PHOENIX -- This is the time of year when teams start calling other clubs to lay the groundwork for the July 31 Trade Deadline, and Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen would like nothing more than to be a buyer. But he’s going to need his team to pick up the pace for that to happen.
Expected to be a postseason team, the Diamondbacks (32-34) have stumbled this year, in part because of injuries, but also because they struggled in a number of areas.
After Monday night’s 8-4 win over the Mariners on Josh Naylor's grand slam in the 11th inning, the Diamondbacks still trail the first-place Dodgers in the NL West by 7 1/2 games and there are four teams ahead of them for the final Wild Card spot.
There’s a lot of season left, but there’s also a lot of work for Arizona to do to get back in it.
“I'm hopeful this is going to turn around and we put ourselves in the conversation to be buying,” Hazen said. “I hope the players put us in a conversation to be buying a month from now, month-and-a-half from now, but we gotta get going.”
With the Diamondbacks having lost 12 of their last 18 games, Hazen has received some calls from other teams starting to feel out whether Arizona might be a seller come the Deadline.
That’s understandable, since Arizona has a number of players on expiring contracts that other teams would covet.
From a pitching standpoint, there’s starters Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, both of whom are free agents at the end of the year, while right-hander Shelby Miller has been a lifesaver for the team in the bullpen.
If teams are looking for offense, third baseman Eugenio Suárez, first baseman Josh Naylor and outfielder Randal Grichuk are free-agents-to-be.
“We’re starting to get some calls,” Hazen said. “It happens when you play this way. When you're sitting in the standings where we are, it's inevitable, you're going to start receiving phone calls about your players. 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. I don't know that they're just doing it to us, but, you know, if we were 15 games over .500, they would be making the same phone call. It would just be a different tone and tenor of the phone call.”
The Diamondbacks have been without co-closer A.J. Puk for most of the year and the other closer, Justin Martinez, also missed time (and could miss more due to a right elbow injury that emerged on Monday). Things got even worse last week when they learned that ace Corbin Burnes, who was signed to a six-year, $210 contract over the winter, will need Tommy John surgery, forcing him to miss the rest of this season and likely the next.
It’s not just the injuries or bullpen struggles that have hampered the Diamondbacks -- they have at times struggled to deliver with runners in scoring position, and their once airtight defense has shown cracks.
“Defensively, we just haven't played well this year,” Hazen said. “And that's an area that is still costing us. But we're also putting so many runners on base in those situations, [so] when the mistakes do happen, it’s costing us a lot of runs. So, everyone's involved, but it's frustrating that we haven't really gotten going defensively, especially in those critical moments.”
There’s still time for the Diamondbacks to get it going, but time is ticking.