A lot will happen in the seven weeks between now and the Trade Deadline, so projecting which teams might be buyers and sellers can often be a fruitless exercise in mid-June.
All but five teams entered play on Thursday with a single-digit deficit in their league’s Wild Card race, leaving more than a dozen teams one or two streaks -- winning or losing -- away from figuring out their ultimate direction.
The Diamondbacks are one of those teams.
Entering Thursday, Arizona (34-34) sat in fourth place in the National League West and seventh place in the NL Wild Card race, trailing San Diego (38-29) by 4 1/2 games for the third and final spot.
There’s ample time for the Diamondbacks -- who swept the Mariners this week after suffering a sweep at the hands of the Reds -- to surge into the thick of both races, though they’ll have to do so without ace Corbin Burnes, who will miss the rest of the season following Tommy John surgery. Hard-throwing reliever Justin Martinez is out too, following Burnes to the operating room for a Tommy John surgery of his own.
“Their pitching situation right now is a difficult one,” an American League executive said. “If you’re not healthy on the mound, it’s very difficult to compete at a high level.”
General manager Mike Hazen is hoping to emerge as a buyer by the time mid-to-late July arrives, though he knows his club has plenty of work to do in order to make that happen.
“I'm hopeful this is going to turn around and we put ourselves in the conversation to be buying,” Hazen said earlier this week. “I hope the players put us in a conversation to be buying a month from now, month-and-a-half from now, but we got to get going.”
Hazen acknowledged that he’s already getting calls from teams asking about several of his players, though Arizona isn’t ready to pack it in just yet. Given the team’s preseason expectations for 2025, that’s hardly a surprise.
“When you're sitting in the standings where we are, it's inevitable, you're going to start receiving phone calls about your players,” Hazen said. “We have a lot of good players, so I'd imagine we would get a lot of phone calls. It's not something necessarily that we want to be tackling right now, but it's not stopping anybody from calling you to ask where you're at.”
Should the Diamondbacks falter in the coming weeks, those calls will continue to come, likely at an even higher rate. That’s because if any team in the league has the potential to shake up what is being projected as a less-than-inspiring list of trade candidates, it’s Arizona.
“They seem to have a rare level of expiring talent,” said one AL executive. “We still have a ton of time for this to turn around before the Deadline.”
The expiring talent the executive referred to starts with a pair of starting pitchers -- Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly -- who have been staples of Arizona’s rotation for several years. Gallen (4-8, 5.15 ERA) has struggled at times this season, but Kelly (6-2, 3.18 ERA) is having a solid season at age 36.
Then there’s third baseman Eugenio Suárez and first baseman Josh Naylor, who rank among the Majors’ RBI leaders this season and are both slated to become free agents in the fall. Veteran outfielder Randal Grichuk is also on an expiring deal, as are relievers Shelby Miller and Jalen Beeks, who are both having excellent seasons.
Put those players together and the Diamondbacks have the potential to infuse some serious talent into the trade market if that’s the route Arizona ultimately takes.
“If the D-backs look to sell, that would be hugely impactful on the trade market, assuming they are willing to put all of those guys in play,” said an NL executive. “Even with Burnes out, I’d be surprised if they look to punt; they’re still pretty talented. I would imagine they’ll wait as long as possible and probably have some conversations on the side so they’re ready to move quickly if needed.”
With Burnes slated to miss most (if not all) of 2026, the need to bring back Gallen and/or Kelly might be even more important than before. Would trading them hinder the opportunity to re-sign them?
“Gallen isn’t having a typical Gallen-like year, but he has been very good for them prior to this year,” an AL exec said. “They may view this year’s performance as an opportunity to keep him in the desert if they believe in a bounceback. If they put him on the market, he becomes one of the top available arms despite what he’s done thus far. If they find themselves in a position where they can buy and sell simultaneously, they could move one of the arms they don’t think they can re-sign.”
Most executives have been projecting a trade class lacking a number of big names, with back-end starters, unproven relievers and a handful of impactful hitters potentially available next month. That could change, of course, depending on which teams wind up becoming sellers, but the Diamondbacks have a better collection of talent to trade than most other would-be sellers.
Again, assuming that Arizona sells. At this moment, Hazen is just as likely to be a buyer, though things can change quickly.
The Diamondbacks were 26-22 on May 19, only three games out of first place in the NL West; when the calendar flipped to June, they had endured a 1-9 stretch and were 27-31, their division deficit swelling to nine games.
“They have some time to right the ship,” an AL executive said. “Every trade market is unique and this one will be no different. On the surface, it doesn’t appear to be a robust buyer’s market, so they could certainly be influential in that regard. But they had pretty big expectations for this year after signing Burnes; sometimes when you enter a trade market, it’s hard to lose sight of those expectations and act in a rational manner. I can see a scenario where they try to buy and sell. It would be very surprising to see them just sell off the expiring contracts.”