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The Diamondbacks went for it this past offseason. And they should have gone for it! They already had A.J. Pollock, they had Patrick Corbin, they had Paul Goldschmidt, Welington Castillo, and Robbie Ray — there was talent there, and it just needed some more talent to help it along. So, they signed Zack Greinke to show off their fancy new television deal. They sent prospects to the Braves — lots of prospects, including 2015’s top draft pick, Dansby Swanson — for Shelby Miller. Spoiler: it didn’t work. Miller was awful. Greinke wasn’t the Greinke they hoped. Pollock was hurt immediately and didn’t even suit up until late-August. Instead of moving forward, the D-Backs finished in fourth with a 69-93 record. Now, everyone is fired.
General manager Dave Stewart was let go on Monday, as was manager Chip Hale. This isn’t the entirety of the management shift, either: Arizona had already let senior vice president of baseball operations De Jon Watson go in September, and Tony La Russa isn’t in a comfortable place at the moment. La Russa, the chief baseball officer for the D-Backs, will no longer run baseball operations. So, the D-Backs need a new head of baseball operations, a new VP for that department, a new GM, and a new manager. And La Russa might not stick with the organization in any capacity, depending on how the discussions the two sides are currently going.
Here’s an anecdote to sum up how the D-Backs were run under this group. This summer, they traded reliever Brad Ziegler to the Red Sox for an underwhelming package — officials around the league even complained about the return. Arizona had traded for Luis Alejandro Basabe, a middling prospect with a twin brother who is also in the Red Sox system, Luis Alexander Basabe. The latter is a potential top-100 prospect. I’m 100 percent of the belief that Dave Stewart traded for the wrong Luis Basabe, and have made this belief public in the past, and no one has corrected me on it or felt like it was too outrageous a claim to make about these Diamondbacks. So, uh, it’s probably not a bad thing that the organization is moving on.
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- That game, by the way, goes down at 8 p.m. ET on TBS.
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- Here’s how the Giants have done against Noah Syndergaard, whom they’ll face on Wednesday in the NL Wild Card Game.
- Joe Kelly has emerged as a presence in the Red Sox bullpen now that the team finally put him in it.
- The Marlins fired Barry Bonds as their hitting coach. He didn’t do a bad job, so it’s unclear if he’ll get hired elsewhere or if this was a Marlins-centric opportunity.