The Diamondbacks still have one of baseball’s most compelling rosters

A year ago, you spent your days aggressively ignoring the Diamondbacks. You’d wake up not thinking about the Diamondbacks, you would spend your day not being reminded about the Diamondbacks, and you would fall asleep to dream about literally anything other than the Diamondbacks. This is just a guess, but it’s a good guess.

Then there were transactions! Zack Greinke got $34 million until 2021. Shelby Miller was acquired at great cost to be his vice-ace, but that’s okay, he was young and under contract. And Patrick Corbin was already in place, which meant the Diamondbacks were the West Coast Mets, more or less. Three awesome starting pitchers and a lineup that started with two young stars. They were one of baseball’s “It” teams, a team you would tune in to watch, just because.

Cut to present day, and you’re spending your days aggressively ignoring the Diamondbacks. In between, a bunch of people got fired. But it’s like that old saying, “It is better to have transactioned and lost than never to have transactioned at all.” We’ll always have the offseason.

My argument today is that you should not ignore the Diamondbacks. They’re a team with latent talent and clearly defined needs, and more importantly, they’re under new management. They could go in either direction. Do they creatively add to the foundation that’s almost certainly better than 93 losses? Or do they unplug it and plug it back in again, trading old players they didn’t choose for new players they did?

Oh, this is a fine mess. But a compelling one, I promise.

If the Diamondbacks were trying to make a soup, they would have broth and onions. So to speak. Those are very important parts of a good soup! They’re starting with Jean Segura, Paul Goldschmidt, and A.J. Pollock, all 20-somethings near the top of their profession. There’s no creative accounting necessary to see how they’ll be valuable in three seasons, much less 2017.

But maybe Mike Hazen — previously the Red Sox general manager but now Arizona’s — is more of a leek man. Or maybe he wants to make his own broth with fresh herbs, not the dried stuff the last people left behind. It’ll be more work, but he’s pretty sure it’ll be worth it.

Aaaaaand I’m going to fry up a couple of eggs, I’ll be right back. While I’m gone, think about how the Diamondbacks have talent to build around.

They could throw a trident into the heart of the offseason by deciding to trade Goldschmidt. He’s an under-30 perennial MVP candidate being paid generic-starter money for the next three years, and teams would camp in front of the store for him. Alex Bregman? That’s a good start. Yoan Moncada? We’re listening. But not excited. Not yet.

The Diamondbacks hold the position-playing version of Chris Sale, but unlike the White Sox, they were actually terrible last year. And if they trade Goldschmidt, why not Pollock? There has to be an AL team interested in Yasmany Tomas and his 30 dingers. And in an offseason in which Rich Hill is the best starter, there has to be someone who would want Greinke on a discount, right? Maybe they could get Aaron Blair back for Shelby Miller, too.

But this brings up the rebuilding paradox: As the number of interesting trade chips increases, the urge to begin a rebuilding project decreases. Why, I’ll bet the Cubs could have a whopper of a fire sale. Just think of all the teams lining up to get Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo. They won’t consider it, though, because those good players make the team, well, good.

It’s possible the Diamondbacks might want to build around the good players.

Their payroll will be around $100 million if they don’t touch the roster, so there isn’t a lot of money to play with, but it wouldn’t be out of the question to bring in Ian Desmond to play shortstop, or to get an outfielder who can field just a smidge better than Tomas. They can probably make one substantial move with the bank account, which means the rest of the 93 losses would have to be addressed through internal options or trades.

Note: Those internal options mostly include “Hope all of the bad players are better this year.”

We looked at this in September, and the conclusion was they should at least shed Greinke’s contract. If another team wants to pay him $25 million per year in this market, the Diamondbacks should pay $10 million every season to have him play for someone else. Think of the money saved, not the money lost.

But the new people running the team might be excited to have Greinke. They might be able to support him better, too, no offense to the La Russa/Stewart braintrust*. Greinke is still in demand because starting pitching is so scarce, which means there’s an argument for keeping the scarce resource around.

It’s pretty hard to advocate trading someone like Goldschmidt away, too, because those fellas aren’t so easy to find. You spend a decade or two looking for them, and you can’t just trade them away to get a younger model. That goes for just about everyone on the roster.

Other than sending Tomas to a DH farm where he can be happy and run around and fall down with other DHs, I’m going to ignore the 93 losses and remember the names on the roster. Goldschmidt. Pollack. Segura. Corbin. Greinke. Miller. Lamb. Archie Bradley. Robbie Ray. David Peralta. Brandon Drury. Those are all players who are either outstanding, were previously believed to be outstanding, or have potential to be outstanding again. I’ll look at them all, and I’ll whisper the following mantra:

Maybe them fancy new smart folks will figure out what’s wrong.

It’s kind of deus ex machina, but front office changes have that effect on me. New GM Mike Hazen stole a well-respected smartypants from the Cubs, and he stole another one from the Red Sox. This will be an analytically focused bunch, and we’re not just talking about stats. We’re talking about figuring out what in the heck went wrong last year. There was too much talent to be that horrible. I blame the NSA experiment that led to the uniforms, myself.

And my guess is that they’ll keep that talent around and take one more shot at not being that horrible, adding players as they see fit. Teams will still do the cartoon-wolf-eyes-thing over Paul Goldschmidt in July or next November, too.

Two Prellers.

They won last offseason, remember. Winning the offseason is kind of a drag.

* maybe a little offense

Edit: Shortly after this published, the Diamondbacks made a huge stunner of a trade, sending Jean Segura to the Mariners for Taijuan Walker, with young players moving with them on both sides. This would seemingly answer the question about the Diamondbacks rebuilding. While it’s certainly possible that they’ll still clean out the basement, this deal seems to suggest they’re going to reload before they rebuild, getting younger players who can help now in any deal.