Eric Sorenson
As many inside the Arizona Diamondbacks organization take a deep breath and step away from baseball during the all-star break, somewhere the wheels are turning inside general manager Kevin Towers’ brain.
The Dbacks find themselves in a unique situation in mid-July sitting alone atop the National League West 2.5 games ahead of the second-place Los Angeles Dodgers. All things considered quite a feat for a team that’s battled injuries up and down the roster, inconsistencies and two seasons worth of late-game collapses by the back end of their bullpen through the first 95 games.
The trade deadline is less than two weeks and many are speculating if the risk-taker Towers will salvage part of the organization’s future in hopes of holding off LA for the final 67 games.
“I think you look at the Dodgers, you look at their rotation,” ESPN baseball insider Pedro Gomez explained during his weekly segment with Pros2Preps.com. “When you look at [Clayton] Kershaw, [Zack] Greinke, [Hyun-Jin] Ryu and [Ricky] Nolasco, I don’t think you can make the kind of changes to match that rotation.”
Whispers inside baseball believe Towers and the Diamondbacks will look to add another arm to their rotation and one named mentioned is Jake Peavy from the White Sox. The two are familiar with one another when both were with the Padres.
Gomez says buyer beware should the White Sox, or any other team Towers is talking to about potential deals, ask for one of Arizona’s top-tier prospects in return.
“I don’t think you sell the future just to try to get in the post-season this year,” he said. “I saw [top prospect] Archie Bradley at The Future’s Game on Sunday…wow, what an arm. When that guy gets [called] up to Arizona a lot of people are going to be saying that is a top end of the rotation-type guy. He looks like a long-term piece of the puzzle.”
The 20 year-old Bradley was a first-round pick (seventh overall) of the Dbacks in 2011 and has quickly worked his way up through the organization.
