D-BACKS FANS BACK IN STANDS
Socially distanced fans, above, watch the Arizona Diamondbacks play the Colorado Rockies, left, at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick on Sunday. It was the teams’ first spring training game of the year. The Diamondbacks lost 5-2.
Prior to the first full-squad workout of camp last week, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo asked his team a question: Are you ready, he said, to shock the world? First baseman Christian Walker liked the sound of it.
“I can see it sticking, for sure,” Walker said.
Walker sees the Diamondbacks’ National League West rivals in the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres getting all the attention. He thinks that puts the Diamondbacks in a good position.
“It’s cool because it’s no pressure, right?” he said. “The shock the world mentality is a no expectation kind of thing. We know who we are. We know what we got to do to be good. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
Projection systems have tended not to favor the Diamondbacks in recent years. That remains true this year. FanGraphs projects the Diamondbacks to win 74 games. Baseball Prospectus’ system is more forgiving, anticipating 78 wins. Still, both systems see them missing the playoffs and finishing well back of the Dodgers and Padres.
Walker sees having the right mentality as a key for the Diamondbacks — and as one of the primary lessons they can take from last year’s pandemicshortened season. He thinks the lack of a full season led to players getting “panicky,” and he believes the return to a full season helps reinforce the notion that there is no reason to worry about a bad series or a bad week.
“There’s still hundreds of bats to have even in a 60-game season,” he said. “I want to take that almost in, like, a calming mentality. ‘Hey, we’re good. There’s no rush this year. You have 162.’”
Walker believes that kind of mindset dovetails nicely with the way Lovullo framed the season.
“It’s a nothing-to-lose kind of mentality,” he said. “I think when that’s truly how you show up every day I think good things are bound to happen.”
Welcome sight
Left fielder David Peralta said he heard kids in the stands asking him to throw them a baseball on Sunday, an early reminder of how much he missed having fans in the stands last season.
“You make the day for the little fans who come to watch you play,” Peralta said. “I think that was the part that I missed from last year.”
The Salt River Fields crowd was a “sellout” of 2,100. That is the most being allowed inside given health and safety protocols. The facility’s capacity is listed at 11,000.
“It was better than nothing,” he said. “Not too many, but still good enough for the first day.”
At one point on Sunday, Peralta was seen waving up to the stands, presumably to his family. He said his wife and two daughters were at the game.
“Today was a little extra special,” he said.
Said right-hander Zac Gallen: “Not having to listen to the pumped-in fake crowd noise was a huge positive in my book.”
For real?
When Gallen heard people yelling to “roll” the first inning, he thought it was a joke. It wasn’t until he saw players making their way off the field that he realized it was really happening.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” said Gallen, who threw 20 pitches in the inning. “I think I looked at (pitching coach Matt Herges) like three or four times. I was like, ‘Really? Roll it?’”
Teams are allowed to bring an early end to innings this spring in order to keep pitch counts in check.
Short hops
The Diamondbacks traded lefty Travis Bergen to the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for cash considerations. Bergen
was designated for assignment on Friday. Bergen had been traded to the Diamondbacks in August from the Blue Jays, who gave him up for lefty Robbie Ray in a deadline deal. Bergen gave up three runs in 6 2/3 innings with the Diamondbacks in September.
*Following Merrill Kelly to the mound on Monday against the Brewers will be right-handers Riley Smith and Josh Green and lefties Taylor Guilbeau and Joe Mantiply.