Welcome to the first ever 'Bloggers Roundtable' on Baseball Digest Daily.

This is simple: we invite bloggers from a specific team to come on and debate a set of five questions I have previously sent them.  Their answers are below.  Readers are invited to debate the answers with the bloggers themselves in the Comments section below.

The goal is to provide a platform for bloggers to debate their team and philosophies in one place and have fun while doing that.  We plan on publishing two Bloggers Roundtable a week, in order to give readers a regular look at news and opinions from their respective teams' bloggers community.
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Our Arizona Diamondbacks bloggers today:

AZ Snakepit - Jim McLennan
Diary of a Diehard - Jeff Summers


Question: Which player has most impacted the franchise since 1998 and why?

Jim: While probably not the 'best' player in franchise history - that would be Randy Johnson - I'd have to give this to Luis Gonzalez, who became the first face of the franchise, culminating in the winning hit to end Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. Nothing much was expected of him when he came to Arizona (with cash!) in a trade with Detroit, but he blossomed in the desert and became the best-loved player, both on the World Series team and for years thereafter. His final departure was somewhat acrimonious, but he remains the most easily-recognized player in the team's history, associated with it in a way the Tampa Bay Devil Rays can only dream of.

Jeff: The popular answer to this question would be Luis Gonzalez as he was the face of the Arizona Diamondbacks franchise for several years.  You could make a strong case for Gonzo and his single season 57 home runs and his 30 game hitting streak or his World Series clinching hit in game 7 but I'm not going to.  I think the key word in this question is "impact".  After the inaugural 1998 season the Diamondbacks decided to change gears and move from an expansion team who hoped to build through their minor league system to what at the time looked like a large market team with the resources that were capable of building a winner now through free agency.  This mercenary mentality could only be successful if the Diamondbacks were able to recruit impact players (see there's that word again).

Shortly after the 1998 season there began to be rumors that Arizona would be courting Houston Astros pitcher Randy Johnson.  Most everyone discounted this notion since Johnson wanted to play for a winner and an expansion team in its second year would be far from a winner.  That did not dissuade Jerry Colangelo from continuing to go after Randy Johnson.  It was the team's insistence that they were players in the Big Unit Sweepstakes that led to other players wanting to sign.  When Randy officially agreed to a contract with Arizona it had a ripple effect on other players signing as well.  This of course led to the Diamondbacks making the post season the following year in only their second season of existence.  It was also the first of four consecutive Cy Young award winning seasons for Randy and should have been five Cy Young awards if it were not for the abysmal 2004 season the Diamondbacks had and the fact that Roger "Rocket Juice" Clemens was playing at Minute Maid park (how appropriate that the stadium in Houston was now named after a juice company).  Randy Johnson carried the Diamondbacks pitching staff for the majority of the time he was with the club from 1999-2004 including the 2001 season culminating in him winning 3 games in the World Series and posting an ERA of 1.04. 

Tack on a perfect game and recording his 4,000th strikeout as a member of the Diamondbacks and Randy pretty much defines the word "impact". Now in the twilight of his career he is back with the team where he had the most success in his career and is still having an impact. Although hurt for most of 2007; Randy remained close to the team and began mentoring some of the younger players.  He has always been a student of the game and now as his playing career winds down he is passing the knowledge he has gained to the next generation of Diamondbacks pitchers.  This should cement his legacy as one of the all-time greats to wear an Arizona uniform.

Question: What are GM Josh Byrnes' strengths and weaknesses?

Jim: I think his weaknesses are mostly in the area of assessing the potential of younger players. He left Dan Uggla unprotected in the Rule 5 draft, and lost an All-Star to Florida as a result. Admittedly, that was just after his arrival, but there have been other cases: I think letting Scott Hairston go will quite possibly come back to haunt us, and one wonders what he might have got for Carlos Quentin at this time last year, rather than after a year of dismal failure. On the other hand, he has kept the core of the team together, filled in gaps with good trades, and put together a roster that had the best record in the NL last season, and should be better still this year. Can't ask for any more than that, really.

Jeff: Josh Byrnes came to the Arizona Diamondbacks as a relatively unknown commodity.  Never having been a General Manager himself I think everyone was curious as to what type of GM he would be.  I am impressed at how quickly Byrnes rose through the ranks of the baseball community.  Considering he began as an intern with the Cleveland Indians in 1994, to reach the level of General Manager in 12 years is pretty impressive especially considering there are only 30 of these positions that even exist. One of the first things I noticed was that Josh Byrnes seems to be a consensus builder. He will collect information for many sources before finally deciding on a decision.  He doesn't seem to let his ego get in the way.  I've tried to discern from the deals he has made what his style is.  He seems to be equally camped in the Sabermetrics and the traditional scouting arenas.  He and his staff use statistical analysis for identifying a player's strengths and weaknesses but he does not discount the human factor that a scout's judgment provides.  So far the majority of the deals he has consummated have been successful.

Josh Byrnes gives the impression of being cold and calculating.  I'm sure puppies love him but he has the outward appearance of being impersonal. This was described in some detail in how he handled the Luis Gonzalez departure.  For a player such as Gonzo to be shown the door and told he was not part of the plan for the organization must have been hard but from all accounts it could have been done with a little more compassion. Another observation is that Josh Byrnes and/or his staff at times thinks or evaluates too much which can lead to problems.  You need not look any further than the Byung-Hyun Kim and Joe Kennedy pickups in August of last year.  I am not sure how anyone could have thought that someone might actually want Kim on their pitching staff given his inconsistency so for Byrnes to put in a waiver request and get stuck with Kim was shocking and just a little embarrassing.  Hopefully these were anomalies and not something we can look forward to each August after the trade deadline has passed.  My cardiologist has warned me that too much stress could be detrimental to my health and seeing Byung-Hyun Kim penciled into the starting rotation for your team would definitely be classified as high stress.

Question: What have been the best and worst trades in franchise history?

Jim: Apart from the Gonzalez and cash for Karim Garcia one mentioned above, I think the deal which brought Chris Young to Arizona, as part of the Javier Vazquez swap, was a thing of beauty. We got a top-quality young prospect, who looks set to occupy center field for years, as well as Orlando Hernandez and Luis Vizcaino, which we spun on into Yusmeiro Petit and part of the Johnson trade. Among the bad, one wonders what might have happened if we'd kept Brad Penny rather than trading him to Florida for closer Matt Mantei in July 1999. Penny was third this year in the NL Cy Young...just behind Brandon Webb: been nice to have these as a 1-2 punch. We should have got a lot more from the Red Sox for Curt Schilling too.

Jeff: The trade that put Arizona on the map and the one that should have immediately suggested to the commissioner's office that General Managers too should be drug-tested would be the fleecing of the Detroit Tigers that sent underachiever Karim Garcia to the Tigers for outfielder Luis Gonzalez and cash.  I'm no zoologist so I am not sure if it is actually possible to fleece a tiger but that is about as accurate a description as I could think of.  It would have been bad enough trading Garcia for Gonzalez but the Diamondbacks actually got Detroit to send an armored car full of money too. I hesitate giving Arizona too much credit though.  They didn't want Luis Gonzalez as much as they wanted to get rid of Karim Garcia.  Gonzalez was not expected to stay in Arizona for the 1999 season.  The Diamondbacks had all intention of moving him to another team but they couldn't find an appropriate taker.  This is why Gonzalez didn't show up on the 1999 All-Star ballot.  The Diamondbacks didn't expect him to be in their outfield so they didn’t submit his name.  Gonzalez though opened the year with a flurry beginning with Opening Day and played his way onto the roster and into the starting line-up; the rest they say is history. 

I think the more important trade to the organization happened in 2000 when the Diamondbacks traded for what appeared was a broken down pitcher in exchange for an underachieving first baseman, an overachieving starting pitcher and two minor league pitchers.  That broken down pitcher was Curt Schilling who was coming back from an injury and when paired with Randy Johnson would become one of the best 1-2 pitchers in the National League and probably all of baseball.  Had the Diamondbacks not made that deal I don't believe they would have had the success they did in 2001.

There have been quite a few questionable deals that left Diamondbacks fans scratching their heads wondering what they were thinking.  In 1998 with David Dellucci playing well in left field and leading the National League in triples the Diamondbacks traded catcher Jorge Fabregas and pitcher Willie Blair to the New York Mets for Bernard Gilkey.  Gilkey would quit in the middle of the second half to have lasik eye surgery ending his season.  I personally think that Bernard Gilkey did more for Luis Gonzalez's career than any other person on the planet.  It was Gilkey that was supposed to be the starting left fielder for Arizona in 1999.  Who wouldn't take Luis Gonzalez over Bernard Gilkey any day of the week? For me though the worst trade in Diamondbacks history had to be the deal reached on July 25, 2001 when the Diamondbacks sent pitcher Nick Bierbrodt, outfielder Jason Conti and cash to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for pitcher Albie Lopez and catcher Mike DiFelice.

I'm starting to think that whenever a team sends cash in a deal that is probably a candidate for bad trade.  I have no idea why the Diamondbacks felt the need to send cash along with a couple of players who were at the time making right around league minimum in exchange for Lopez and DiFelice.  DiFelice was the jewel of this deal.  He went 0-21 to begin his career in Arizona and followed that up with an alleged bar fight where he tried to light the rear of a woman's pants on fire with a lighter.  He tangled with the wrong woman though and got hit harder than an Albie Lopez fastball (a pitch inappropriately named in Albie's case).  This trade probably would have looked even worse if it were not for a bizarre incident where Bierbrodt was shot while sitting in the back of a cab at a fast food drive-thru window which sidetracked a promising pitching career.

Question: What's your take on the new logo and uniforms?

Jim: It was probably only after the changeover that I realized how bad the purple was – I find it impossible to wear without thinking of Barney the Dinosaur. Though the red is a little too common with other teams, it does differentiate ourselves to a greater degree from our divisional rivals, the Rockies. I didn't feel the same degree of loss at the changes as some did - but being a Brit, feel that nothing less than a hundred years old can be considered to have any history. I have *shoes* that are older than the Diamondbacks, so shrieks of 'They're destroying our traditions!' seem somewhat exaggerated.

Jeff: November 8, 2006 was a life changing date for me.  It was not that I was attached to purple and turquoise; it was just the sheer volume of purple and turquoise in my life.  I’d been following the Arizona Diamondbacks since the franchise was unveiled on March 9, 1995 and had accumulated a lot of Diamondbacks stuff.  My wife reminded me of the fact that I had 59 variations of Diamondbacks hats before they changed the colors and logos. It was a pretty traumatic change when the team changed their logos and uniforms. Not only did I have to completely change my wardrobe but I also had to repaint rooms in my house, change Christmas decorations (I had purple and turquoise tinsel and decorations), and car accessories (floor mats, license plate covers, windshield visors).

I was furious at the change and I felt that the team was ignoring what little tradition they had accumulated. I was baffled as to why they would move away from something as unique as the purple which was shared by only one other team to red which it seemed as though half the league used as one of their colors.  What was even more curious was the fact that Major League Baseball initiated the discussions with the team.  It didn't make any sense at all and there was no way I was buying the stated reason that purple was difficult to color match and didn't show well on television.  Initially I had planned to boycott the new colors and logos and stay with the traditional purple and turquoise.  Guilt began to creep in and I started to feel like I wasn't much of a fan if I let a color change come between me and the team. So I went to the team shop and picked up a Sedona Red hat.  I didn't actually wear the hat, I just sat it on my desk and looked at it every day. Before long the color started to grow on me in the same sense that mold grows on those leftovers I don’t touch in the back of the refrigerator.  Before long I noticed myself
starting to include more Sedona Red in my color schemes. 

It started with a font color here and there and soon it spread to my background color.  Before long my purple and turquoise hats began moving off the shelf and into a box and the hat I had used as a desk decoration was now on my head.  The new Sedona Red hat was one thing but I just couldn't force myself to get one of the jerseys.  That changed when I received a jersey for Christmas.  I again held out and just hung the jersey near my desk and stared at it every day and lamented the fact that all the jerseys now in my closet were obsolete. When Opening Day arrived I cringed as I reached for the new Sedona Red jersey and wore it to the game. When we won the game I knew there was no going back otherwise I might jinx the entire season.  After 162 regular season games and 7 post season games I've come to grips with the color and logo change.  I've also noticed that my vocabulary has changed as well.  I no longer speak of red or tan.  Now it is Sedona Red and Sonoran Sand and Black is always capitalized but we only speak of it at home on Saturdays. Now if I can just find Sedona Red tinsel and Sonoran Sand Christmas tree lights I'll be fine.

Question: What do you expect (or want) the lineup and rotation to be in 2012?

Jim: Hopefully, not too different from what it is now, in a lot of cases. Young, Justin Upton and Mark Reynolds will still be in their arbitration years, and perhaps Stephen Drew and Conor Jackson will still be around, though the former needs to produce more consistently if he's to have a future. Pitching is harder to predict: Webb and Dan Haren are both locked in through 2010, so the club might have some tough decisions to make: can we afford to keep both? Micah Owings will likely also be about, but whether in the rotation or as a position player remains to be seen: as well as a 4.30 ERA, Owings hit .333 this season, with more homers and RBI than Justin Upton - in less than half as many at-bats. First-round pick from this year, Max Scherzer, will probably be closing games for Arizona by that stage.

Jeff: I have a hard time imagining even talking about 2012.  I barely remember to start the year off with 20?? when I write a check.  One of the great things about the current youth movement that the Diamondbacks have initiated is that the core group of players now breaking into the major leagues should be reaching their prime in 2012.  I would expect to see names such as Mark Reynolds, Chris Young, Stephen Drew, Chris Snyder, and Justin Upton being household names for Diamondbacks fans.  I think by 2012 there will be a change at first base as I am not sure the lack of power hitting and sometimes questionable fielding will allow Conor Jackson to continue at that position.  In 2008 I think the Diamondbacks will begin experimenting moving Chad Tracy to first but he too is error prone meaning that may be an area where the Diamondbacks look to shore up their team.

Javier Brito looks promising but again he hasn't shown a lot of power.  By 2012 I would expect Eric Byrnes to be replaced by Gerardo Parra.  He may not be the athlete that Carlos Gonzalez is but he shows tremendous promise as a 5-tool player.  I don't think the Diamondbacks will be able to re-sign Orlando Hudson after 2008 so I would expect to see Emilio Bonifacio to take over at second base. His speed would be a huge asset and may finally give the Diamondbacks the lead-off hitter they have been looking for.  Defensively he is no Hudson but he should blossom into an above average fielder with good range.

The front end of the pitching staff seems set with Brandon Webb followed by Dan Haren.  I believe Micah Owings will continue his progression and slide into the third slot.  I look to see Jarrod Parker be ready and become the number 4 starter.  Esmerling Vasquez could be the fifth starter if he continues to progress.  This of course is assuming that the Diamondbacks move first round pick Max Scherzer to the bullpen where many people feel he is more suited.  Scherzer or Tony Pena would be a dominating closer with he other being a perfect set-up man along with Brandon Lyon who thrived in that role in 2007.

Jim and Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time for this first edition of The Bloggers Roundtable.  I highly encourage everyone to check their respective work on the sites linked at the top of this post.  Now...

I want to see everyone debate!