Arizona Diamondbacks: Chip Hale’s Days Numbered to Avoid Bad Public Relations?

The Arizona Diamondbacks, the darlings of the offseason and cellar dwellers of the regular season, don’t seem to have a cohesive plan in place for the future of the franchise. While manager Chip Hale may hold some of the blame for the team’s performance, he may end up being the fall guy for the D-Backs shortcomings this season.

Last year the Arizona Diamondbacks led all of baseball in DRS (defensive runs saved) with 69, thirteen more than the next-highest team, which just so happened to be the world champion Royals. 37 of those runs were saved in the outfield with Ender Inciarte (29) and A.J. Pollock (14) doing most of the fine glove work.

With one of the best offenses in the National League, and a superb defense behind some mediocre pitching, the Diamondbacks went 79-83 and looked to be a team on the rise. All they needed was some pitching help, which they went out and got in signing the biggest name on the market in Zack Greinke, and trading away a bounty for Shelby Miller, whose 6-17 record in 2015 was more indicative of some rotten luck, as his 3.02 ERA (3.45 FIP) can attest.

One part of the package that was sent to Atlanta to acquire Miller was 2015’s defensive wizard, Inciarte. While he was just league average at the plate with a 100 wRC+, the superb defense he provided led to a WAR of 3.3. He was basically a throw-in for Miller.

The loss of Inciarte to the Braves, coupled with A.J. Pollock’s injury at the beginning of the season, has really hurt the club’s outfield defense. If you’ve already done the math, Pollock and Inciarte combined to save 43 of the club’s 37 runs in the outfield last year. That means that their other outfield options gave up six runs.

While Shelby Miller has not pitched well, his 7.14 ERA is well above his FIP (5.64), and that can be directly attributed to the defense behind him. David Peralta, who has only amassed 385 innings in the outfield this season, has saved three runs in the 2016 version of the Arizona outfield, while Chris Owings (403 innings) has saved another three and Michael Bourn (539.1) has saved one. Those are this year’s team leaders, and all they have done is counteract the negative effect of letting Brandon Drury roam free. That doesn’t take into account the runs allowed by Yasmany Tomas (809 innings, -6 runs saved), Rickie Weeks (167.1, -5) or Peter O’Brien (105, -1) either. That comes out to a -12 DRS, sixth worst in baseball, just a year after winning the Wilson Defensive Team of the Year award.

All of this leads to the Diamondbacks having a team ERA of 5.08, while their pitchers hold a cumulative 4.50 FIP, the worst differential in baseball. Last season their pitchers actually outperformed their FIP by 0.16, even without Greinke and Miller.

All of this leads to Chip Hale. Yesterday on MLB Now, I heard something interesting when they were covering this topic. Guest of the show Danny Knobler had this to say of the likelihood that Arizona retains Hale for next season: “I don’t see it. I don’t know for sure, but I talked to someone with the Diamondbacks today and he said ‘Look, there’s plenty of blame. Nobody here has done a good job this year.’ However, if you keep Chip Hale and the team gets off to a bad start next year, it becomes the topic of the day right from the start of the season. That’s a dangerous thing to do.”

Firing Chip Hale would simply be a public relations move, and a bad one at that. Losing two of the team’s top three players in WAR from 2015 was something Hale had nothing to do with. Pollock (6.6 WAR) and Inciarte (3.7) are both major losses for any team, especially one that is a little talent top heavy.

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While an official report has not been made, and these are solely grumblings from a television program, the D-Backs firing Chip Hale would almost be the most D-Backs thing they could do. Get ready to add this one to the list right behind trading Dansby Swanson and feuding with the county over stadium upgrades.