Welcome to the D-backs Beat Newsletter! I’m Steve Gilbert and I’ve been writing about the D-backs since 1998. Let’s get to it … |
What gives? It’s been a whole three days since Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen has signed a player to an extension. I’m kidding, of course, but there have been quite a few extensions signed by D-backs players of late. Shortstop Geraldo Perdomo inked one at the start of Spring Training for four years, then just after the season started, reliever Justin Martinez agreed to a five-year deal and Brandon Pfaadt signed a five-year deal. Then there was Ketel Marte’s six-year extension signed Wednesday. Are more coming? Stay tuned, because you never know. “I think we're always having conversations,” Hazen said. “Sometimes it stops at the front door, and sometimes it gets a little deeper than that. There's been years where we've gotten nothing accomplished in that way, and sometimes you do.” During Spring Training in 2023, the D-backs reached an agreement with outfielder Corbin Carroll on an eight-year, $111 million contract, which at the time was a record for someone with his amount of service time. |
At that point, Carroll had just a little more than a month of time in the big leagues, and that’s the smallest amount of service time for a player that Hazen has signed to an extension. Carroll and Marte were seen as foundational franchise players, so Hazen wanted to make sure they were locked up. Carroll’s extension and Marte’s first extension back in 2018 were signed before either player had broken out at the big league level. Carroll’s extension was before the D-backs started to have real success on the field. They would go on later in 2023 to make a surprise run to the World Series. No players were signed to extensions in 2024, but the team once again had success on the field, winning five more games than in '23, although missing the postseason due to a tiebreaker. In Hazen’s mind, that makes Arizona an even more attractive place for players to want to work out extensions. “I think as the team improves and the talent around the players improves, I think there's probably more of an outlook like, ‘I want to stay here and do this.’ I think the battle is probably about long-term dollars for everybody. I think there's a secondary part of that is like, ‘Where am I going to be living and who am I going to be playing with, what type of talent are we gonna have around me?’” |
Both sides take risks when signing an extension. The team is betting on the player reaching his potential, and if he doesn’t, the deal becomes an overpay. From the player’s perspective, they are giving up the possibility of making more money either via arbitration or free agency in order to get immediate financial security. “We try not to look at it like we're trying to win a deal,” Hazen said. “We're looking at it from, ‘What's [a] reasonable risk for us to take on? What’s fair in our mind?’ That always differs between the two sides. … When we signed Corbin, we signed him to a record deal. We were comfortable with that. It's not that you're always gonna sign a record deal, but there's times when, I think, if you're gonna get a deal done, you've got to jump over that barrier.” |
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IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN EXTENSIONS |
The Diamondbacks are currently in what is often referred to as a “competitive window” for success with the way their roster is set up. Signing players to extensions for cost certainty is one way of managing your payroll to stay in that window, but there are other things that have to go right as well. “We're going to keep working on trying to keep this window open,” Hazen said. “There's a lot of things that will have to go into that. There's going to be trades that have to get made, there's going to be Draft picks that we have to hit on. There's going to be kids that come up within the system that have to fill positions, and there's going to be guys here that we have to try to keep. So all those things have to happen for us to do that, just because of the hyper competitiveness of the landscape.” |
Eugenio Suárez is off to a hot start this season, and the first 20,000 fans through the gates on Saturday, April 12 will receive a Suárez bobblehead courtesy of Chase. The Diamondbacks’ three-game weekend set against the Brewers also features a special Boy Band Tee ticket package on Friday, April 11, which includes a ticket to the game and an exclusive D-backs Boy Band Tee featuring Marte, Carroll, Gabriel Moreno, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Perdomo. Fans can get their tee by purchasing the ticket package at dbacks.com/boyband. The night will conclude with a boy-band themed postgame fireworks show, presented by SeatGeek and open to all fans in attendance. |
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