How the Diamondbacks, Rangers surged to surprising division leads | The Bandwagon
Yahoo Sports MLB writers Hannah Keyser and Zach Crizer dig into the early season success of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers and explain why they are 'built differently' in 2023.
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Video Transcript
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HANNAH KEYSER: Let's get into a segment we're calling Built Different, powered by Ram Trucks. Sometimes, you just see a guy or team whose performance is game changing and think, wow, he's built different.
Zach, I was going to say who amazed you this week, but actually they've been amazing for a long time. Because the little conceit, the unnecessary attempt to tie these two together that we're doing this week, is teams that you and I both predicted were going to be good, and now they are. Wow. Who did you think were going to be good?
ZACH CRIZER: You could say that I'm not amazed at all, but I actually am a little bit amazed that the Arizona Diamondbacks are tied with the Dodgers atop the NL West. They did briefly have a tie for the best record in the National League in general. They lost that one to the Braves in a series this weekend. But they are a very good team, and it's mostly because of a collection of young players all kind of bubbling up together.
They also made what looks right now to be a very savvy trade this offseason, sending Daulton Varsho to the Toronto Blue Jays for Gabriel Moreno, who's been great as a defensive catcher and hitter. Pretty good as a hitter, great as a defensive catcher. And also, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who's having his best season in the majors by like a mile. And combine that with Corbin Carroll, who everyone thought was going to be amazing, being amazing.
Zac Gallen, who you wrote about at Yahoo Sports, continuing to be an ace. He's probably the Cy Young favorite in the NL right now. And yeah, this is the type of team that you don't necessarily see coming. Because it's just-- you need a bunch of young guys to progress together at once. And in the Diamondbacks' case, they are. And I'm going to take the victory lap now so that if they do fall out of the playoff race, I don't have to think about it.
HANNAH KEYSER: I don't remember why I predicted this other than to be contrary to what you thought. You did not think that the Rangers were good, and so I was like, the Rangers are good. And then actually, you are the one who ended up writing about the fact that the Rangers are quite good. And you wrote about the fact that the Rangers are quite good because-- not just because of the pitching, the offense has been incredible.
Their little Roster Resource rankings, they're first an average, first in on-base percentage, first in runs scored. But a more interesting way to say that is that they have the best run differentiable at this point in the season since the 1939 Yankees. They've scored at least 10 runs 16 times so far this season. It's interesting because there's been so much attention paid this season to teams that concentrated all of their free agent spending this past year, and then that's not panning out, whereas the Rangers, it is. We should look more at what the Rangers are doing.
Also, they're hitting .336 with runners in scoring position, which is probably not going to hold up. And a team that's really good with runners in scoring position-- I'm not like a particular fan of the Texas Rangers, but I'm very happy for all the fans of the Texas Rangers. Because the team that's really good with runners in scoring position sounds like a very satisfying team to watch play. That was Built Different, powered by Ram Trucks. Built to serve.
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