This story is an expanded excerpt from Steve Gilbert’s D-backs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
PHOENIX — Eugenio Suárez bolstered his trade value with his fifth multi-homer game of the season Saturday night. Those two homers helped the Diamondbacks beat the Cardinals, 10-1, at Chase Field to win their first two games out of the break — and effectively make their Trade Deadline dilemma harder.
Buy or sell? That’s what everyone wants to ask Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen.
So what’s the answer? It’s still to be determined.
“I said it before, I say again — we need to play better,” Hazen said Friday. “Now we have fewer opportunities to do that coming into the [Trade] Deadline, but we need to play significantly better — like we’re putting ourselves in a situation where we don’t need to obviously win every game, we just have to start stringing wins together. And to date, we just haven’t done that. So I’m not against changing how we view this in terms of what the [Deadline] strategy could be, but I feel like with every day that passes, we’re getting pinned more and more into a corner of having to make a decision that is what’s best for the team and or the organization.”
After suffering a major spate of injuries in the first half of the season, the Diamondbacks have opened the second half on the periphery of the NL Wild Card race. After Saturday’s win, they are 4 1/2 games out, but with four teams to leapfrog.
It’s not an easy road, especially with ace Corbin Burnes, and closers A.J. Puk and Justin Martinez lost for the season (and part of next year) due to Tommy John surgery. Catcher Gabriel Moreno is out until at least later in August.
Despite that, Hazen is still willing to try and add some pieces at the Deadline if his team starts playing better. But the time to do that is running out, and they will have to do that against a pair of tough teams coming out of the break in the Cardinals and Astros.
Should they decide to be sellers, the Diamondbacks have a number of players that teams would be interested in. Pending free agents like right-handers Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, reliever Shelby Miller, first baseman Josh Naylor, outfielder Randal Grichuk and in particular third baseman Suárez would draw interest.
Hazen has an idea of what teams would be interested in various players on his team, but he has not engaged in-depth on what the return would be. He has fielded calls from teams asking “If you were to sell, would you be willing to talk about Player X or Y?”
“We have not called anybody and said, ‘Here’s a deal we would do with you and if you say yes to this we’ll make the deal right now,’” Hazen said. “And that’s usually what it takes. It takes me telling them, ‘I will [do it], I’m not just messing around with you saying, well, I would, I could.’ I think once you tell a GM, ‘I will do this tomorrow,’ I think that changes the tenor of the negotiation. Then they’re like, ‘OK, we could acquire that guy if we pony up and he will do it.’ I haven’t done that yet.”
Hazen said he is not under any pressure from managing general partner Ken Kendrick to reduce salary after the team opened the year with a club-record $195 million payroll.
Instead, like he’s done throughout his tenure in charge, Kendrick has allowed Hazen to decide.
“The opportunity to be able to go out there and buy is always what [Kendrick] wants to do, and he’s always given us the resources to go and do that,” Hazen said. “We’ve talked through the challenges of where we’re standing today relative to where we are in the league, and relative to how many bullpen injuries we’ve taken on, and then what the realistic opportunity is to recover from that.”
