Diamondbacks will not be defined by tepid trade deadline

The Diamondbacks did more than nothing at Major League Baseball’s trade deadline. They acquired a left-handed bat and a name that sounds delicious, like a candy bar you might dedicate to a postseason hero.

Could Lars Nootbaar be that kind of addition, a marketing goldmine in Arizona?

Probably not. But it’s better than our current options. And the 2026 Diamondbacks were never going to be defined by trade deadline acquisitions, anyway.

They will be defined by the late-stage greatness of Corbin Carroll, Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte. They will be defined by the late-season productivity of players returning from injury, from Corbin Burnes to Justin Martinez to Jordan Lawlar. They will be defined by how they react to the moment at hand, how they deal with the Padres and Dodgers in the next seven days.

The team’s lack of activity at Major League Baseball’s trade deadline is both unsettling and understandable. The Diamondbacks need a playoff berth to validate their manager, their 2023 World Series appearance, and the slogan starting to ring tired and hollow in the Valley. The virtue of “Diamondbacks Baseball” means nothing with one playoff berth in the past nine years.

Currently, they have a pair of left-handed rookies at the bottom of their rotation. They are getting historically poor production from their collection of first basemen. Their lineup is screaming for some new blood. Yet they’re acting like a team whose local media rights deal has shrunk to a reported $30 million a year.

The Diamondbacks already invest an admirable percentage of their revenue to payroll. Unlike the bottom 12 teams in Major League Baseball, no one can question their fiscal commitment to winning. But they seemed to have reached a glass ceiling.

Financially, many big-market teams can compete with the Dodgers and won’t. That’s greed. The Diamondbacks would but they can’t. That’s our reality. And given our recent history with lengthy injuries and stalled comebacks, waiting for reinforcements to emerge from the injury list seems like a dubious strategy at best.

Yet the 2023 Diamondbacks galvanized the Valley by doing the impossible. They swept the Dodgers in a three-game series. They rubbed salt in the wound with four consecutive home runs in a clinching victory at Chase Field.

That series was one of the greatest weeks in team history. It must also be the game plan and the template moving forward, proof that Arizona can win against all odds and all opportunities lost. Like the trade deadline of 2026.

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