dot com slash locked on MLB ethos dot com slash locked on MLB application times and rates may vary. Workplace chaos deadline stacking up inbox over flowing in the one position you have to feel still sitting open when the pressure is on and you need the right hire. This is a job for sponsored jobs indeed sponsored jobs helps you reach the people who actually fit what you're looking for skills experience location. So you're not just hoping the right candidate symbols across your post. Here is a stat that says it all in the meantime and the minute that I've been talking to you companies like yours have made 27 hires on indeed according to indeed data worldwide.

23:04So unless time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes less stress less time more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs and listeners of this show will get a 75 dollar sponsored job credit to help get you the job or your job the premium status it deserves indeed.com slash podcast go to the indie.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about it on the locked on Diamondbacks podcast that's indie.com slash podcasts term podcast just so not not plural terms and conditions apply need to hire this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. Now our first comment comes from longtime listener and commenter NP5 how you doing man we need to we need to he well yeah we need to we need to meet up at some point which we'll

24:06be we'll be at a game and something we'll we'll we'll we'll figure it out we says so stoked even decided to buy a parking pass for a season tickets this season going to have our own parking space wow that's like that's that's about as as posh as it gets that means that's that's how you know that you've made it is when you get to that point that's how you'll know that I've made it at least makes me irrationally happy I wouldn't say irrationally I think that's very rationally I I would be very happy as well Eduardo Rodriguez I'm actually kind of interested in seeing what he does though if he doesn't play like he did in the world baseball classic I'm going to flip out might be the season I buy a fought jersey hope he's awesome I know he can be I totally agree he's had a great spring so far and and the thing with Brandon fought is he has the thing that made him so good was his sweeper and a slider his off-speed stuff last season he kind of was losing that a bit

25:09and that was why we saw that drop off he's been working on that this off season he's been working on that during spring and it is looking really really good a lot of breaking a lot of movement and he seems to be in really good control of it he also seems to be in really good control of his cutter he seems to have he seems to his velocity is really good he he's looking better than ever so I think I think fought's gonna have a pretty darn good year at water Rodriguez he's the kind of player I mean he's got so many years behind him he's got so much experience that I think for him it's a lot of I mean it feels like it's less of a mechanics thing for him and more of a a mindset headspace type thing and right now coming off of the world baseball classic I think he's coming in hot I think he's coming in really really good and I think he's gonna I think he's gonna do some really good things and then he's gonna build on that now he's gonna have a rough outing

26:12here and there so the question will be is he gonna be able to bounce back from that that's the question but I think he's gonna start off pretty good and then we had a comment from Michael Armstrong we posted about the how the locked on MLB top 100 because we do a top 100 as well we did a top 100 and three diamond backs ended up on there I tried to get all of them on there but but we had Corbin Carroll at 13 can tell Marta at 18 for all the Prado Mo at 24 I um and uh obviously I think they all should have been just a smidge higher but that's okay that's one of those one of my business uh there's uh I did my part but uh Michael said more like three diamond backs in the top 25 you're right like that's that's the crazy thing is we have we have three players that are all like in the lineup one after the other that really I mean have made a lot of

27:17noise and are looking to make a lot of noise this season and then on top of that we have Gabri Moreno when so as long as he's not injured he's great and he's not necessarily I think the flashiest guy on the team but he is very very good he's um I and he makes the team around and much much better defensively he's incredible so Moreno I think will be on the top 100 list this upcoming offseason I think you'll make it this next season uh assuming he stays healthy um and then aside from that I mean there's so many other guys that I think are new for a breakout season Jordan Lawler um chief among them I think I think we got a good season there another thing a parent I actually didn't see this until right before recording and I had already written the script maybe we'll talk about this in a segment but uh the diamond backs lineup ranks 10th in the power rankings in MLB did you know that I did not yeah so MLB uh dot com uh I don't know I don't know exactly

28:23who did the power rankings or whatever because you know they're all brought to you by different people who do they have different metrics but the diamond backs lineup is ranked 10th in the league so um which you know the diamond backs are a team that's not expected to ever do really well so the fact that we're on there I'll at all says kind of a lot about our lineup um I still think that's low to be honest I think we have I think we're gonna prove to be really really good offensively as we were last season um but there you go um and then the final one that I wanted to talk about today Spartacus who is a very critical uh viewer and thinker and I mean that in a good way um it said uh that Jordan Lawler has had four homers against mostly double-a pitchers which he's not wrong uh and you can actually look if you go to uh baseball reference there is a um in the spring training line

29:26there is a um a stat called op-qual or uh quality of opposing pitchers or batters faced and it's ranked from one to ten and it basically is how good was the player that they were playing against and uh ten is major league level eight is triple-a uh seven is double-a you know one is rookie and opposing the opposing batter is a pitcher it says so like you know obviously that plays a big part of it um and out of all of Jordan Lawler's appearances his uh quality of opponent is seven point seven so it's right at that high double-a low triple-a mark so you're not wrong he's he's it looks like most of his work has been against double-a triple-a guys but it's when when you're facing guys that you don't have a scouting report on which I feel like is the case in a lot of these spring training games it doesn't really make that huge of a difference

30:31at what level they are if you're the hitter i don't know am i totally like wrong when saying that like you're facing a guy who's throwing 90 95 miles per hour they have pretty good stuff i mean we've seen pitchers that are in high a double-a completely shut out the best of the best and i think that's just mainly because yeah there's not like a there's not like this extensive scouting report on them it's very just raw um it's raw baseball and we're kind of like anything can happen there i don't know what do you think i don't think you're entirely wrong but i wonder how how much that point goes like i wonder how right you are also i yeah i think one thing to to uh mention is one of Jordan Lawler's home runs was against Tyler Glass now that is true it was and he's not a double-a-pitcher

31:32is it which doesn't discredit the against mostly double-a-pitchers if one of them was against a major leader but it was Tyler Glass now and and and we know that spring training is not a perfect metric people who do really really well in spring training go on to not do very well at all in the regular season and then vice versa so it's it's it's it's very different it's not a perfect thing the thing that makes me excited about this is that Jordan Lawler is laying off of pitches that he wasn't laying off before yesterday he laid off like i mean he was taking pitches that he swung at every single time where he would just close his eyes and swing you know that he's doing so much better in that in that regard he's walking like crazy he's he's he's getting base hits he's barreling the ball and he's hitting home runs all things he was not doing last season so that makes me excited but you're right and Spartacus is right are you Spartacus is that your

32:33is that you ever seen me and Spartacus in the same way i have not oh my word anyway Spartacus Spartacus gladiator keep keep up the keep up the comments keep up the uh and everybody as well keep that up um i uh i tend to be a little bit too optimistic when it comes to the dimebacks need a little bit of hard truth sometimes so i appreciate it but we will see Jordan Lawler we'll see how he does here in the next couple weeks that's going to be very telling anyway you guys thank you so much for watching for listening that is the show for today be sure to follow us on ex instagram facebook and tiktok and hoktan diamondbacks were on youtube and every other place you get your podcasts if you want to see more of me you can find more of my youtube channels and projects at my website slackshack.tv and if you've never missed an episode the everydayer club is built for you get locked on dimebacks ad free plus members only discord access and more head to locked on dimebacks supercast.com to join the club thanks again and i will see you tomorrow

33:41you