Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall: Team won’t sacrifice depth for a ‘right now’ player

When news broke Friday that the Arizona Diamondbacks were reportedly interested in Cole Hamels, it brought into question the team’s plan for the trade deadline:

Are they looking for someone to help them on a short-term basis or are they looking to build a contending team down the line?

“Active” is how D-backs president Derrick Hall described his team’s trade deadline approach on the Burns and Gambo Show on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM.

“If we’re going to do something,” Hall said, “it’s going to be for a player who is under control, a player who we think can help impact us, not so much this year but next year and the year after that and the year after that.”

While Hall wouldn’t comment on Hamels directly, he said it’s normal for teams to make a lot of calls at this time.

“We’re going to call every team we can to see how we can improve and I don’t think it’s a big surprise that people are focusing on starting pitching as we will be too.”

He added that keeping the D-backs’ youth is a high priority.

“We have finally set ourselves up where we do have depth and we don’t want to get rid of that again, we’ve made that mistake in the past. We can’t surrender too much of our farm system, we can’t get a rental player, we’re definitely not doing that.

“We can’t just empty the cupboard again because we spent so much time trying to restock it. We’re going to be very careful with what we do but we’re going to be very active this week.”