No, the D-backs Should NOT Buy at the Deadline
The Diamondbacks are too fundamentally flawed as a team for short-term reinforcements to drastically alter the direction of the season.
With the 2025 MLB Trade Deadline just a week away, the Arizona Diamondbacks are fading fast out of postseason contention. The reality is that the team has too many fundamental flaws, and making one or two high-profile additions won’t make much of a difference. This is a team that, if they stay on their current trajectory, will win between 75 and 80 games and pick around 14th-16th in next year’s draft.
It’s a team that loses too many games at the margins. Committing to players who will become free agents after the season will not help them. Instead, the focus needs to be on improving the club’s outlook in 2026 and beyond.
As I see it right now, their 2026 season is dead on arrival, and it’s going to be another painful and frustrating season ahead. They lack the pitching depth to survive another season with these types of injuries, and it will be much worse since they’re starting from a more depleted level of depth in the organization than they began 2025.
D-backs Bullpen is in Complete Shambles Due to Injuries
The bullpen is in complete shambles with injuries affecting all of their useful arms, and collectively would be the worst bullpen in baseball if the Los Angeles Angels didn’t exist. They’re second in the league in wins lost (15) from the rotation behind the Angels.
The bullpen, as currently constructed, has one useful right-hander for high-leverage situations. Kevin Ginkel has shaken off a terrible start to his season, which will likely screw up his full season’s ERA total (7.94). He had pitched scoreless baseball in nine of his last 11 appearances.
In a game against the Astros, manager Torey Lovullo had no choice but to pray that Jake Woodford could complete a six-out save. Woodford was picked up off the street earlier this month after bouncing around the minor leagues. The fact that they need to rely on him at all speaks to the poor pitching depth they’ve built in the minor leagues. That’s a Mike Hazen problem, not a Torey Lovullo problem, for those who can’t figure out what’s going on around them.
They will get Shelby Miller back before the end of the season, but it will likely be too late. Unless Hazen can pull a miracle and land a controllable closer like David Bednar or Jhoan Duran, there’s not much he can do to salvage this bullpen. There’s no point in picking up a rental, unless the price is a low-level lottery ticket that’s unlikely to pan out for you in the first place.
Zac Gallen is Still a Part of this Rotation
The other elephant in the room is Zac Gallen. Gallen has struggled in 2025, posting a 5.58 ERA in 21 starts. In addition to the bad overall numbers, he’s only producing a quality start in a third of them. That’s less than the major league average of 36%. The rest of the rotation is picking up the slack, with 35 in the other 81 games (43%).
No pitcher has lost more money this year than Gallen. What seemed like a safe bet to break $150 million on the open market, he’s put the D-backs in a tough situation on whether or not to extend him a qualifying offer. If they aren’t going to do it, yes, they need to pull the plug and get what they can.
The D-backs win when Gallen records a quality start (7-0) but they have only won two of the other 14 starts. One was a game they scored 14 runs against the worst team in baseball in the Rockies, and the other required a big ninth inning comeback to spit him off the hook.
Buying implies that they’re going to bet on Gallen to make another 12 starts, unless they do some weird move where they drop him and add a more useful starter with more control in a separate deal. The idea of buying controllable pitching was brought up when I mentioned the team as sellers at the end of June, a stance I have not wavered from one bit personally, despite the rosy series recap against the Cardinals.
Who Should Go?
If they aren’t going to buy, then it makes sense to start shopping players with 2025 and 2026 control. However, their 2026 controllables (Kevin Ginkel, A.J. Puk, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., and Ryan Thompson) aren’t going to fetch much of a return right now. So the focus should be on their impending free agents.
While the topic of buying vs. selling is an exhausting debate, one that I’m tired of and will be glad to see the deadline pass, it’s not as simple as you’d think. It takes two teams to trade. Hazen needs to focus on getting someone who can actually contribute to the club in 2026 and beyond, not get a lottery ticket that may or may not pan out. A bad return works the same as no return, but you don’t get that final third of the season for that player and lose the ability to extend a qualifying offer (~21-22 million).
The players who should get the most interest are Eugenio Suárez, who’s on pace for just the second 50-homer season in franchise history, and Merrill Kelly. Suárez and Kelly look like no-brainers to extend the qualifying offer to, although I think it will be easier to re-sign the latter without it. They can afford to be picky on offers involving those two players.
Josh Naylor has done OK, but he’s in a tough qualifying offer decision himself. However, if the organization feels comfortable with a $50 million offer, they have nothing to lose by extending it. Naylor has hit relatively well and is third on the club in RBI, but his power numbers have not translated since the trade, and his 31-homer season looks like a fluke in comparison to 2023 and 2025.
In my opinion, Zac Gallen and Josh Naylor should be dealt. For Suárez, they need to bring back a lot more than the Tigers brought back for JD Martinez eight years ago. Hazen was on the other side of the deal, but he doesn’t have a good record on sell trades. There hasn’t been one player he picked up in a sell deal that made a significant impact. Caleb Smith might be the most notable, as he picked up 0.8 bWAR over 183.2 innings as part of the deal for Starling Marte to the Marlins in 2020.
It has since been pointed out by Spencer O’Gara that both Josh Rojas (3.3) and Emmanuel Rivera (1.0) have accumulated more WAR than Caleb Smith regarding deadline sell moves. Rojas was the only player of consequence in the Zack Greinke deal in July 2019 and Rivera was picked up for Luke Weaver in 2022.
Josh Rojas was part of the Greinke return. He is surely the best sell trade return of Hazen's tenure, no?