How the Diamondbacks' big offseason splash didn't pay off

Baseball's offseason is normally a time for optimism, and optimism was running rampant in the desert as far as the Arizona Diamondbacks were concerned. Despite finishing the 2015 season with a 79-83 record, the Diamondbacks were convinced that they were trending in the right direction. To be honest, it's hard to fault them for this line of thinking since the 79 wins were actually a 15-win improvement over their 2014 record. They decided to go all-in on this perceived upward trend by embarking on an ambitious run of offseason transactions, and were clearly aiming to wheel-and-deal their way back into the postseason.

The two biggest moves that the Diamondbacks made during the Hot Stove season were both related to their rotation. Arizona's pitching staff posted sub-par numbers in both ERA and FIP during the 2015 season, so they made a point of trying to fix their rotation by first pulling off a free agent coup by signing Zack Greinke to six-year, $200+ million deal, and then trading their starting center fielder Ender Inciarte and two minor leaguers for Atlanta Braves All-Star starter Shelby Miller. On top of all of that, the team unveiled a set of flashy (and garish) new uniforms. Arizona was determined to show the baseball world that a new era was underway in the desert, and that they meant business when it came to contending in the National League in 2016.

At the time, you couldn't fault the Diamondbacks for their two major pitching acquisitions. Greinke was coming off of one of the best seasons of what's been a very good career for him, and Miller seemed poised to break out as one of baseball's top starting pitchers after he seemingly had put it all together with the Braves. With the rotation seemingly improved and the team continuing to build around a core of perennial MVP candidate Paul Goldschmidt, the extremely talented A.J. Pollock, and other pieces such as Yasmany Tomas, Jake Lamb, and Brandon Drury, it seemed as if the Diamondbacks were poised to at least make a run at a Wild Card berth and possibly turn the two-horse NL West race between the Giants and Dodgers into a battle on three fronts.

Then the season began, and what was initially diagnosed as a slow start turned out to be a sign of things to come for the Diamondbacks. On April 23rd, the D-Backs beat the Pirates to improve to 10-9. That would be the last day that Arizona would be over .500 for the rest of the season. Once they reached the end of May, they were already 10 games behind in the NL West divisional race, and by the All-Star break, they were 38-52 and 19 games back. Things only got worse for Arizona in the second half of the season, and instead of being in a three-team battle with the Giants and Dodgers for NL West supremacy, they're currently fighting with the Padres to avoid finishing in last place and have just barely avoided a 100-loss season.

The optimism that was bursting from the seams during the offseason had long since faded, and everybody associated with the franchise is coming to grips with the fact that 2016 has been a lost season. Zack Greinke's first season in the desert was decent but at no time did he reach the quality that he exhibited during his time with the Dodgers. A.J. Pollock's season was derailed due to a broken elbow (that was apparently a ticking time bomb that was just waiting to happen ), and then shortly after returning from that injury, he suffered a groin injury and missed further time. Yasmany Tomas was unable to have the breakout season that would've helped boost the Diamondbacks this season, and the entire outfield just seemed to miss the presence of Ender Inciarte.

Speaking of Inciarte, it was mentioned earlier that he was traded to Atlanta with two other minor leaguers. One of those minor leaguers was highly-touted pitching prospect Aaron Blair, and the other was the number one overall pick in the 2015 MLB draft: Dansby Swanson. Inciarte has been riding a great second half of the 2016 season to a career year, Blair recently picked up his first win as a major league starter, and Swanson has made a seamless jump from Double-A ball to the big leagues. So, those are three major league players who are having varying amounts of success this season. What happened to Arizona's return in that trade? Unfortunately for Arizona, Shelby Miller has had the worst season of his career and has actually spent time pitching at the Triple-A level this season. It's truly been a disastrous year for Miller, and the trade that Arizona made with Atlanta continues to look even worse with each passing day.

With the farm system looking bare as well, the Diamondbacks don't even have the promise of future prospects coming to save the day to fall back on. As a result, Arizona just looks completely listless as a franchise right now, and both Chief Baseball Officer Tony La Russa and General Manager Dave Stewart are sitting on fiery-hot seats right now. The Diamondbacks have received just and due criticism for their evaluation of talent and the acquisitions that they made during their ambitious offseason. They've become yet another example of how winning the offseason means absolutely nothing if you can't win when the games actually count. This was a lesson that their cellar-mates in San Diego learned after having a splashy offseason in 2014, only to flop in 2015. Now, the Diamondbacks are learning this lesson, but unlike the Padres, they haven't been able to use mid-season acquisitions to go forward with a rebuild in an effort to fix past mistakes. Instead, Arizona is wallowing in their mess.

Granted, Arizona will probably be better next season if they can avoid injuries and both Greinke and Miller can return to form, but the future of this team still looks bleak. They're a long ways away from challenging the Dodgers and Giants in the NL West, and that's a far cry from the high expectations that they had going into this season. It's been an extremely disappointing season for the Diamondbacks -- one that may take a while for them to recover from.