The Arizona Diamondbacks are wasting time.

Every day Manny Machado is in another team’s lineup is another day playing a game of chicken that the D-backs will lose.

There is never a reason to keep under-productive veterans. Jake Lamb, Chris Owings, Jorge De La Rosa, Jarrod Dyson, Shelby Miller and Alex Avila might be wonderful people so this isn’t a personal attack, but they contribute much more to losing than they do to winning.

If Arizona’s farm system is so pathetic that there are no options in Triple-A Reno or Double-A Jackson to replace one of the vets, then trade what you have to the Orioles. Not today, not soon — the Machado trade should have happened before July started.

All year we’ve heard “Wait till we get our pieces back!” but, other than A.J. Pollock, who missed more than a month with a broken thumb, no player moves the meter.

Robbie Ray has been average all year. Steven Souza Jr. has done nothing. Shelby Miller went 0-4 and is on the disabled list again.

Give the team credit for still being in first place in the NL West, but it’s fool’s gold to think the Diamondbacks will hold off the rest of the division. The team is hemorrhaging and you have to be in denial to not see it.

The 2018 Diamondbacks are outstanding people playing baseball for a fantastic organization, but they’re not a great team. They’re a great collection of people leading a crappy division.

The farm system is so bad that there’s no need to protect anything. There’s not enough pieces to do a rebuild. The Diamondbacks didn’t even get their No. 1 pick in this year’s draft signed.

If the D-backs were a third-place team, they should get out! Sell everything at the major league level and bring back a good club in 2022. Since they’re in first place, the organization has to go for it!

Either way, this team will stink in 2020 and 2021. Would you rather go through hell two years from now with a chance at a second championship this year, or be able to tell your friends (who are Dodger fans) how close Arizona was to making the playoffs in 2018 and 2019?

The D-backs have about two players in the minor leagues that anyone else in baseball really wants. Sure, it will hurt if they become great players, but Arizona can lose a lot of games having only two good players. The present is much brighter than the future, and trading for Machado  — even if it’s only a rental — would change the entire balance of power in the division.

If the Diamondbacks don’t get him, someone else in the National League will. The team that wins the sweepstakes will make the playoffs.

If the Diamondbacks don’t, they won’t.

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