What If The Arizona Diamondbacks Have A Plan?

When we analyze baseball teams, we often don't think very highly of teams that give away talent. This is because, and apologies for the baseball jargon, winning is the funnest! To that end, acquiring talent, stacking talent, stashing talent—those are all things you do to make your team better, and better teams win more. That's what the draft, international signings, and free agency are about. Smart teams use them, among other means, to get better. Less smart teams trade valuable players for less valuable players. To turn this into a Goofus and Gallant thing: the Braves are good. They make happy trades. The Diamondbacks are bad. They take dumps in your fishtank. Also something about trades, probably, in that last sentence. We'll add it before publication, don't worry.

But in this age of multi-billion dollar television contracts, hundred million dollar free agent deals, and the like, there is a great deal of ambiguity in most any action a baseball team takes. Mistakes have consequences, and teams don't often get second shots at acquiring the right talent. Teams still gamble on players, but bet wrong and you—presuming you are a Major League Baseball franchise—are screwed as never before.

The Arizona Diamondbacks, as of late last week, were screwed. They'd agreed to pay Bronson Arroyo $9.5 million per season, and then he wasn't that good and then he got hurt and was even less useful than he was before. So, to get unscrewed, they traded Touki Toussaint, one of their best minor league prospects and an undeniable 80-grade name, to Atlanta. In return, they received the right to trade Bronson Arroyo, Bronson Arroyo's unfortunate Scott Weiland imitation, and his aging, rehabbing-from-major-surgery body and attendant salary, to Atlanta. Effectively Arizona used Toussaint as currency. They paid Atlanta Toussaint and Atlanta took Arroyo and his salary. There was no change, with all due respect to injured utility dude Phil Gosselin, who also moved from Atlanta to Arizona in the deal.

The Braves won't likely get much out of Arroyo, who might be ready to play by the end of August if his rehabilitation continues without setback. Toussaint is another matter. Toussaint has real value. I won't pretend to be a prospects analyst, so here is Baseball Prospectus's prospect analyst—and a man who doesn't need to pretend to know what he's talking about—Mark Anderson on Toussaint:

Toussaint carried as much upside as any arm in [Arizona's] system prior to this trade. With a great frame and growing strength, Toussaint has more velocity in his right arm than he has shown this season [because][…] The Diamondbacks have been focusing his development on commanding the fastball, forcing him to dial it down in an effort to find the strike zone.

This is one of the things about the minor leagues. Teams will alter the pitch mixes of young pitchers because they want to teach them command or a new pitch or whatever. While he's still in the learning-to-do-things stage of his career, Toussaint looks like a valuable player to have in the system, which isn't surprising considering he was Arizona's first round draft pick last year. They paid him $2.7 million to sign one calendar year ago; the Braves effectively bought Toussaint's services by taking on Arroyo. So why would Arizona need to give him away to be rid of the $9 million they owe Arroyo? Overall, public opinion has settled on, "because they are stupid, cheap, and bad." This may prove to be correct, in time. But let's consider an alternative.

There is no salary cap in baseball, or at least none mandated by the league. There is a luxury tax, which hits when a team spends over $185 million on player salaries in a season, and which has functioned as a sort-of cap on player salaries. Arizona is currently around $88 million in player salaries this season according to Cot's Baseball Contracts, so they're in no danger of crossing the $185 million threshold. That's not it. But of course not every team can afford to spend that kind of money on players. Nine million dollars doesn't sound like much to fans accustomed to hearing the word "million" tossed around, but it's not nothing, even to a pro baseball team. We don't know the financial situation the Diamondbacks are in because teams don't disclose that kind of information, but it's also possible Arizona or owner Ken Kendrick needs the money for some not-directly-related-to-baseball reason. And as the owner, he can pretty much do whatever he wants.

There's also the other aspect to the deal that lies outside the goofus/gallant binary. The Diamondbacks lost/sold a blue-chip prospect, but gained $9 million in available money, which they can now spend on other players they might bring in via trade or, next season, free agency. At the time of writing, Arizona is 34-35, four-and-a-half games out of first place. This trade didn't necessarily do anything to help their major league roster, but it did provide flexibility to add to that roster. Tony La Russa, the team's chief baseball officer, has been shockingly plainspoken about this: the move was about saving money so the team can add Major Leaguers at positions of need. "Touki has a future," La Russa told the Arizona Republic's Nick Piecoro. "But it's not an immediate future like we need. We think (our future) is sooner rather than later."

The Diamondbacks are far from a perfect team on the field—few teams in baseball are more redundant when it comes to dirty-uniform scraplords of limited utility—but they're close enough to the playoffs that adding players and payroll could pay dividends in terms of a pennant race, and a potential playoff berth. At which point no one knows anything, except that even Phil Gosselin would be likelier to help the D-Backs, this year, than either Bronson Arroyo or Touki Toussaint.

Or not. Moving Toussaint is a tough one to spin. It's never a good look to use prospects as bleach to cleanse the major league team of bad contracts. But as far as Arizona is concerned, this trade isn't finished. If they use the $9 million saved on Arroyo's deal to beef up for the stretch run, what looks bad now—and it looks really bad, now—might turn out not to be. If the owners pocket the money, or even if the team adds the wrong expensive veteran, then feel free to bring on the hot takes. Mortgaging the future for a mediocre present is not just a bad look, it's thermonuclear Goofus. But, for all the things we think we know now, there's one important thing we don't know: whether this deal is even finished.