The king of Chase Field should be signed by the Diamondbacks

Here’s why the Diamondbacks should sign Trevor Story

The King of Chase Field, for opposing players, is someone that Diamondbacks fans know all too well. He’s a great fielding shortstop that has light-tower power and is known for showing off said power at Chase Field. So, why wouldn’t the Dbacks sign him, if money wasn’t an issue? Well, first I feel that I should say that the player is Trevor Story so that there’s no confusion.

There’s a lot of reasons as to why we should sign Trevor Story beyond the monetary factor. Although, you can’t count the Diamondbacks out when it comes to money as they did shock the MLB-World when they signed Zack Greinke.

Yet, it would mean a lot to a team that keeps saying it’s only a year or two away from competing by showing that the team wants a veteran star player to help lead these young studs that are coming up next year. He would give the Diamondbacks legitimacy just like they have sought in their coaching hires.

How would Trevor Story help the Diamondbacks?

There are so many reasons as to how Arizona would be benefited from Trevor Story joining the team in this hypothetical dream scenario. First off, the team needs a right-handed hitting power hitter. Our normal line-up has at least 5 left-handed hitters which prevent us from leveraging on the short left-field fences in ballparks. Plus, too often, the team would face a left-handed hitter and be shut down consistently. If we want to win, that can’t happen.

Story hit .251, .329, .471, .801, 103 OPS+ (100 is avg) in what was a “down” year for him. Of course, playing with a team that he didn’t want to be on that had more internal strife than the Dbacks surely didn’t help matters. The Rockies couldn’t even trade him at the deadline for some odd reason. Yet, Story still hit 34 doubles, 5 triples, 75 RBIs, and 24 HRs which would be tops on the team in most categories. Furthermore, he would’ve led the team in steals with his 20 last year.

There are underneath stats behind the main stats that show that Story should bounce plenty next year. He had a career-worst .293 BABIP (batting average on balls in play). What BABIP measures is how does a hitter hit on balls he actually puts into play. This means every single, HR, line-out, fly-out, etc… all into one and what’s their success rate. If Story still got to those stats despite having the worst year on balls that he hit not finding open spots then that just shows he’s a terrific hitter.

His strikeout rate is going down each year and he’s been found to hit the ball up the middle often. That’s huge in keeping your BABIP up and maintaining your abilities to be an elite player. He has accrued 26.7 WAR and had 4.2 last year, easily would’ve been tops on the team.3.4 of that WAR was from his offensive production which shows he’s an elite hitter.

His defense waned a little bit last year, but he still was plenty productive at the shortstop position. To make things even better, we can easily move him to third base if need right away to clear a spot for Perdomo or Ahmed. With his success at shortstop for defense, he could be a Gold Glover at third. He had 1.6 defensive WAR with a 3.1 UZR rating. (League avg for UZR is 0.0, so this is very good).

Story would solidify this lineup by being the main third baseman that we can have to lead the team towards contention in 2023. He will only be 29 next year, which indicates he should still have 4+ years left as an elite player, especially if we move him to a less physical-demanding position at 3B. Trevor hits the ball to all fields and is a 2-time All-Star. Of course, this is forgetting the fact that Trevor Story is a King of Chase Field.

How is Trevor Story a “king” of Chase Field?

I think many Diamondbacks fans can remember what Story did to Chase Field and Zack Grienke during the Opening Day series in 2016. Homering in every game and twice against our star pitcher making his debut is pretty hard to forget. Without a doubt, that was just the beginning of his tenure at owning Chase Field.

Over Story’s career playing at Chase Field, 105 games, he had 174 at-bats. Across those at-bats, he had 50 hits, 9 doubles, 4 triples, 13 HRs, and 32 RBIs. That equated to a .287, .361, .591, 147 WRC+ batting line. Those are insanely impressive numbers that would be absolutely amazing on the DBacks. Imagine if Story played at Chase Field over 81 games consistently, how great he would do.

Trevor also walked 22 times and only struck out 54 times. Meanwhile, I don’t need to remind you how the Dbacks did with walks and strikeouts. What a wonderful dream world I live in.

While I doubt the team will give Story the 5-6 year, 125-150 million dollar he’s probably seeking, it would certainly be a wise and special decision if they did. One can only hope!

Hazen, Torey, Story, if any of y’all read this, please consider joining the Diamondbacks! Be sure to check out the article on Josh Rojas and what kind of surgery he had!

As always,

May the Dreams and Force be with you…