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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: NL West Notes
Vol. 17, No. 43
June 12, 2025
It’s the NL West today because I really wanted to write the Padres note.
Arizona Diamondbacks
I’ve been writing about baseball for 30 years. One of the biggest changes in MLB over this time is that teams’ opportunity cost has largely disappeared. During the 1980s and 1990s, owners did not receive the guaranteed income they do in today’s market. In an absolute sense, many teams’ payrolls ran closer to revenues, such that signing Player A often meant foregoing Player B. A contract that went bad from a team standpoint could keep that team from adding other players it needed.
Today’s guaranteed revenues, as well as a greater understanding of team owners’ substantial wealth, have changed the conversations around paying players. The baseball risk is lower and the financial risk is negligible, so we expect, even demand, that owners shell out money to put better teams on the field. If anything, we’ve gone to the other extreme, foregoing contract analysis entirely in lieu of considering all player paydays to be good.
The 2025 Diamondbacks are an example of what happens when those investments go bad. Ken Kendrick is going to be fine. Still, there’s no way around the fact that the Diamondbacks, after Corbin Burnes’s elbow injury, paid $53 million this year, more than a quarter of their payroll, to Burnes and Jordan Montgomery, getting 11 starts, 64 1/3 innings, and two bWAR for their money. Having Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, Zac Gallen and others locked up for less than their market value soothes the pain, and the team is still at .500. Spending $53 million for two wins, though, is going to sting.
Burnes was just one of a number of pitchers whose seasons ended in the last week or so, some making more money than others. Ronel Blanco, Jackson Jobe,and AJ Smith-Shawver are all done for the season. Cole Ragans, Shane McClanahan, and Pablo Lopez are going to be out for a while, or a while longer. Gerrit Cole, Justin Steele, and Jared Jones are long gone. Between the time I write this and the time I send this, some other good pitcher may join the list.
I praised the Diamondbacks for signing Burnes and criticized the Orioles for letting him go, and I stand by all that. What can we say to teams, though, teams already paying tens of millions of dollars to pitchers who can’t pitch, the next time through? How fair is it to press the Padres to sign Framber Valdez, or ask the Cubs to commit to Dylan Cease, or wonder why the Orioles won’t pay Merrill Kelly, when investing any money at all in starting pitchers seems an invitation to light it on fire?
The Diamondbacks, even without Burnes and Montgomery, are still contenders. Ryne Nelson was already one of the top sixth starters in the game, and Cristian Mena is doing good work out of the pen, perhaps lining up for a second-half role in the rotation. (Ed. note; Mena is going to miss a couple of months with a shoulder injury. --J.) The team is 6 1/2 out in the West, 4 1/2 out in the wild-card race. What they need, help in the pen to cover for injuries out there, is generally easy to find in July. They can work around the loss of $53 million worth of pitching. That they have to, though, is something for us to consider once the Hot Stove League starts up again.
Colorado Rockies
There’s nothing interesting happening in Denver since the last time we checked in on the Rockies, so let’s be the jerk who jumps ahead on a storyline.
Meet Me Half Way (worst 81-game records, since 1961)
Tigers 2003 20-61 .247
White Sox 2024 21-60 .259
Athletics 2023 21-60 .259
Diamondbacks 2021 22-59 .272
Seven teams tied at 23-58 .284
That three of those teams, plus the 2023 Royals at 23-58, have come from the last four seasons is probably something we should talk about. Twenty years ago, it was the statheads and baseball labor nerds -- mostly the same people -- saying that increased revenue sharing would subsidize losing by weakening the relationship between on-field success and financial success. It took a while, a number of CBAs and a lot of changes in how money comes into the league, but these slow starts are representative of a baseball underclass that has led to a spike in 100-loss teams to go with these terrible starts.
The Rockies haven’t tanked, and they’re not in a rebuild. They’re just bad. At 12-55, it would take a stunning two weeks of good baseball to stay off that list, and an 8-6 mark to keep from topping it. If we expand our focus, the worst-ever 81-game starts come from before integration, when three teams started seasons 19-62. The worst 81-game stretches by any team belong to the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who had a 10-70 stretch with a tie, and were 12-69 over their worst stretch of 81 decisions.
Those 1916 A’s set the mark for lowest winning percentage by an AL/NL team since that structure came into being in 1901. These numbers are probably all too familiar to you, but to recap:
Most losses: 2024 White Sox, 121
Lowest winning percentage: 1916 A’s, .235
The Rockies have to go 40-65 to beat last year’s White Sox, which really does seem impossible, but the 2023 A’s followed 12-50 with 38-62, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility. The catch is the Rockies are what they are, without much more talent on the way, whereas those A’s were able to improve internally. For the third year in a row, we’re on #120Watch, and for the second year in a row, we’re going to get there. The question is whether the Rockies will catch those A’s, which requires 39 wins.
The Rockies sold 38,000 tickets a game over the weekend, by the way. It may not matter how bad they are; people will come.
Los Angeles Dodgers
There’s an idea out there, one that even Andrew Friedman has nodded to, that the Dodgers are doing something wrong that’s causing their pitchers to be injured more than other teams’ pitchers are. As I write this, the Dodgers have 14 pitchers on the injured list, some out for the year, some out for the moment, some on the brink of returning. That’s a lot of injured pitchers, but if we’re doing this, will someone point to me the team that is keeping its pitchers healthy for more than the blink of an eye?
Last year, it was the Mariners and Royals hitting the health lottery. Well, this year Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryce Miller, Cole Ragans, and Seth Lugo have all been injured, some missing significant time. The Phillies? Even setting aside Andrew Painter, we’ve seen Ranger Suarez and Aaron Nola hit the IL this year. Go back up a couple of grafs, and I ran through a bunch of pitchers, none of them Dodgers, who will miss all or most of the 2025 season. This isn’t a Dodger problem. It’s a baseball problem.
It’s one for which the solution is readily apparent, as well: Make endurance matter again. Over four decades, MLB went from using 400 pitchers a year to more than 800 pitchers a year.
This Is It (pitchers used in selected seasons)
1983 390
1993 507
2003 612
2013 679
2023 863
(I shifted the selected intervals to avoid strike-shortened 1994.)
Apples to apples? In the first 30-team season, 1998, teams used 557 pitchers. Last year, it was 855. It happened as we leaked from seven-inning starts to six-inning starts to five-inning starts, from five-man rotations to five-day rotations to six-man rotations. Relievers never pitch four days in a row, rarely pitch three days in a row, and managers even avoid back-to-backs if they can. Pitchers never pitch tired anymore, so they can max out per-pitch effort in a way previous generations could not.
The answer has been sitting there for years. Cap available pitchers. The simplest move is allowing just 11 on a roster, rolling things back to roughly the turn of the century. You’d have to cap transactions in some way as well. Modern “13-man” pitching staffs are really 14 or 15. Once teams can no longer use five pitchers a night, 16 a week, 35 a year, they’ll have to begin asking more of the ones they have on the roster, valuing pitchers who can carry larger workloads.
Once teams are forced to select for both effectiveness and endurance at the MLB level, they’ll have to select for those things in the minors as well, and develop those skills in their prospects. When MLB teams change their behaviors, amateur pitchers and coaches will have to adapt as well. This one rule change won’t make it 2004 overnight. It took us 40 years to get to this point and it may take 40 years to get back, but it all starts with changing what MLB pitching staffs look like. That’s the first domino, and until the league, the teams, and the players make this change -- which won’t cost baseball players as a whole jobs, but will cost some pitchers theirs -- pitchers will keep getting hurt, whether they’re Dodgers or not.
San Diego Padres
I know I’ve written this before...I'm fascinated by hinge points. Moments when things turned, and maybe you didn’t know it at the time, but everything would be different. A party needs your roommate’s blender, and you meet your wife. (True story, not a great ending.)
I can’t help but think I saw one yesterday afternoon, watching the Padres take on the Dodgers in what’s become maybe the game’s most watchable rivalry. The Padres came into the day a game behind the Dodgers in the NL West, with a chance to tie them in the standings, maybe even capture first place pending the Giants’ game. The Dodgers had spent the last six weeks in first place, but the night before had seen their pitching staff so depleted that they asked utilityman Enrique Hernandez to get seven outs.
The Padres went up 1-0 in the second, but Fernando Tatis Jr. ended a bases-loaded situation with a fly to right. Home runs by Michael Conforto and Teoscar Hernandez put the Pads behind 4-1 in the sixth, and a sac fly in the bottom of the sixth cut the deficit to 4-2. Dave Roberts sent Michael Kopech to the mound in the seventh, and Kopech sent a bunch of Padres to the bases. The righty walked three straight batters to load the bases for Luis Arraez, at which point Roberts called on Anthony Banda. Banda got Luis Arraez to pop up, bringing up Padres future Hall of Famer Manny Machado.
Bases loaded, two outs, tying run on second, Machado against a lefty, first place in sight. Banda, with no place to put Machado, ran the count to 3-0. Machado was in as good a spot as he could ever hope to be, able to sit on not just a strike, but one in his happy zone. Banda threw a four-seamer at 94 over the outer half and up. It was in a pretty good spot for Machado, to be honest, but he did nothing with it, rolling over and tapping a ground ball to short.
Swinging 3-0 isn’t, by itself, a bad idea. This is a spot, though, where the outcome really does matter. If you’re going to swing 3-0, you have to make hard contact, preferably up. This is especially the case in a bases-loaded spot, where the pitcher has to throw you three straight strikes. If you offer at the 3-0, you have to take a swing with which you can drive the pitch. Machado rolled over on a fastball out over the plate.
The Padres did not have another baserunner in the game, losing 5-2. They fell to two back of the Dodgers and 1 1/2 back of the Giants, who came back late again to beat the Rockies. I cannot help but wonder whether that one pitch, with the Padres poised to get one run and maybe a lot more, to tie for first place, will turn out to be the hinge point of their 2025 season.
San Francisco Giants
The Giants’ 10-7 win at Coors Field snapped a stretch of eight consecutive one-run games, and six consecutive one-run wins. The Giants, who have allowed the third-fewest runs in baseball, have been the sport’s most consistent high-wire act so far in 2025.
Danger Zone (most 1/x games, 2025)
Giants 19-12
Braves 10-19
Rays 15-12
Pirates 13-14
Phillies 15-11
Mariners 15-11
Red Sox 7-19
(1/x games: one-run games plus extra-inning games not decided by one run)
The Giants have gotten away with it so far, winning 19 of these close contests thanks in part to a bullpen with the lowest ERA in baseball. I am not sure they can keep that up. The Giants’ pen is fourth in FIP, eighth in xFIP, ninth in SIERA. The group is just 12th in strikeout rate and 11th in K-BB%.
Camilo Doval, who has replaced Ryan Walker in max leverage, is living off batted-ball outcomes -- a .238 BABIP and 5% HR/FB -- not supported by the quality of contact he allows. Randy Rodriguez has been the best pitcher in this bullpen, one of the best in baseball dating back a year, and will eventually start taking the ninth inning. (He picked up a save last Wednesday.) Tyler Rogers is the same guy he’s been for seven seasons now, something left over from the 1980s, throwing 84 at that low angle and tying up lefty hitters (.204 BA, 12 hits against ten strikeouts) with obscene two-seamer movement.
A great bullpen can be a difference-maker on the margins in close games. I just don’t think the Giants have one, and if they want to stay on the Dodgers’ heels. they’re going to have to stop playing so many one-run games and start putting opponents away earlier.
