Ringer: D-backs overcoming health issues could lead to NL pennant

The Arizona Diamondbacks are 21-9 and will be the top team in the National League, even with a loss Thursday.

That’s the main story with the D-backs, but there’s a whole lot of required context to get the point across of how miraculous that start is.

From Steven Souza Jr. making his 2018 debut Thursday to Jake Lamb playing in only four games, the D-backs’ batting order has taken hits on the injury front.

The rotation has as well, with Taijuan Walker having Tommy John surgery and Robbie Ray’s return date a mystery as he works his way back from a right oblique strain.

With those setbacks, the D-backs have still managed the best record in baseball.

That’s a reason for serious optimism when they get healthy, and The Ringer’s Zach Kram agrees.

Kram said if the D-backs stay healthy and can still get decent contributions from their depth, they could be playing for a championship in the fall.

A big reason for that is Patrick Corbin, who has sure looked the part of an ace through 30 games.

Kram is not worried about Corbin’s level of play drastically dropping the rest of the season and that’s because of his dominance as a strikeout pitcher.

Corbin ranks third among qualifying starters in strikeout rate and second in strikeout-minus-walk rate, and it’s impossible to fake his level of dominance even in a small sample. FanGraphs has monthly splits going back to 2002, and in that span, 2018 Corbin ranks sixth in strikeout rate at the end of April (minimum 25 innings). The rest of the top 10 are new-look Gerrit Cole, Yu Darvish, Max Scherzer, Javier Vázquez, Chris Sale, Robbie Ray, Scherzer again, Noah Syndergaard, and José Fernández. That’s a list of uniformly elite strikeout pitchers, so either Corbin is a remarkable outlier or he’s improved by a remarkable amount.

Thanks to his nasty slider becoming more of a go-to pitch than it ever was, Kram is confident the 28-year-old left-hander can maintain a high level of play.

The return of Souza and the eventual return of Lamb will help the D-backs where they are ailing the most.

They will help solve two of Arizona’s positional problems, as Baseball-Reference’s WAR values peg Arizona as below replacement level at third base and exactly replacement level at right field thus far. Lamb will displace overextended utilitymen Daniel Descalso and Deven Marrero at third base, and Souza will slot in as the everyday right fielder.

Even with a predictable decline of A.J. Pollock’s scintillating start that earned him National League Player of the Month honors, Kram expects Lamb and Souza to pick up any slack left.

Add in baseball’s best bullpen and you’ve got a well-balanced team that should have real aspirations in October if they are healthy.

If the Diamondbacks maintain their early-season advantage, and if the health problems stop with Ray, the fifth starter–turned-reluctant–Opening Day–starter-turned–emphatic ace could use that hand this fall to pitch for a title.

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