The Diamondbacks head into San Francisco with a fresh roster move and a real chance to keep tightening the wild-card picture.
Jose Cabrera is up, and he’ll get the ball against the Giants tonight. Arizona’s 40-man roster now sits at 39, and Cabrera is the first of what’s expected to be a busy stretch of transactions with Saturday’s doubleheader creating a need for more starting pitching.
Cabrera already made four starts for the D-backs before the All-Star break, and the results were uneven: a 5.60 ERA overall, helped by five shutout innings in his major-league debut. After that, hitters adjusted fast.
In his next three outings, he gave up 11 earned runs over 12.2 innings, and the biggest issue was control and command in the strike zone, with a 9:7 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Arizona will need him to do a better job of missing bats and limiting traffic tonight.
The timing of this series is useful for Arizona, too. The Cubs series is over, and the D-backs came out of it well in the wild-card race thanks not just to their own win over a team above them in the standings, but also to help elsewhere.
The Phillies and Padres both dropped series to teams below them, which cut the gaps to three games and one game, respectively. It also changed the outlook of Arizona’s remaining schedule in a meaningful way.
With the Cubs now behind them, the D-backs’ strength of schedule has dropped to 24th, with opponents carrying a .485 winning percentage. That matters because only nine of Arizona’s final 28 games are against teams currently above them in the standings: the Yankees, Phillies and Padres.
There’s also a series against the Marlins, who are above .500 at 68-66. The other 16 games are against clubs with losing records.
That makes this four-game set in San Francisco a big opportunity. Arizona won’t have Eduardo Rodriguez starting one of these games, but the ask is still clear: take three of four if possible and keep pressing.
The schedule lines up nicely, too, with the Phillies off today before heading to the Angels tomorrow, and the Padres traveling to Tampa for a tough series against the AL-best Rays. For the D-backs, this is a chance to make up ground while the teams ahead of them are dealing with difficult road trips.
In Other News...
Diamondbacks Add Intriguing Infield Depth As Wild Card Pressure Builds
As the Wild Card race tightens, the Diamondbacks quietly added another layer of infield depth by bringing in Santiago Espinal on a minor league deal after his release from the Dodgers. Los Angeles has been forced to churn through bodies all season, using 29 pitchers and 22 position players while dealing with injuries to Will Smith and Tommy Edman, and Espinal became one of the latest names to move on after the Dodgers cut ties.
For Arizona, the move is more about roster flexibility than headlines, but those can matter when September pressure starts to build. Espinal has already appeared for the Diamondbacks minor league club, giving the organization another experienced option to evaluate if the big league bench or infield depth gets tested down the stretch. [Read more 🡒]
D-Backs Lars Nootbaar Trade Comes Down To One Huge Pitching Question
The Cardinals decision to send Lars Nootbaar to Arizona brought an immediate return of pitching, with Daniel Eagen, Sandro Santana and a player to be named later heading back to St. Louis. For the Diamondbacks, the move underscored how much value they were willing to place on adding an established outfielder, even as the deal centered on arms and the kind of organizational depth every front office covets.
Eagen is the name that makes this trade more than a simple player swap, especially after the former Arizona No. 5 prospect has performed well in the Cardinals Double-A system. St. Louis has been leaning into a broader effort to strengthen its farm under president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, and this deal fits that approach, even if the final evaluation will depend on what the Cardinals ultimately get from the pitching side. [Read more 🡒]
Diamondbacks Put On The Spot By Ketel Marte Situation
Ketel Martes absence quickly became a much bigger topic around the Diamondbacks than a single missed game. Arizona first put him on the restricted list, then later shifted him to the injured list, and the organizations president and manager both wound up addressing the situation publicly as the questions kept building. With photos of Marte at a casino circulating, the story moved beyond a routine roster move and into the kind of off-field cloud that can follow a club for days.
Torey Lovullo has defended Marte amid the speculation, trying to keep the focus on the player and not the noise around him. Former MLB pitcher Heath Bell also weighed in, saying the reaction around Marte reflects a disparity in how players from Latin America are treated compared with American players, adding another layer to a story the Diamondbacks would probably have preferred to handle quietly. [Read more 🡒]