Hunt for ‘impact’ leads Diamondbacks to Gabriel Moreno

If the Diamondbacks were going to trade one of their young outfielders, it was not going to be for prospects, a point General Manager Mike Hazen stressed throughout the offseason. He wanted someone ready to contribute at the major league level.

In catcher Gabriel Moreno, the key player in the deal that sent outfielder Daulton Varsho to the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday afternoon, the Diamondbacks received a major league ready player, albeit one with relatively little experience at the game’s highest level.

So be it.

Or, at least, that is how Hazen seemed to view it, saying he sees Moreno much the same way as he saw many of his young major leaguers a year ago today.

“I feel like a year in the big leagues in a full season of play,” Hazen said, “I think I make a phone call on this player and I don’t get a response.”

In Moreno, the Diamondbacks believe they are getting a catcher who is capable of being an impact player on both sides of the ball. It is a view that appears to be shared by many in the industry. Moreno ranks among the best prospects in baseball on every publicly available list, including Baseball America’s, which places him third — two spots ahead of Diamondbacks’ super prospect Corbin Carroll.

“Our evaluators see Moreno,” a rival official said, “as a potential All-Star.”

The Diamondbacks see Moreno as a future plus defender behind the plate, an athletic backstop with the ability to receive, block and throw. But more than anything they see a talented hitter.

“He’s a really good hitter,” Hazen said. “He’s always been a good hitter. He’s hit since the day he came into baseball. I think that’s the reason people think as highly as they do. He has the ability to get on base. He makes contact. He has a great two-strike approach. He’s just a really good hitter.”

Moreno is a .310 career hitter in the minors leagues and hit .319/.356/.377 in 73 plate appearances this year in his first exposure to the majors. He was available in large part because the Blue Jays have a pair of capable backstops already established at the major league level in Alejandro Kirk and Danny Jansen.

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Hazen acknowledged a change in philosophy in the way his front office approached the deal. The past two times the club had a big chip to play — Zack Greinke in July 2019, Paul Goldschmidt in December 2018 — it opted for multi-player returns.

“Those trades,” Hazen said, “haven’t gone so great for me.”

Part of his thinking with those trades was to spread out the risk while beefing up what had been a depleted farm system.

“We went more after impact in this trade,” Hazen said. “We were chasing more specific players in these trades versus, you know, just trying to acquire as much volume and value as we could.”

He said that as talks progressed with rival clubs it became apparent that the only way to land that sort of impact would be to move Varsho instead of fellow outfielders Alek Thomas or Jake McCarthy.

“I think there was more certainty — and clearly, we have it, too — with Daulton’s performance to this point in his career, and probably rightly so, that teams were willing to pay more for that,” Hazen said. “I don’t know that we were ever going to cross that divide otherwise.”

Moreno’s upside does not entirely offset the pain of removing Varsho from the roster, nor does the inclusion in the deal of outfielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr., whom the Diamondbacks have under club control for just one season.

But the Diamondbacks see Gurriel as helping to offset the loss of Varsho’s offense, and pairing Moreno with veteran Carson Kelly provides a “good runway” for the young catcher to establish himself.

“We lost some home runs out of our lineup today, but I’m hoping we’re replacing it in a different way,” Hazen said. “And then the speed element that is still very much on our team, I’m hoping the contact, the on-base, the ability to hit, the two-strike approach, is going to lend itself to making our lineup even tougher to face with the way some of those kids are going to be running around the bases the way they did last year. I feel like a lot of that dynamic offense has a chance to be enhanced with the way he (Moreno) — they, Lourdes as well — hit.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Hunt for ‘impact’ leads Dbacks to Gabriel Moreno