Three Veterans Could Be Moved By Arizona Diamondbacks
With the trade deadline still several months away, the Arizona Diamondbacks have already made it be known that they are willing to move veteran players with big salaries.
In a tweet, Jon Heyman of CBS Sports named three players in particular.
Dbacks have let it be known they'd trade vets cahill, ross and hill. (rule: don't use "shopped" as that triggers denials)
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) March 2, 2015
None of these three names should surprise any D-Backs fans. These three would be the most logical names to be shipped out first considering the depth of the young players on the roster and the money Cahill, Hill and Ross are making.
Cahill probably has the most interesting contract out of the group.
He’s scheduled to make $12 million this season, which is a ton for a guy who has seen his numbers decline in each of the past two seasons. He does have a $13 million team option for next season with a 300,000 buyout, so a team might be willing to take a one-year flier on a guy who just turned 27.
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As for Hill, the second baseman has two years left on his deal at $24 million, which isn’t too bad considering he’s still only 32 and is a couple of years removed from putting up very good numbers (.302 average, 26 homers, 85 RBI in 2012). There’s always a contender needing a middle infielder at some point during the season too.
Ross has by far and away the toughest contract to move out of the three. The veteran outfielder is due $9.5 million this season and has a team option for the same amount in 2016.
The 34-year-old is probably a platoon type outfielder at this stage of his career and there won’t be a lot of teams jumping up and down for him at his current price tag. The D-Backs would more than likely have to eat a good portion of his contract.
Ideally, I’m sure general manager Dave Stewart would like to move all three sooner rather than later. With this organization in a clear rebuild mode, one of the top priorities of this front office should be to remove all the big salaries from this roster.
Moving Cahill and Ross wouldn’t drastically hurt this ballclub. Cahill being elsewhere would give one of this team’s plethora of young arms a chance at a rotation spot and no Ross would allow more at-bats for Ender Inciarte and possibly even Socrates Brito.
Trading Hill would be a tad more tricky largely because this team’s infield depth isn’t quite what it was. Didi Gregorious is now in New York, Chris Owings could start the season on the disabled list and the jury is still out on whether Nick Ahmed can hit big league pitching.
The coming months ahead will tell us whether these three will remain in a D-Backs uniform. If I was a betting man, I would say that all three would be gone by the trade deadline on July 31.
We will find that out in due time.