Bickley Blast: Did the Arizona Diamondbacks get a demoralizing trade deadline return?

Bickley Blast: Did the Arizona Diamondbacks get a demoralizing trade deadline return?

and Marada boardings. Arizona sports, the local sports leader. Biggley Blast. It’s easy to grin when your ship comes in and you have the trade market beat. And it’s fantastic when demand exceeds supply. But the Diamondbacks learned a painful lesson on Thursday. Selling usually sucks when you’ve arrived at baseball’s trade deadline. Gone are Gino Suarez and Mel Kelly, two of the most popular players in recent memory. Suarez is adored by casual fans, many of them female. And Kelly is a local kid who became a playoff hero. Their departure hurts and the pain goes deep. They traded away Shelby Miller for nothing just so they could get two million bucks rebate on Jordan Montgomery. And meanwhile, there was no market for Zack Allen. The player, a good portion of the fan base, actually wanted to be traded, and it added insult to injury. All told, it was a deflating day and to some, a demoralizing return because fans expect more when trading hallmark beloved marquee players. And the Diamondbacks might have been damaged by a shifting market where some teams went from buyers to sellers, flooding the deadline with too much supply. Or maybe they waited too long and overpriced their players, leading to the retention of Gallon and trading Kelly with just minutes to spare. Or maybe selling off rental players always leads to disappointment. Either way, the Diamondbacks thought they’d be hanging a banner or two in 2025 and they ended up waving the white flag instead. And so the biggest party in baseball will go on without us. And that simply sucks. All right, today’s Bickley Blast brought to you by my great friends at Chapman BMW. Make luxury attainable. Find them online at chapmanbmw.com. So, a day that was deflating and I think it’s deflating by definition. I think what when you um when you are pure sellers at the trade deadline, it means that you have had a very bad baseball season. And when you have to trade a Gino Suarez and a Mel Kelly, uh that is going to leave a mark. and when you end up having to give away Shelby Miller to get out from 2 million bucks of Jordan Montgomery. Now, there’s still some tentacles to that trade depending on what Shelby Miller may or may not do with the Bru uh with the Brewers, but all told, and then retaining Zack Allen, I don’t think it’s anything that anybody wanted. I think that deep down Zack Allen was probably looking forward to resetting maybe in a real competitive situation, maybe. But I mean, I’m not going to sit here and say I don’t understand the fans that a are upset that the players are traded in the first place or b about the return. This is it. It there’s nothing concrete about it. And I know the Diamondbacks got good grades from those who grade trades um for, you know, in real time for the return they were able to get, especially in the Kelly deal with the three pitching prospects coming from Texas. But Mhm. you can’t baseball trades, you can’t grade them for years. Oh, no. It’s impossible. But let’s go down the road of what if they did nothing and nothing changed in the second half of the season and these players said, “You know what? We want to come back and give it another shot.” There’s no guarantee that the Diamondbacks would be any better next year. No, no, no. Yeah. Listen, I’m not arguing that point. I I think the Diamondbacks did exactly what they needed to do. Absolutely. I totally agree. I I am I am an advocate that they needed to sell off some assets and get some prospects and try to hit reset with something different. I as I said in Malamaro today, as I said earlier today, for whatever reason, this was this team that we had prior to the trade deadline was a bad mix. Whatever whoever is to blame or who was ever at fault, it collectively it was a bad mix particularly for this manager. And this was they had to do what they did. And I also think the haul they got for Gino Gino Suarez, while I’ve read that there’s some disappointment in what the market brought to bear, I’m okay with the fact that you got a good young piece in Tyler Lleier who might be a guy. I I don’t know what else you can hope for when you’re trading off a rental player. And so I’m not necessarily quibbling with their return. It’s just the whole thing. The season has been a a debacle. the trade deadline, the rumor started really early for this baseball club. It obviously took a chunk out of this team and and then as a result, what you got back in return, you you you might wonder what the heck happened to this market here. So, I I think more than anything, it’s just deflating because you had to say goodbye to two guys that fans really gravitated to. And it’s an acknowledgment that this great attempt at winning in 2025 turned out to be a big swing and a miss. Yeah, I thought one of the interesting things that Mike Hazen was asked yesterday uh when when all was said and done uh with Zack Allen still being on the roster, they made the Josh Naylor trade real early in this process. It was, you know, you know, it wasn’t right at the deadline. Josh Naylor’s been with the Mariners now for for a week. Mhm. Um Mike Hazen was asked because he talked about know maybe we announced ourselves as sellers too early and would things have been different if it was Gallon who was moved earlier in the week. Here was Mike Hazen’s answer on that. Oh no. No. I wouldn’t had a deal. I wouldn’t had a deal three days ago. No. Um nobody would have I mean I had all the the same level of interest. I had the same level of teams calling me telling me that they wanted these players. Um and then we had conversations. It’s just there’s there wasn’t much there wasn’t you know there wasn’t much there in terms of what we would be willing to do make a trade and we told teams that like you’re going to have to clear a bar. There’s a value here for us that we have in holding him. Um and it just didn’t happen. Yeah. The Zack Gallon uh experience this year has been puzzling, but this is something another thing that might light a fire under a guy who’s had a really difficult year. He’s been very open and honest about his own struggles, trying to figure out, just doesn’t have it. But think of it this way. This is a guy who in 2023 had the trifecta. He was the opening day starter for his team. He started in the All-Star game and started game one of the World Series. There’s not a lot of pitchers that have that on their resume. No. Two years later, he couldn’t be dealt at the trade deadline by a seller. Crazy. That’s crazy. That that could go one of two ways. It could light a fire. Uh it could lead to to more of the same in the second half. A guy who was pitching a no hitter in a World Series game for seven innings. Uh here was also Mike Hazen uh on his message to the fan base after what the Diamondbacks did at the trade deadline. Obviously, I think I’ve repeated myself many different times on this that were exceptionally disappointed in where this season went. I think it unfortunately in my job and where we at where we’re at looking forward in trying to put the best team on the field for 2026. I’m certainly the best in, you know, for the rest of 2025 to our ability. But in 2026, um I I I have to face the reality of where our feet are, how we’re playing, and we just didn’t play well enough. And where we were in relation to those teams we were chasing was not a good spot for me to feel like we have in years past. Even when we haven’t been in a playoff spot, we’ve bought. Um unfortunately, this team wasn’t playing at a caliber or way that I felt the same. And I have to make those decisions. And you know, if that that those baseball decisions don’t always align with what I know the fans want to see and I and I respect that and we we understand and I don’t do that lightly. Um it’s very complicated to make that decision given how allin we went in at the beginning of the season. Yeah. And I feel the disappointment that Mike Hazen is talking about. Obviously, it’s been a it’s been a rough watch this season, especially in the last two weeks. But I think this represents look a changing of the lens. You’re looking for different things now. And Mike Hayes talked about Jordan Lawler getting ramped up in his rehab, ready to he’s going to get some time at Reno. But for much of the remainder of this schedule, we should see Jordan Lawler playing third base. Yeah. Under a different circumstance than the first time he was up and he did not look ready for Major League Baseball when he was called up. He was also sprinkled in in games for a team that was contending for that had expectations that was contending for a playoff spot. I’m not sitting here saying the Diamondbacks aren’t going to try to win games in in in the remainder of the schedule. They are. It’s going to be much tougher because there’s young players, but Jordan Lawler is going to be afforded the opportunity to play every day ideally with not without the pressure of being right in a playoff chase that can pay dividends down the road. The same thing for Tyler Lleair. That starts tonight. He should be the starting first baseman in in the lineup tonight when they play the A’s. Yeah. Yeah. So, I’m I’m real excited to see what this kid looks like. He, like I said, he’s been tearing it up at Tacoma. Um, he made some serious swing adjustments from what I read and you even heard Mike Hasin say the same thing. And, and if you find if you find the first baseman of your future, though, there will be no questioning the Gino Suarez trade. True. Thanks for watching Bickley and Marada. Click to see the latest Bley Blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports.

Dan Bickley sounds off on the Arizona Diamondbacks’ trade deadline on his Bickley Blast.

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