Diamondbacks debut regular lineup, expect a ‘relentless’ offense

The Arizona Diamondbacks rolled out a sneak preview of their regular lineup on Monday afternoon, the first game this spring in which manager Torey Lovullo has had all of his projected starters together in the same batting order.

For anyone who paid attention to the club’s postseason run last October, the lineup likely looked familiar, with Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, Gabriel Moreno and Christian Walker occupying the first four spots.

Newcomer Joc Pederson, a left-handed hitter, was wedged into the fifth spot, splitting up a pair of right-handed hitters ahead of him and two more behind him in Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Eugenio Suarez.

Lefty Alek Thomas and Geraldo Perdomo, a switch-hitter, were hitting eighth and ninth, respectively.

If there were any doubts about whether Lovullo was still toying around with lineup ideas, he mostly put those to rest. Asked if there were any changes he was still considering, Lovullo thought for a moment, then gave a deadpan answer.

“Yeah,” he said. “Who the backups will be.”

That lineup figures to be the primary group against right-handed starters. When a lefty is on the mound, Lovullo said he expects to flip Carroll and Marte at the top — something he did against lefties during the playoffs — and he also has the option to sit Pederson in favor of a right-handed hitter, likely Randal Grichuk once he is healthy. He could also further shuffle the order.

The group did not generate much offense on Monday at Salt River Fields, scoring just one run before most of the regulars exited after six innings of an eventual 6-5 loss to the Oakland Athletics.

Lovullo intimated that the lineup’s success in October left him with relatively few difficult decisions. Carroll, Marte and Walker had been locked into their spots since early last year; Moreno’s emergence in the second half prompted his promotion within the lineup, first to the No. 5 spot at the start of the postseason before eventually landing in the three-hole.

“I think Gabi showed toward the back end of the baseball season that he was capable of handling that workload and that responsibility of hitting that high up in the lineup,” Lovullo said. “I have no reason to believe that it’s going to change.”

Last season, the Diamondbacks’ offense ranked seventh in the league with an average of 4.6 runs per game. They averaged 4.3 runs per game in the playoffs. This year’s unit has a chance to be more robust.

Suarez, who posted a .714 OPS last year, is an upgrade over a group of Diamondbacks' third basemen who produced a combined .644 OPS, the second-worst of any team in the league at the position. Pederson and Grichuk look like a platoon duo capable of easily outperforming last year’s designated hitters, whose .678 OPS also ranked second-to-last in the NL.

Walker said he envisions the Diamondbacks having a “really relentless” lineup.

“When I see this lineup, I feel confident that opposing staffs are going to have a hard time navigating it,” Walker said. “I feel like you’re really going to have to pick who you’re OK with letting beat you that day, who you’re not going to let beat you, who your targets are. Being on the other side of that in the past, it makes it really uncomfortable, especially late in games, trying to navigate a bullpen in a three- or four-game series. It presents some issues.”

Walker took it a step further, pointing to Suarez’s durability from last year — he played in all 162 games for the Seattle Mariners — and suggesting the Diamondbacks could have a group of everyday players who find their way into the lineup more often than not. He referenced the Atlanta Braves, who had eight players appear in at least 138 games, including three who played 159 or more.

“You see teams like that are running the same seven or eight guys out there every day, playing with the DH, playing with maybe a platoon spot,” Walker said. “It’s cool to maybe be in that category, too. We’ve got our everyday guys. We’ve got our rocks.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks expect lineup to produce 'relentless' offense