Dear Season Ticket Holders,
A day like today isn’t what we envisioned when 2020 started and there are no excuses, despite the challenging circumstances of this year. We simply have not played well enough and sometimes we are required to make long-term decisions and pivot quickly when things don’t go as we had planned. Our motivation for today’s trades was positioning ourselves to be better in 2021.
In acquiring Caleb Smith and Travis Bergen, we added a left-handed starter and reliever who we highly value and have had an eye on for some time. We also traded for infielder/outfielder Josh VanMeter and outfielder Stuart Fairchild who we think are two good hitters to add to our already talented core of young position players. Finally, we were able to add several prospects to our farm system, which is regarded as one of the best in the league.
But our goal is not to have the best farm system. We need our prospects to come up and help us win a World Series or be utilized as options to trade and improve our big league team. We want to keep our fan favorites and those drafted and developed here, but given the way this year went, we were not in a position to do that right now.
None of the trades we made today were easy. Archie Bradley, Andrew Chafin and Robbie Ray have long histories with us and will be missed, as will Starling Marte. We hope that you get as excited about the next wave of young D-backs players like Daulton Varsho, Corbin Carroll, Alek Thomas and Kristian Robinson as you were about these other young men. We need to blend all these players together so that when they get here, it leads to victories.
We started this season with every expectation of making the playoffs so today is certainly disappointing. But we are well positioned to improve even further during the offseason and put a team on the field in 2021 that competes hard every day and makes you proud.
Sincerely,
Mike Hazen
Executive Vice President & General Manager
Arizona Diamondbacks
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