Bickley Blast: Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo has tough starting pitching decision ahead

and Mara mornings Arizona Sports the local sports leader bigley blast Tory lello has made a lot of tough conversations this year from codling Corbin Carroll to benching Paul sea Wald to telling Christian Walker he did not make the national league Allstar team and yet nothing might compare to the road ahead for the Diamondbacks manager which means telling your best starting pck he's no longer a starting pitcher that's what's on the line with Jordan Montgomery V Ryan Nelson where everybody assumes that lllo will side with the pricey pedigreed veteran at the expense of a third-year player with 17 career wins because that's conventional wisdom because that's what most managers would do because Jordan Montgomery has been part of the championship team and that ring means something but these two pitchers are aren't even close at the moment Ryan Nelson has been a monster since July 2nd his erra is 2.93 his whip is less than one his strikeout rate is an unbelievable 25.5% and that's a lot of starting pitcher to send off to the bullpen now chances are Montgomery will do well today he's facing a bad team away from Chase Field where Montgomery is really struggled and chances are Nelson will get one more start but this decision is looming and this decision is inevitable and this decision is fraught with Peril and you hope whatever he chooses it doesn't reverberate the wrong way in a Clubhouse full of young players who have grown to believe that Excellence will be rewarded in Arizona not reputations and not politics all right today's Bly blast brought to you by my great friends at Chap and BMW make luxury attainable find them online at bman bmw.com all right big decision ahead for the Diamondbacks Tory lello the idea of having a six-man rotation will it go on another weekend that seems to be my gut feeling on the matter I may be wrong about this but it feels like to me because Zack Gallen um is coming off uh that that the injury that or the cramping stuff that he had and he hasn't been good because Merill Kelly had a start where his velocity was down they might roll this thing back one more time because it would really feel wrong to bench Ryan Nelson after we saw last Friday where I was transfixed by the quality of his fast ball it he is just his his stuff in particular the stuff we're so about the stuff with these Dbacks uh Justin Martinez and the stuff that he's got in the pen and Ryan Nelson that has been the big jump for him this year I think that you look at his numbers previously and you look at them now the swing and miss and all that kind of stuff and particularly again going back to the fast ball we talked about how Zack Allen struggles this year have largely been tied to his fast ball on yesterday's show and today that can be a lot of the success where I start to get some trepidation here and it it's just at the beginning stages here don't get me wrong and let me know if I'm getting two out of hand here Dan with W I'm about to suggest but if Jordan Montgomery's place in the pecking order is as so to the point where he can be vastly the worst pitcher of the two but because of how much money he is making and because of his past precedent that he has set as a playoff performer and just a really good starting pitcher in general gets him the KN over Ryan Nelson let's say we get to a Dbacks postseason where they are using four starting pitchers or maybe even three starting pitchers does it get to the point now where Jordan Montgomery's getting the KN over brain and fought because that that can't happen either that really cannot happen to me especially if Jordan Montgomery doesn't figure things out in the next six weeks but again I guess it's easy to say Jordan Montgomery's been a playoff per former he's going to show up here Brandon fod has also been a playoff for it's a different but with that being said it is a young pitcher against a proven guy over the course of his career and it's a similar sort of thing am I getting too off base here in my early worry no not at all uh I my gut feeling would be that that at that point I'm not sure either would make the rotation but again if you're watching Ryan Nelson morphing into a dominant pitcher and if and if you know Ryan Nelson's story it's a story of a kid who's had a really good fast ball who had a who had to add some supplementary stuff and he did and then somewhere around July he kind of dialed back on the cutter a little bit and started going real heavy with that for seamer and the results speak for themselves his strikeout percentage is up 10% since July that's a huge number and remember the first third of the Season Tor lello Mike hayen and others were sort of saying these young when when we had all the injuries of the pitching staff these young guys are getting a to sees the opportunity and nobody is doing it and we saw like three or four guys sort of come and go up and down up and down Ryan Nelson was the guy who figured it out finally and then took off in the second half so and again and I I don't know exactly and i' I've kind of riffed on this because knowing Sports the way I do and knowing the situations that brought Jordan Montgomery to Arizona in the first place you don't know if any verbal promises were made to him okay yeah of course you're a starter you'll get 30 starts what you're you don't know but I also do know that the way Sports works is that GMS and organizations have to be real careful how they handle guys in this situation because there's agents involved and because you might have to deal with that agent down the road and because you might have to deal with this particular player down the road and and because as a young player Ryan Nelson's under the Diamondbacks control so so there's a lot of things when it comes to Conventional wisdom that would make you say okay I get it but when there's this much difference to the eyes in what you're seeing right not the numbers the eyes that's where you you risk the guys in the clubhous going that's wrong I sort of half jokingly said earlier but there's a part that you're almost hoping for just a truly disastrous start for Jordan Montgomery to sort of make this easier because because he's been mediocre he's been mediocre for a stretch here not bad enough that made anything obvious to do he's been really bad at home and maybe maybe there there are players on the Diamondbacks who won't speak out about the uh the temperature and the swamp of Chase Field and maybe maybe they're sympathetic to the way Jordan Montgomery struggled at Chase Field or maybe they think he made excuses after that last start at Chase Field I'm not sure about the internal Dynamic but there is one I can guarantee you that there is is an internal internal Dynamic the funny thing is we always use the phrase you know six pitchers for five spots that's a good problem to have even a good problem is still a problem MH so it's sort of they're going to have to figure it out eventually I would think unless they commit to the six-man rotation well what confuses me here is that the Diamondbacks are very analytical driven you you've written about this a lot on Arizona sports.com over the years in the mik ha and era Dan and we have some of the more simple numbers in front of us they have some of the more advanced numbers but if you just look at it for basic things and you were mentioning ey test and numbers both are just as glaring you look at the four seamer for Ryan Nelson this year as primary pitch hitters are only hitting 250 off of it this year Jordan Montgomery he's more of a mixed guy but he gets in the Sinker the most hitters are hitting 377 off of that pitch this year it is not even close in terms of the primary stuff between these two guys and again I got to believe that part of this is motivated about they have the data in front of him but even if you're just going through baseball Savant pages right now it's just not even close the indications for Montgomery or that he's headed in the wrong direction right now and if you wanted to lean on the excuse which the Diamondbacks will that Ryan Nelson well he's the one with Bullpen experience you don't have a role that needs to be filled in the bullpen right now so there's that that logic it it falls apart if there was a glaring need for somebody for for a guy to miss bats in the bullpen right-handed firearm then yeah you could say okay that does make sense but in terms of the composition of the bullpen the pieces are already there so this is going to be interesting how this thing plays out and Jordan Montgomery gets the ball today and and I'm just hoping that again if if Tory lello is going to side with the veteran and you know how he is with loyalty then I hope he has something really really good to kind of have his managers back yeah sorry and where this gets complicated is if you are now within a game or two of the Mets and this race starts to become a lot more important you can't just be giving these games to Jordan Montgomery to try and snap him out as something you're in a real race here pretty soon if things start to slide just a little bit thanks for watching Bley and marada click to see the latest Bickle blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports