Good morning and welcome to episode 438 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from

baseball perspective presented by the play index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with

Ben Lindbergh Ben Howerium. Okay. Did you just see the tweet from our friends that you can't predict

baseball noting that the Diamondbacks now officially have as many losses as the Tigers have played games?

No. Diamondbacks story gets sadder every day. It seems like. It does. Although also they've played

eight more games than the Tigers. Which is also interesting. This is two fun facts in one because

both of those could stand on their own. But yeah, those Diamondbacks. Wait, why does it get sadder?

Because they send Lucas Harrel. Oh yeah, that's true. They traded for him. Yeah, you're right.

Player to be named later. All right. Anything or should we just lie right into this? Well,

you know how Ryan Goens was my 2014 test case for mechanical adjustments?

Yeah. My ongoing struggle to understand whether I should give any credence to reports that some

player has overhauled his swing or has changed his stance and he's a new player now. So I bookmarked

or mentally bookmarked this story by Shai Davidi from late February where it was your typical

mechanical adjustment story for Ryan Goens. And the story was that Kevin Sitzer, the new Blue J

sitting coach, had seen something in Goens. He had invited Goens over to his house over the winter,

put him through some drills, made an adjustment with his hands. And then the quote from Sitzer is

I told Alex and Gibb and Poppeless and John Gibbons, there's more in this kid's tank. I wouldn't

be quick to pull the trigger on a second basement. With the way he plays defense and the runs he

saves with his glove, he's going to be able to contribute with the bat, I believe. And then the

story says 2.5 months later, spring training is underway and Goens is the front runner to open the

season at second base. With my serrster is Chris Getz and Steve Tullis in his primary competition.

Really, the job is his to lose even with free agent Steven Drew still sitting on the open market.

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