With the Arizona Diamondbacks now in Detroit prior to the start of a three-game set on Monday night, attention on the series is going to be diverted by the trade deadline.
The Diamondbacks are 51-55 in the Dodgers ruled National League West division and one of the most interesting sellers into the trade market. Third baseman Eugenio Suarez looks to be the top bat available in trade at Thursday’s 6:00 p.m. ET trade deadline, but the Diamondbacks have already traded outfielder Randal Grichuk to the Royals,
and have several pitchers, starter Zac Gallen being the most notable, available in trade talks as well.
The first place Detroit Tigers are still riding high with an eight game lead in the AL Central over Cleveland despite an abysmal stretch of four series which really scratched the needle and stopped the music cold over the last 10 days. No one really expects the Tigers to make a franchise altering trade, but they’re clearly going to trade for some help this week, most likely a reliever.
Yet Mark Feinsand of MLB.com reported on Sunday that the Tigers are still considered one of numerous contenders for Diamondbacks third baseman, Eugenio Suarez. The Diamondbacks have been scouting the Tigers’ farm system recently, with a presence on hand to see the Tigers Double-A affiliate in Erie in recent days. That’s pretty standard practice this time of year and the Erie SeaWolves were playing the New York Yankees affiliate, the Somerset Patriots last week, so they were being scouted as well. It certainly doesn’t mean that a deal with the Tigers’ or a Yankees deal with Arizona is imminent either. This is just everyone doing their due diligence at this point.
Since he was flipped to the Cincinnati Reds in 2015 after a solid rookie season in which he was pressed into duty almost directly from Double-A to play shortstop in place of Jose Iglesias, who missed the whole season with stress reactions in his shins in Dave Dombrowski’s worst trade running the Tigers, Suarez has put together a nice career for himself.
FanGraphs currently has him at 32.4 fWAR, not far from Hall of Very Good status. His days as a shortstop wound down after the 2015 season with the Reds, but he learned to tap into his power en route to a 312 home run mark that appears to have a good chance to reach 400 by the time Suarez is through. All that without ever quite getting on the radar as a premier infielder in the game.
The 34-year-old is in the midst of a huge year with 36 home runs and a 144 wRC+ in his 12th major league season. He’s slashed .249/.320/.584 with a 26.6 percent strikeout rate and an isolated power mark of .334.
Suarez has generally been an average defensive third baseman in recent years, maybe a bit less depending on which statistic you prefer, but all agree he’s having a bit of a down year defensively. That might be age catching up with him, but as a rental who will hit free agency this offseason, no one is concerned with his glove.
The power in Suarez right-handed bat appears to be a rare commodity heading into the trade deadline, though some deals that aren’t being rumored can and probably will surprise us, and the Diamondbacks have enough interested parties to do very well in return for their top trade piece.
We haven’t written that much about Suarez over the last few weeks at all, partly because the Tigers didn’t seem likely to make an early move, but also because this doesn’t really feel like a Scott Harris/Jeff Greenberg type trade. They haven’t been in this situation before running the Tigers, so we have no real prior examples to go on, but spending significant prospect capital on a rental third baseman in a one year push to win a World Series just doesn’t seem like their style.
The impact Suarez could have doesn’t take a deep grasp of analytics to unpack. While not the zone control hitter the Detroit Tigers prefer these days, Suarez is consistently doing damage at the plate this season. He would certainly be a boost to a suddenly struggling offense and while his home run numbers could suffer a bit in Comerica Park as compared to Chase Field, it’s probably not as much of an issue in summertime as it would be in a Michigan spring.
Suarez’s batting average is an abysmal .179 against lefties this year, but he’s still producing well above average against them because he’s hitting for a ton of power. In every other respect, he’s having a really big season at the plate, and his career splits all say the batting average against southpaws will be fine over time.
The Tigers have been hunting for and failing to find a homegrown third baseman for decades, so there is a bit of poetry in bringing home the one they let get away. Suarez himself has expressed how meaningful it would be to him to return to Detroit and try and win a title here. The story arc and personality fit is perfect. The roster fit is a little more ungainly.
The big problem with the Tigers offense in July has been the outfield. That’s mainly Riley Greene going into a deep funk and Parker Meadows struggling to get it going after missing most of the first half of the season. Add in Kerry Carpenter playing hurt and then missing a couple weeks, and you have the weakest hitting outfield in the game in recent weeks. Obviously Suarez isn’t going to play the outfield. So instead he’s going to bump Zach McKinstry and Colt Keith’s playing time off of third base, should the Tigers trade for him.
Adding a really big bat overrides those concerns to a degree, but it’s still pretty far from ideal to sideline two of your more productive hitters rather than filling a real hole, positionally speaking.
Then there’s the cost, which is likely to be higher than the price the Tigers could command for Jack Flaherty from the Dodgers last July. They don’t want to trade catching prospect Thayron Liranzo or hard-throwing pitching prospect Troy Melton just to take an extra hard shot at an October run. If Suarez was under control for 2026 as well, I could see it, but ultimately this just doesn’t fit the Tigers modus operandi.
Feinsand reports that the Cubs, Brewers, Mariners, Reds, Tigers, Astros and Phillies are all interested in Suarez to “varying degrees.” The Tigers certainly have the firepower in terms of prospects to outbid anyone on that list, but are they really going to out compete all those teams in the quality and amount of young talent given up in a trade? Not bloody likely. If the Tigers can manage to make it happen without giving up one of their top six guys, it becomes more likely, but one of those teams is going to be more aggressive than the Tigers’ front office and trade a top 100 player in a deal, almost certainly.
That’s understandable for the Tigers. Paying for the top player at the trade deadline at any position of need is a bad recipe for long term success. Once in a while it puts a team over the top for a year, and proves worthwhile. More often a team takes a couple of shots like that, fails, and has to reset and do some rebuilding of their farm system.
Of course, if you’re a Tigers fan waiting 40 years and counting for a World Series title, it’s also understandable to be frustrated by it and prefer them to really try and leverage Tarik Skubal’s last two years of team control. Just don’t expect it, particularly in Suarez’s case.
If the front office pleasantly surprises us with a bigger deal than just trading for a setup level reliever or something, they’ll more likely be trading good prospects in a move that is longer term than just the next three months. It’s not impossible that they could come out of left field with a trade for a position player that we’re not expecting—Luis Robert Jr. is extremely unlikely but I would love it—but giving up a top 100 prospect and more, for three months of a good power hitter, doesn’t appear to be in this front office’s playbook. They have good reasons for that position.
Until we see them do something that aggressive, it’s best to expect a pretty modest few days of deal making from the Tigers before Thursday’s trade deadline.
More from blessyouboys.com:
- BYB 2021 Detroit Tigers prospects #15: IF Colt Keith
- Tigers vs. Pirates Preview: Tigers head home to take on star-less swashbucklers
- Behind Enemy Lines: A pre-series chat with Jeremy Brener of Bucs Dugout
- Tigers 2, Athletics 3: Ninth inning miscues lead to walk-off sweep in Oakland
- Royals 3, Tigers 1: Tigers threaten but do not win
- Ian Kinsler trade rumors: Brewers ‘digging in’
- Detroit Tigers News: Justin Verlander might actually be traded this week
