This week, Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen has discussed the team’s situation at the trade deadline. Appearing on the Wolf & Luke Show on Arizona Sports radio on Wednesday, Hazen spoke about where they have to be in the standings in order to be buyers.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“We need to be within distance. My intention is to buy. I want to buy, I want to push further in. I know I’ve already pushed pretty aggressively in on this team. I want to watch July, August, and September happen with really good baseball. We need to play a little better than we have and play a little bit more consistently than we have been playing. I think the next three to four weeks is going to tell us quite a bit.”
Arizona finds themselves in the midst of perhaps the toughest 13-game stretch of their season. That very well could determine the direction of where they go when it comes to the trade deadline. They lost the first game of that stretch in heartbreaking fashion, playing well for 8 1/2 innings only for the Dodgers to walk them off when they were one strike away from an impressive win.
Due to injuries and poor performances across the roster, they find themselves at a 41-44 record losing a lot of ground quickly in the Wild Card race. They are now 3.0 games back of the St. Louis Cardinals for the final Wild Card spot and have been recently passed by the San Francisco Giants. There are now five teams ahead of them in the Wild Card race.
Where the Diamondbacks stand right now, they have a very thin margin of error to win baseball games. They’re built to play from ahead, scoring early and then relying on the starting pitching and bullpen to make those runs stand. When they don’t get all three pieces to fall in place, they don’t stand much of a chance to win a baseball game.
“I think the team knows we need to play better,” said Hazen. “Sitting here, three games under .500, is not not where you would look at a team and be like man, that’s a really good team. I think, injuries aside, which have certainly impacted some of where we are right now, I think you can look around the room and think there’s room for improvement in all we’re doing. This team has another gear in it, we haven’t hit that gear, we need to hit that gear.”
Hazen later expressed his confidence that the team would find that extra gear.
Entering play on July 3, the Diamondbacks are closer to the Chicago Cubs than the St. Louis Cardinals in the Wild Card race. With a tough slate of games ahead of them, they risk the possibility of getting buried in the standings before the All-Star break. However, they also face a slate of games where they can stack some wins against teams they can beat and fight back into contention after the break.
Should the team continue to struggle and find themselves out of contention, there’s a good possibility the Diamondbacks opt to sell some expiring control guys. Players such as Christian Walker, Paul Sewald, Joc Pederson, and Eugenio Suárez, all of whom will likely hit the open market this winter, come to mind for who they would move at the deadline in a sell situation.
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Michael McDermott covers the Arizona Diamondbacks and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @MichaelMcDMLB
