The Arizona Diamondbacks had a pretty successful 2011
season, winning the N.L. West crown, and are currently
resting and preparing for 2012.

GM Kevin Towers has been hard at work to re-sign players
and lock up free agents.

So far this season Towers has re-signed John McDonald,
Henry Blanco and, most recently, Willie Blooomquist.

Towers was a guest on Arizona Sports 620’s Burns and Gambo
Friday, and talked about the importance of bringing
Bloomquist back.

“He plays multiple positions,” Towers said. “Also not
knowing if Stephen [Drew] is going to be able to start the
year.

“He got most of the playing time at shortstop and I think
ended up in the top two or three in the National League in
defense. Having him, it gives a guy that sets your lineup
and makes your lineup that much better.”

Another key element at the top of Towers’ agenda is re-
signing Aaron Hill; he hopes Hill can be secured by Monday
before flying to Milwaukee for MLB’s GM meetings.

“We’ve had some good dialogue, we wanted to know something
sooner rather than later,” Towers said. “Just didn’t want
to go deep into the offseason not knowing what our infield
was going to look like, and talking to Aaron at the end of
the year I think he enjoyed his time here.”

Bringing Hill back could create a log jam in the infield.
It would be Hill plus Bloomquist, McDonald, Geoff Blum,
Ryan Roberts and Stephen Drew. Towers, though, wants more
depth in the infield since it isn’t known when Drew will
be back and if he will even be effective.

The reason Towers wants Hill back by Monday is so the GM
can concentrate on getting more talent at the meetings on
Wednesday.

“A lot depends on Aaron,” Towers said. “If we have Aaron
in the fold at least our infield other than maybe a left
handed bat to go along with [Paul] Goldschimdt at first.
Probably looking for a lefty reliever to go along with Joe
Patterson and we’re always looking for starting pitching.”

Towers also talked about the possibility of bringing up
one the team’s younger pitching prospects like Tyler
Skaggs or Patrick Corbin instead of bringing back veteran
Joe Saunders.

“We’ll look at the rest of our ball club and probably have
a little better of an idea what it’s going to cost us if
we tender him a contract on December 12th,” Towers said.
“Were in a good position, Joe does give you starts and
innings but we got a lot of pitching depth behind him too
so if we feel if there is greater needs in other areas and
we want to allocate those dollars in those areas and go
with young pitching, we may choose to go that route.”

Saunders was 12-13 with a 3.69 ERA and 108 strikeouts in
2011.

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