ESPN’s Boone: D-backs have played ‘a bad brand of baseball’

There have been moments this season where the Arizona Diamondbacks appeared to be turning things around.

But that’s all they have been — moments.

Following their 7-2 loss at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers Monday, the D-backs fell to 41-58 on the season. They are 17 games out of first in the NL West, and a Wild Card berth is at this point highly unlikely.

Their failure to compete is as surprising as it is disheartening.

“I think they’ve, in a way, been as disappointing as anyone,” ESPN MLB analyst Aaron Boone told Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Tuesday. “Because there’s certainly lots of talent on this roster.”

Boone pointed to the D-backs’ pitching as where the troubles start, noting if you don’t pitch well night in and night out it is difficult to put a winning team on the field. Entering play Tuesday, the team’s ERA of 4.83 is third-worst in the National League, and opponents are hitting .271 off Arizona hurlers.

That mark is second-worst in the NL.

“When you’re giving up four and five runs through five and six innings every night you’re not going to have a winning team,” Boone said. “That being said, I think one of the things we thought about this team heading into the year and what we saw last year was a team that seemed to play the game the right way, seemed to be a fun team to watch; very athletic, very good defensively. And that’s kind of gone by the wayside this year.

“They’ve had some real nice, obviously, individual efforts, but collectively it’s just been a bad brand of baseball, unfortunately.”

A quick glance at the roster would show a handful of players are, in fact, having excellent seasons.

Jean Segura is hitting .315 with eight home runs and 17 stolen bases, Paul Goldschmidt is batting .294 with 17 home runs and 63 RBI, and Jake Lamb has posted a .284 average to go with 21 home runs and 65 RBI.

None of it has been enough, though, and as so often is the case, the team’s continued struggles have led to questions about the manager’s job security.

In his second season — and following a 79-win campaign 2015 — Chip Hale has especially lately been the subject of rumors, the kind of which that say he is not long for his role as skipper.

That people wonder if Hale’s job is in jeopardy is not really all that shocking, though the timing of this latest batch of speculation is. One would think if the D-backs were planning on making a move, they would have done so either during the All-Star break or just prior to this current road trip.

That’s not to say a managerial change could not take place at any time, and the more games the team loses, the louder those whispers will get.

However, Boone does not see Hale as being the team’s problem.

“Obviously it’s not always about the manager,” he said, “and they get unjustly blamed a lot of times when things go wrong. But in this business you can’t always fire the players, so you constantly have got to be evaluating things and sometimes a new voice is needed.

“I’m not suggesting that at all is the case here because by all accounts, Chip Hale’s been a great baseball guy — obviously they played tremendously under him a year ago — but unfortunately, sometimes, they go to that as kind of just to shift things up and to kind of change that psyche, kind of change that mental thing.”

Boone said he would still be surprised if the D-backs relieved Hale of his duties, adding that the season’s final couple of months will be key for Hale and the organization to “kind of right the ship a little bit” going into the offseason and then 2017.

It would be rather beneficial for the franchise if some of its younger players, like Braden Shipley, as well as veterans like Shelby Miller and Patrick Corbin, can get back on track.

“This is an important couple of months for those guys to kind of establish and re-establish themselves as important members of this rotation in what, conceivably, should be a team that has a chance to compete next year based on the talent that they have,” he said. “They’ve got to get over some big hurdles, though, obviously.”

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