…as the Mets take on the surging Diamondbacks in Arizona this weekend, I did a quick Q & A with Jim McLennan, who blogs about the D’Backs for AZ SnakePit…

D.J. Short:

How exciting is it to see all these young players develop at the same time? How long before GM Josh Byrnes gets the national recognition he deserves?

Jim McLennan: 

It’s great to see players come up, when you’ve followed them since they were picked in the draft. The 2001 World Series winners were almost all free-agents, and that’s fine, but there’s a much greater sense of involvement if you watch your roster develop, and see prospects become rookies, then blossom into potential superstars. We have had occasional home-grown players before - Brandon Webb is the most obvious example - but three-quarters of our regular starting lineup and three-fifths of our current rotation made their debuts with Arizona. Seeing that, and knowing the core of this team will be here for a long time to come, is a very exciting prospect. Down the line, there will be some difficult decisions to be made with regard to contracts, but the next few years promise to be good ones for Arizona.

Josh Byrnes has done a masterful job of turning a 111-game loser into division champions in only three years, especially in a small budget market such as Arizona. I think it was a wise move of the organization to lock him down, signing Byrnes to an eight-year contract extension, which takes him through 2015. He has made some excellent trades, notably the one which brought Chris Young to the desert, though there have been occasional mis-steps, such as letting All-Star second-baseman Dan Uggla get snapped up by the Marlins in the Rule 5 draft. I think Byrnes is likely seen by already insiders as among the most savvy managers, but more casual observers probably won’t really pay attention to the Diamondbacks until they reach the World Series. How does this October sound?

D.J. Short:

What has impressed you the most about Dan Haren thus far?

Jim McLennan: 

His splitter. That is just a nasty, nasty pitch, especially with two strikes - when he gets ahead of hitters, he’ll bury it in the dirt and get hitters to swing over it, either squibbing off a weak grounder, or missing it entirely. Moving to a hitter-friendly park at Chase, there was some concern that Haren might be a bit liable to the long-ball, but thus far he’s done a good job of keeping it in the park, with only three homers in 37.1 innings. The splitter likely plays a part in that, and while I can’t be sure, I imagine he is probably using it more than he did when he was in Oakland.

D.J. Short:

Do you think Stephen Drew will finally figure it out this season?

Jim McLennan:

So far, so good - an .810 OPS is a big improvement on last year’s figure of .683. That statistic from 2007 is probably a bit misleading: he hit a lot of balls hard, but straight at opposing fielders, which led to a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) that was significantly below the National League average; Drew was at .267, compared to .301. So he was, to a certain extent, unlucky, and he is simply concentrating at trying to put together quality at-bats; the BABIP is still lower than most, but the hits will eventually start to drop in.

D.J. Short:

Barring injury, do you expect Brandon Lyon to last the entire season as closer?

Jim McLennan:

This was the subject of some debate early on, as he struggled mightily in his first couple of starts. However, since then he has been lights-out, converting his last eight save chances, and not allowing a run in that time, a span of eleven innings. There have been some concerns about his stamina, and so far he has not been called upon to work three days in a row. It’s certainly possible that, if such a situation arises, Melvin may turn to alternatives like Tony Pena or the very-impressive Chad Qualls [obtained from Houston in the Jose Valverde trade, and who has a zero ERA after 15.2 innings], simply to give Lyon a break.

However, at the moment, it seems he has now adapted nicely to the change of roles, moving from the eighth to the ninth inning. He is a much less flamboyant and demonstrative figure than Valverde, and doesn’t have the same raw ’stuff’ - when Valverde visited Phoenix earlier in the week, he was clocked as high as 99 mph. However, he does have a broad variety of pitches, and mixes them up well: he can drop a hammer-like curve on batters for a strike, then freeze them with a fastball on the outside corner. Thus far, Lyon feels like a less stomach-churning closer, but that may in part be the result of our improved offense.

D.J. Short: 

With the emergence of Micah Owings and now the much-hyped Max Scherzer, is it possible that Randy Johnson is the fifth best starting pitcher on this team now?

Jim McLennan:

Hard to say. Scherzer’s debut retiring all 13 batters he faced, was certainly eye-popping, but you need only look at the Reds’ Johnny Cueto to see that a great debut is no guarantee of future success. I’m restraining predictions of Cy Young-ness until opposing hitters come to the plate armed with a proper scouting report on Mr. Scherzer; until then, I will remain cautiously quiet. You don’t have to worry about him this weekend though: just Webb, Haren and Micah Owings.

The last-named is probably unique in recent baseball: a starting pitcher who is also one hell of a hitter, to the extent that some consideration was given to letting him play 1B between his starts. A fear of injury put that one in the freezer, though he may well be used as the DH in interleague play. As a pitcher, he worked on his change-up in the off-season, with Hall of Fame reliever Bruce Sutter (Sutter’s son was Owings’ pitching coach at Tulane), giving him a third pitch to help get through the opposing rotation an extra time. If that becomes a reliable weapon in his arsenal, Owings will be a solid middle-rotation starter, even discounting his offensive prowess.

Randy Johnson is…Randy Johnson. The first couple of starts, he was clearly still short of full strength and velocity, but it took him a couple of outings in 2007 before he rounded into shape. He had a great outing against San Diego at Petco last weekend [six innings, three hits, no walks, seven K's], but was smacked around by the Astros on Tuesday, to the tune of six earned runs in only four innings. That does worry me somewhat, simply because there isn’t much else we can do with Johnson except use him in the rotation - his back probably stops him from being used as a regular reliever, a suggestion that has been made a couple of times. When he’s on form, however, he’s still easily capable of confounding major-league batters with his slider; I just don’t know how much we can expect to see that. I’d happily settle for 25 starts and an ERA around four.

…thanks, Jim…