Counterpoint: Don’t Listen to Jay; The Diamondbacks Should Stand Pat or Even Buy at the Deadline

The Arizona Diamondbacks, like King Solomon confronted with a baby, split their first 100 games straight down the middle. With the trade deadline looming a week from Thursday, the Diamondbacks could use a little wisdom right now, because it’s tough to tell whether they should buy or sell.

As of this writing, Arizona sits in fourth place in the NL West, nine games behind the Dodgers. Even after sweeping the Cardinals, a direct Wild Card rival, over the weekend, the Snakes still need to leapfrog four teams — including St. Louis — in order to slither in to the National League’s final Wild Card position. Five and a half games out of the playoffs with 61 games to go is a substantial hill to climb, especially for a team that’s been devastated by injuries. And the Diamondbacks, with their plethora of impending free agents, could command the market if they chose to sell.

Selling is the pragmatic move, the temperate move, the sustainable move, the move for the guys with the longest view in the room, and all the other business school-informed malarkey that gets spouted by the quarter-zips upstairs.

Poppycock, says I. Don’t listen to them, or my colleague Jay Jaffe. The Diamondbacks should go the other direction, and buy at the deadline.

Yes, the Diamondbacks are buried in the standings, and yes, they’re old and hurt. But their playoff odds currently sit at 14.9%. That’s a few ticks higher than what the Royals’ were last week, when I wrote that yeah, what the heck, they should at least be seen to make an effort to compete at the trade deadline. This is even less scientific than playoff odds, but it’s still important: None of the nine teams ahead of Arizona in the standings are especially scary.

The Dodgers’ bullpen is busted. The Phillies have shackled the game’s best rotation to a millstone of a lineup whose output is limited by the number of men on base when Kyle Schwarber hits one out. Giants catchers have a collective wRC+ of 58 this season, and the Padres’ catching situation is even worse overall. I’m sorry if that’s a little too blunt, but by giving Martín Maldonado 146 plate appearances through two-thirds of his age-38 season, the Padres have insulted themselves more gravely than I ever could.

And that’s, like, the cream of the crop. At some point, this stops being about numbers and turns into a matter of honor. Are you going to throw in the towel because you don’t think you can beat the Reds over two and a half months? Have some self-respect.

The Diamondbacks aren’t without their own inadequacies, of course. Since the 2023-24 offseason, Arizona has signed five pitchers to multi-year free agent contracts or contract extensions worth at least $10 million. Three of those pitchers (Jordan Montgomery, Corbin Burnes, and Justin Martinez) are currently on the 60-day IL with torn UCLs. Eduardo Rodriguez has a 5.94 ERA this season, and a 5.59 ERA over 130 1/3 total innings since joining the Diamondbacks. The fifth pitcher, Brandon Pfaadt, has a 4.82 ERA and 4.41 FIP but a 6.22 xERA.

Actually, let’s circle back to Martinez for a moment. Ten Arizona pitchers have recorded at least one save this season. Of those, only three are currently on the active roster: Ryne Nelson (who’s actually pitching quite well out of the rotation), Kevin Ginkel (8.18 ERA), and Anthony DeSclafani. When you’re chasing a playoff spot in 2025, “Thank God for Anthony DeSclafani” is not the kind of thing you want to be saying about your bullpen.

Gabriel Moreno, the superstar catcher in the making, has been on the IL since mid-June with a broken finger and will remain there until at least mid-August. Moreno came over from Toronto in the Daulton Varsho trade three years ago; the other key piece in that transaction was Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who’s appeared in 93 games for Arizona this year but is having the worst offensive season of his career.

Also having the worst season of his career: Zac Gallen, the capital-A Ace of the 2023 pennant-winning Diamondbacks team. While Gallen has been healthy all season — far from a given on a club that has five starting pitchers on the 60-day IL at the moment — his FIP is up a run and a half, and his ERA is up almost two full runs from last season. In between drafts of this article, he allowed six runs (including two homers) in a start against the Astros. So it’s not like things are getting better.

Arizona’s pitchers, in total, have a collective win probability added of -4.38, making them the only team still in the playoff hunt (or one of two, depending on how you feel about the Angels), whose pitchers are underwater in WPA. They’re 11-19 in one-run games, which is the third-worst record in baseball in those situations. And despite having the fourth-best team wRC+ in the entire league, the Diamondbacks are in the middle of the pack in offensive production with runners on base and in high-leverage situations.

What a nightmare.

But after all that, the Diamondbacks are still well in the playoff race. And because they still have at least one remaining series against every team they have to jump in the Wild Card race, they still control their destiny.

Imagine what this team could do with merely average luck. And with no real powerhouse evident in the NL playoff bracket, a mere ticket to the dance could be worth quite a bit.

And it’s not like they can do a proper rebuild anyway. I was going to make this argument on normative grounds, based on the fact that this team went to the World Series two years ago, and arguably fielded an even better team in 2024, when they missed the playoffs on the last day of the season. (Actually, the day after the last day of the season.) Barring a collapse so comprehensive the playoffs were never in the picture to start (see: this year’s Braves or Orioles), the Diamondbacks would be wise not to wantonly check the organizational momentum they’ve built over the past two seasons.

But Arizona’s core is built in such a way that such squishy concepts as “ought to” and “organizational momentum” don’t need to enter into it. Burns is under contract through 2030. Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte are in the fold on team-friendly deals through 2031, as is Martinez. Pfaadt’s contract carries through a mutual option in 2032, while Geraldo Perdomo’s deal ends with a team option for 2030. Moreno is still pre-arbitration and under team control through 2028, which is also the last year of Rodriguez’s contract.

In other words, the core is in place for the long run. An actual tear-down would involve burning Carroll’s prime, as well as the most productive remaining years Burnes and Marte have left.

But the Diamondbacks could still do a major sell-off without harming the future too much; they have that many impending free agents. Actually, let’s take a gander at who they might trade:

I’ll admit, I’m having a hard time gauging this year’s trade market. Given how much buzz there is around Sandy Alcantara, who’s been worse than Gallen this year and at his peak far less recently, I think the bespectacled New Jerseyan ought to have some value. But suffice it to say the Diamondbacks would be selling low on a player who, this time last year, would’ve trailed only Carroll and Marte in value to the organization.

Three Diamondbacks free agents-to-be have actually been good this year: Suárez, Kelly, and Naylor.

Let’s start with Kelly, since he’s both the easiest trade candidate to find a comp for and will be the hardest to sign. Kelly is making $7 million this season, and even entering his age-37 campaign, he’s been so consistent since returning to the U.S. — and durable starting pitchers are so scarce — I’d expect him to at least double, if not triple, his annual salary on a multi-year contract this offseason.

Last July 30, the Dodgers traded catching prospect Thayron Liranzo and infielder Trey Sweeney to Detroit for free agent-to-be Jack Flaherty. The Dodgers won the World Series, as you might remember, though Flaherty’s contributions were a bit inconsistent. Sweeney has made 64 starts and 78 total appearances at shortstop for Detroit this season, and has hit not even a little bit: .209/.273/304. Liranzo earned a 50 FV evaluation on the Tigers’ preseason top prospects list, and while his power numbers have lagged since his promotion to Double-A, he’s still walking a ton. If you’d rather compare Kelly to Yusei Kikuchi, who went from Toronto to Houston for Jake Bloss, Will Wagner, and Joey Loperfido, be my guest.

Naylor is an odd player, an ultra-high-contact hitter with some pop, who’s absolutely nailed to first base. There wasn’t a player like him traded last deadline, and the closest comparison I can find in 2023 was the Cubs’ acquisition of Jeimer Candelario from Washington, in exchange for shortstop prospect Kevin Made and pitching prospect DJ Herz.

That leaves Suárez, who’s a 34-year-old free agent to be, but he’s one step ahead of Juan Soto on the wRC+ leaderboard, and has the same number of home runs as Aaron Judge. Suárez leads the NL in dingers, and is second in the NL in slugging percentage, trailing only Shohei Ohtani.

For a long time, the book on Suárez was that he’d give you good vibes and 30-odd dingers, at the cost of iffy defense, tectonic foot speed, and roughly one million strikeouts. He’s a player I’ve loved since his days in Cincinnati, but he has flaws.

But if you actually think Suárez can keep this up for the rest of the season, it’s been ages since a rental bat like this moved at the deadline. The most recent candidates I’d even consider changed homes in 2021: Schwarber, Kris Bryant, and Nelson Cruz, and all three of those had question marks. Schwarber and Bryant had both been bad in 2020, and neither hitter (especially Bryant) was quite up to Suárez’s level now. Cruz, for his part, was not only a pure DH, he was 100 years old when the Twins traded him to Tampa Bay.

I’m not saying the Diamondbacks should be obtuse. If they drop another four games behind the Padres this week, or someone offers them a global top-10 prospect for Suárez and/or Kelly, then by all means, run up the white flag.

But they don’t have to sell just for the sake of selling. Especially because if they stand pat and don’t make the playoffs, they don’t have to lose their most valuable free agents for nothing.

Last year, the qualifying offer landed at $21.05 million; teams that received revenue sharing money (a list that included the Diamondbacks in 2024) and lost a free agent on a deal worth at least $50 million, received a pick at the end of the first round.

The Diamondbacks know this area of the draft well; this year, they got the 29th pick as compensation for losing Christian Walker to the Astros, while the Orioles received the 30th pick as compensation for Arizona signing Burnes. (The Diamondbacks lost their second-rounder as part of this exchange.) Pick no. 29 added $3.19 million to Arizona’s draft bonus pool.

Suárez is a lock to get a $50 million contract this offseason; he’s the most obvious QO case I can think of. And given how expensive starting pitching is, and how Kelly’s age makes him especially attractive on a shorter-term deal, I’d probably qualify him as well if I were running the Diamondbacks.

The argument for the Diamondbacks divesting from all their 30-something free agents rests on a faulty assumption: That chasing a long shot at a playoff berth would leave the team with nothing when that pursuit inevitably fails.

The way I see it, the question is a bit more complicated. Are the prospects Arizona could receive for Suárez, Kelly, Naylor, and Gallen so valuable that it’s worth giving up the following: The inside track on re-signing these core players, at least one and possibly two first-round draft picks, and the opportunity cost of punting a prime season of Carroll and Marte?

That’s worth taking some time to ponder. In the remaining days before the trade deadline, general manager Mike Hazen could have that decision made for him if the team swoons or a Godfather offer comes in. Until and unless that happens, however, a shot at the playoffs is too valuable an opportunity to just throw away.