D-backs GM: Team not ‘willing to go the extra mile’ to land Aroldis Chapman
Jul 31, 2015, 4:19 PM
(AP Photo/John Minchillo)
There were rumors. Oh, there were rumors.
At one point in time it was believed the Arizona Diamondbacks would be sellers at the non-waiver trade deadline, possibly parting with veterans like Aaron Hill, Cliff Pennington, Jeremy Hellickson or Brad Ziegler.
Then, later, they were viewed as buyers, with talks centered around them acquiring a starting pitcher or maybe even a closer like Cincinnati’s Aroldis Chapman.
But when the deadline passed at 1 p.m. Arizona time Friday, the team looked exactly the same as it did the day before.
The D-backs did nothing, deciding to stick with the team that has posted a 49-51 record and won its last five.
Though they wouldn’t have minded adding Chapman.
“We really felt that putting a guy on the back end and securing the games once we get it to those innings was important,” D-backs GM Dave Stewart told Burns and Gambo on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Friday. “We’re leading all of baseball in blown saves with 17.”
Most of the blown saves came before Brad Ziegler assumed the closer role, however, and since then he has done a pretty solid job of locking down wins for the team. But the pursuit of Chapman was about more than just adding a ninth-inning guy; it was also making it so that the starting pitchers did not have to throw as many innings.
“We are trying to allow this staff to mature and we’re trying to get them into the next season,” Stewart said. “And if we can put a guy on the back end and shorten the game, we felt it would make us much better.”
There’s little doubt Chapman, who is 3-4 with a 1.65 ERA this year would have helped. He is the hardest thrower in baseball, and has converted 21 saves in 22 opportunities this season. A four-time All-Star, the 27-year-old is widely regarded as one of the premier closers in the game.
But you have to give in order to get, and the reported asking price of Braden Shipley, Brandon Drury and another top prospect was just too much for the D-backs to surrender.
“We just were not willing to go that extra mile to get it done,” Stewart said. “Those guys are indeed players that are going to play, we hope, for a long time in our organization and guys that we covet very, very highly in this organization.”
According to MLB.com, Shipley is Arizona’s fourth-best prospect while Drury is ranked seventh.
How close the D-backs and Reds came to making a deal is anyone’s guess, though Stewart said he believes Arizona was one of the teams that offered Cincinnati the most talent. That Chapman was not traded to anyone leads the first-year GM to think the asking price, either in quality or quantity, was just too high for anyone to stomach.
And as for any players other teams may have been calling about, Stewart said there weren’t any trades worth making.
“We did have some calls on Oliver Perez, we did have some calls on some of our other players,” he said. “Aaron Hill was not one of the players we had inquiries on.
“That can be for whatever reason. But we figured it was going to be a quiet period once we got here, and it turned out to be exactly that.”