Dbacks acquire Brad Ziegler from Marlins in exchange for RHP Tommy Eveld; acquire Jake Diekman from Rangers in exchange for Wei-Chieh Huang and a Player to be Named Later.

You could sense that it was all coming to a close, but Archie was still out there. He didn’t want the dream to end, and he was the only one qualified in the pen to be there. So, Lovullo ran him out there for forty-eight pitches after he tossed forty just two days prior. As the sun set on the 2017 season, everybody knew that Archie needed more help; he couldn’t do it alone. Bullpens are so important in the postseason, and Bradley, essentially, was the Diamondbacks’ bullpen. Now, having learned from his mistakes, Hazen seems resolved to put together a full team of relievers, ready for a second run to the postseason.

If you’ve been a Dback fan for more than a year, then you probably already know who Ziegler is. “Z” pitched over 300 innings with the Dbacks from 2011 to 2016, recording a 2.49 ERA and being named to the 20th Anniversary Team, but since his previous tenure in Sedona Red, it has been a wild ride for the notorious submarine pitcher. He finished up the 2016 season in Boston, where he pitched quite well, but after being signed with the Marlins, he mustered up an ERA not far below 5.00 in 2017. This year, it seemed that he had lost his major-league caliber talent, allowing ERAs north of 7.00 in the first two months of the season, but in the following months, those figures were below 1.20. All told, he has recovered from the rough start to put up a 3.98/3.53/4.37 ERA/xFIP/DRA line.

However, despite the two wild years spent away from him, Ziegler is basically the same guy. As with when we last left him, his specialty is ground balls; his 74.0% GB-rate is the second-highest of his career and the highest such figure in the MLB. And with ground balls come double plays, making Ziegler a highly useful reliever to resolve a one-out jam. He only strikes out two guys per every three innings, and when hitters won’t chase the low stuff, he can fall prone to the walk, but neither issue is fatal when he racking up the worm killers.

Diekman, on the other hand, is far less familiar to Dback fans, but he fulfills their longings for a better left-handed relief pitcher. He also fills another hole on the pitching staff—the ability to throw hard. In a baseball universe where it seems that every other guy can throw 95, only Bradley has been consistently doing so for the Dbacks. Jake averages 95.28 MPH on the fastball and combines that with a slider to form a devastating combination that has gotten whiffs from 27.9% of batters that he has faced. He keeps the ball in the yard just fine, but the walks (13.4% of batters faced this season) are what prevents him from being a truly elite reliever. As a southpaw, though, he will be instantly valuable if he can get his fellow lefties out, which he has done, allowing a .221/.320/.292 line against them over his entire career.

This year’s stretch-run pen now looks massively different from that of last year. Hazen has brought in Boxberger, Hirano, Andriese, Ziegler, and Diekman to pair with relief-ace Archie Bradley, and his willingness to depart with low-minors prospects shows that he believes that this is the team’s best shot at the World Series. The front office has now added five players mid-season, and while they have lost ten prospects in return, they have not given up any of the best prospects in a weak system. It has been a busy trade deadline, but at least in foresight, it has been a successful one.

The biggest name going the other way is Huang. After failing to move up the system as a starter, largely due to an inability to add weight and strength, Huang has moved to the bullpen and has thrived in that role. His fastball sits in the mid-90s, and he uses a plus curve to round out the profile. The righty has enough to become a middle-relief pitcher fairly soon. Tommy Eveld, headed to Miami, doesn’t have the stuff to make Top-30 prospect lists, but he has performed well in every assignment thrown his way. He has a fastball-slider combo and could become a below-average reliever at the major league level.