PHOENIX — In one of the last Major League Baseball trades of a hectic deadline day, the Arizona Diamondbacks obtained reliever Dylan Floro from the Washington Nationals for a minor-league infielder.
As fate would have it, the D-backs played the Nats at Chase Field Tuesday night, so Floro just switched dugouts, walking down the corridor from the visiting clubhouse to the home abode.
But Nationals manager Davey Martinez had to tell Floro about the deal—and at first, Floro thought Martinez was kidding.
“I told him, and he started laughing,” Martinez said. “I said, “No, ‘you’ve been traded.’ He kept laughing. I told him, ‘Really, you’ve been traded. I’m not kidding.’”
Floro was momentarily left without anywhere to sleep for the evening, but the Nationals let him stay at their hotel—the Phoenician, a local resort, where Floro has a room with all his belongings unpacked.
“It’s paid for,” Martinez told Floro. “It’s all yours.”
This is the human side of the trade deadline.
“I’m sure it was awkward to just walk like that across the field,” D-backs general manager Mike Hazen said. “I don’t know how often that’s happened.”
It happened to Martinez when he was a player in 2000—he was traded at the deadline from the Texas Rangers to the Toronto Blue Jays as both teams played in Toronto.
“After that game I walked across the hallway and played for the Blue Jays,” Martinez said.
Martinez has had a lot of experience with deadline trades as the Nationals’ manager since his club won the 2019 World Series. At the deadline in 2021, pitcher Max Scherzer and shortstop Trea Turner were traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The next year, Juan Soto was swapped to the San Diego Padres, who have since traded him to the New York Yankees.
Those were pretty tough, Martinez recalled.
“That group of guys [who won the World Series in 2019] did something really special,” he said. “My hope is that with the group we have in here now, with some added help, we can do something special again together.”
That’s the hope for all the teams that tried to improve up to Tuesday’s deadline with playoff spots on the line. The Dodgers, Padres and D-backs all made multiple moves to help their chances of winning the National League West and/or an NL Wild Card spot. Ditto the Yankees and Baltimore Orioles engulfed in a cage match for the American League East and/or an AL Wild Card spot.
But there were no real blockbuster moves, as two of the league’s biggest pending free agents—the Yankees’ Juan Soto and the Mets’ Pete Alonso—are in the thick of playoff races with their teams.
Also, neither the Yankees nor the Padres got the starting pitchers they really needed. New York settled for reliever Mark Leiter Jr. in a deal with the Chicago Cubs, and San Diego agreed to get starter Martin Perez from the Pittsburgh Pirates, along with adding Tanner Scott from the Miami Marlins to their strong bullpen.
“There are a lot of ways you can go about building championship teams and rosters and pitching staffs,” Padres general manager A.J. Preller said at a post-deadline media conference. “Historically, you just need some guys that can get outs with big-time hitters. If that’s as a starter for seven innings, that’s extremely valuable. … But having a group that hopefully shortens the game, we’ve seen some teams win championships that way.”
The Dodgers added five players, including starter Jack Flaherty from the Detroit Tigers at the witching hour. Flaherty, an upcoming free agent, is a two-month rental and the biggest prize of the day. LA needs the arm, as its starting rotation is wracked with injuries.
The D-backs, in an arms race within their division, added relievers Floro and earlier A.J. Puk, and on Tuesday first baseman Josh Bell from the Marlins, who had previously waived Bell. The D-backs picked up $3.1 million of what was a $16.5 million contract for the full season, Spotrac notes. He’s also an upcoming free agent.
“Every deadline since 2017 has been the same,” Hazen said. “The Dodgers unload, the Padres unload, and we try to respond. We walk into this trade deadline knowing that the teams above us are going to unload. That’s our full understanding.”
The D-backs had a sudden need for a first baseman when the incumbent Christian Walker strained his left oblique on Monday night and was placed on the injured list, out for at least three weeks.
The timing couldn’t have been more propitious with the trade deadline pending.
“I don’t know if there had been a necessary fit [if the injury didn’t happen],” Hazen said about obtaining Bell. “But it certainly increased the urgency.”
Talking about unloading, the Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays, both out of it in their respective races, sprayed their now-former players around the rest of the league.
“This team is in a position to go out and compete and stay in this, and that’s our goal,” Tampa Bay president of baseball operations Erik Neander said Tuesday night after the Rays traded nine of their big leaguers. “We feel like we’ve strengthened our future competitiveness considerably, and that’s something that we’re always trying to accomplish.”
The Nationals, falling 7 1/2 games out of the NL Wild Card race after blowing a four-run ninth lead and losing to the D-backs Monday, traded outfielder Lane Thomas to the Cleveland Guardians. Martinez wasn’t told about the trade by the front office but learned about it second-hand.
Once confirmed, he had to tell Thomas, of course.
“It’s a tough time for some of these guys,” Martinez said. “Their names pop up all over the place. It takes away the focus of what they’re trying to do. But once [the trade deadline is] over with and they stay put, it’s a little bit of a sigh of relief for them. And for us.”
