Hazen's priorities shift at Winter Meetings

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The MLB Winter Meetings opened Sunday at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., and while D-backs GM Mike Hazen isn’t about to guarantee anything, he said he thinks we could be in for a busy week.

“I’m assuming a lot is going to happen,” Hazen said late last week. “It seems like there is a lot set up to happen. Not specific to even free agents, just there’s been a lot of trade activity conversations happening all the time. I think those conversations can start up more aggressively at the Meetings.”

Hazen is referring to all of baseball, not the D-backs specifically, but he did indicate they could be busy, as well.

“It’s hard to say exactly where we fit into any of that right now,” Hazen said. “We’re having a lot of trade conversations about various things and obviously very active in the free agent market. It’s hard to know how that will come together. I’m sure we’ll have meetings with agents and some face-to-face meetings with teams. It’s hard to say if that makes a difference in getting trades done.”

In recent years, the D-backs have not been big players in the free agent market, so they’ve had to wait for that market to shake out before teams were willing to get serious with them regarding trades.

Coming off a World Series appearance, though, and having some money to spend, the D-backs are in a different spot this time around. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be in the bidding for Shohei Ohtani, just that they won’t necessarily be waiting for the scraps to fall to them at the end.

“We’re engaged in the market more aggressively,” Hazen said. “It's not to say that something’s going to happen involving us there, but I think we’re probably in a little different spot than we have been in the past going into the Winter Meetings is how I would characterize it.”

Unlike last year, when the D-backs had a surplus of outfielders to deal from with Daulton Varsho going to the Blue Jays in exchange for Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno, Arizona seems unlikely to trade off its Major League roster.

“I’m never going to say never, but it’s more complicated now for us,” Hazen said. “Trading off your Major League team when you win 72 to 74 games, I think, has a different feel to it. It’s not that you shouldn’t do it if it’s the right decision, but just coming off the season we did, I think there’s a little bit of a difference. You know that the team you have can win. The players on your team are geared around winning. So taking people off of a team that went to the World Series, I think, is a little heavier than doing it off a team that missed the playoffs and came in fourth place.”