Offishial News: Unfortunately for Miami, the Diamondbacks are sellers, too

[Ely Sussman]

The Arizona Diamondbacks, who are a game ahead of the Miami Marlins, have officially declared themselves trade deadline sellers. On Thursday, they dealt first baseman Josh Naylor to the Seattle Mariners for prospects Tristin English and Brandyn García. 

The concern from Miami's perspective is that the D-backs will continue to shop their pending free agents, including starting pitchers Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly. That saturates the market. Needless to say, those right-handers will be more attractive to contenders than Marlins trade chip Cal Quantrill because of their superior MLB track records. Also, the asking prices for them should be significantly lower than what the Marlins have assigned to Sandy Alcantara and Edward Cabrera, both of whom have multiple years of club control left beyond 2025. It will be harder to convince contenders to give up their elite young talent for Alcantara or Cabrera when there are solid rental alternatives.

The deadline is six days away.

Down on the farm, Triple-A Jacksonville won, 4-2. Jacob Berry drilled the game-winning home run, which was also his longest one at the Triple-A level (estimated at 436 feet). Double-A Pensacola won, 10-7. They bailed out Dax Fulton, who retired only four of the 13 batters he faced (1.1 IP, 6 H, 7 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 60 pitches/34 strikes). Eight different Blue Wahoos players drove in runs. High-A Beloit lost, 9-2. Garret Forrester sneakily has a .408 on-base percentage this season. Low-A Jupiter lost, 3-2. Andrew Salas hit his first career minor league homer. DSL Marlins won, 4-2. DSL Miami lost, 7-6.

More Marlins news and content below:

🔷 I wrote about every angle that the Marlins need to consider before pulling the trigger on an Alcantara trade.

🔷 The FCL Marlins season ended with a rainout. The team lost 15 of their final 16 games. It was frankly an uninteresting summer for stateside rookie ball prospects. No hitter with significant playing time slugged above .382 (Breyias Dean). Rotation anchors and 2024 draft picks Nate Payne and Grant Shepardson were bright spots—they should get moved up to Jupiter soon. The career of Jun-Seok Shim (10.80 ERA and 29.5 BB% in 13.1 IP) has been fully derailed.

🔷 On this day in 1995, the Marlins set a franchise record by tripling over times in a win over the San Francisco Giants.

🔷 Griffin Conine and Just Baseball's Aram Leighton will be opening packs of 2025 Topps Chrome baseball cards at Lids in Boca Raton on Saturday.

🔷 Elsewhere around baseball, the Detroit Tigers have lost 10 of their last 11, though still enjoy the largest cushion of any MLB division leader (eight games). Nick Kurtz had two more extra-base hits on Thursday, upping his July slash line to .373/.455/.896. He has seized the lead in the American League Rookie of the Year race.

🔷 Today's MLB game: the Marlins begin a three-game series against the team with the best record in the majors, the Milwaukee Brewers (probable starters RHP Cal Quantrill and RHP Freddy Peralta). The Brewers are celebrating their 25th season at American Family Field by bringing in a bunch of alumni. The Marlins have a 34.9% chance to win, per FanGraphs. First pitch at 4:10 p.m. ET.

🔷 Prior to the game, Fish On First LIVE will preview the Brewers series beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET. FOF LIVE is presented by About The Fans. Check out our new merchandise collection (coupon code fof10 for 10% off).

 

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[Ely Sussman]

This reporter has a mixed track record of sometimes getting big scoops/sometimes making s*** up, so not reliable enough to feature in the article, but for what it's worth...

[Guest]

Oh wow, how TERRIBLE! This team (which is playing well and is only 5 games under .500 and 6 games away from a Wild Card!) might have to wait until the off season to get rid of it's good players. What a shame that we might have to wait to DUMP Edwin Cabrera, who FINALLY became the good pitcher we had hoped for after we developed him for FIVE YEARS. We finally have a good starting pitcher in Edwin and he's not making a lot of money, so what do you want to do? GIVE HIM AWAY TO A CONTENDER. Maybe we should give him to a team in our own division, like we did with Luzardo? Ely, WTF happened to you? Do you work for ShermDix? How about we KEEP Cabrera? And unless we want to bring up Snelling, why not keep Quantrill too? Is not trading them RIGHT NOW going to derail "The Plan"? The season has just gotten interesting for Marlins fans. Can we put off the wrecking ball until the off season and not destroy the team's chemistry just yet? No, OF COURSE NOT. We can't do that! We are "Sellers"! That means we have to SELL! Got it.