Yesterday afternoon, reports from Ken Rosenthal came down that the Diamondbacks and Athletics nearly made a trade that would have sent Tyler Skaggs and A.J. Pollock to the Athletics and Yoenis Cespedes to the Diamondbacks. In the end the A’s were asking for too much and both sides nixed the deal. But this brings up an interesting thought: What’s become of the Diamondbacks highly touted minor league pitching that was supposed to be the future of this team?
It’s interesting that only two years ago, that the Diamondbacks had 5 exciting young pitching prospects: Trevor Bauer, Patrick Corbin, David Holmberg, Tyler Skaggs, and Archie Bradley. Not to mention Jarrod Parker who has gone on to post two outstanding years for the Athletics after he was traded for Trevor Cahill. Now the Diamondbacks have made deals that sent away Bauer and Holmberg. Additionally, it seems like they have given up on Skaggs by using him as trade bait this offseason. Granted Bauer was a head case, and Holmberg is a low level starter at best, but trading Skaggs away is going too far. What once remained of their amazing minor league pitching prospects is now down to only Corbin and Bradley it would seem.
The key weakness of the D-backs in 2013 was their starting pitching. Solving this problem doesn’t mean trading away one of your best pitching prospects. Sure, Skaggs has struggled out of the gate in his few major league starts, but so did Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson where it took them years to become ace pitchers. Skaggs has shown flashes of the high level starter he can be and he has also shown that he is young, makes mistakes, and is still learning the game. But those failures don’t mean you trade him the first chance you get. There is no doubt that Skaggs can be a quality MLB pitcher, so give him time to develop and learn the game, but don’t trade him away just yet.
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