Hazen has said over and over again that the Dbacks are looking to stay competitive, not going with the tanking route that has been so popular ever since the Astros lost their way to dominance. In a sense, it is hard to believe; they traded away their best player and casually let their next two best walk away without a fight. But Hazen isn’t saying that the Dbacks are staying competitive just to sell tickets; he actually is gunning for a competitive season. Hazen chose not to trade away David Peralta, Nick Ahmed, and Robbie Ray, players that certainly could bring back large hauls but are losing their value as the clock ticks closer to free agency, instead waiting to see if the Dbacks will fake their way to playoff contention in the first half of the season.

Still, “competitive” is a relative term. By “competitive,” the Dbacks will most likely be neither good nor bad, but close enough to the distinctly good territory that if things break right, they could make the playoffs. Yet, at the same time, if things go south, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Dbacks picking quite early in the 2020 Draft. By choosing to be competitive, the Dbacks have put themselves in a spot that most teams try to avoid—stuck in the middle.

The middle ground is notable for not having the advantages of the bottom—notably, high draft picks—or the obvious lure of the top, essentially being left with nothing. However, it is quite plausible that Hazen can avoid this fate through mid-season decisions. If the team is already not doing well, trading away 2019-20 free agents for prospects would not only improve the team’s farm but also help ensure that they don’t rise up to this dreaded middle territory. The more difficult (but preferred) situation is where the Dbacks are truly competitive at the break, and Hazen has to ward off second-half regression, a strategy that failed this season and left the team in the dreaded middle.

In this way, aiming for the middle and allowing the results to dictate your future decisions could end up as a more popular strategy for “transitioning” teams going forward. With the Player’s Union vying for draft penalties for teams that are consistently bad year-after-year, the middle is going to become a more and more attractive (or perhaps, less and less unattractive) place to start the year. In addition, if teams are willing to use free agents to help them long-term, this strategy would become even more tempting. Take Greg Holland for example. If Holland has a good year and the Dbacks aren’t in the playoff hunt at the deadline (which seems to be the most likely scenario), then Hazen will sell him off for prospects. Holland will likely only impact a game or two, which won’t drastically change the team’s draft position, and the prospect they receive for him would compensate for the difference. However, if the Dbacks are competitive, they could keep him around for the playoff push, and if Holland struggles, the cost to the team is minimal.

Aiming for the middle is certainly a riskier strategy than full-out tanking. It can go wrong quickly if the team is unable to get out of the middle after the Al-Star break, or if they can’t improve their long-term position to where they are projected to be above the middle. The middle becomes the most dangerous when teams get stuck there for multiple seasons until, almost inevitably, they fall back to the bottom as happened with the Dbacks in 2014. The middle, without any plans to get out of it, is a terrible place to be; the Dbacks, however, don’t seem to be in that position. The farm is improving (despite the team’s success), and a heavy 2019 draft should further launch them up towards the top of the league in future potential.

If the argument for tanking is that it is the quickest way to improve the farm system, it should be noted that it isn’t the only way—just look at the Dodgers and Yankees. While they are eternally competitive, they also often host the strongest farms in the league. By avoiding trading away their elite prospects and, more importantly, drafting, signing, and developing well, they have built a system that prioritizes the present but also emphasizes the future. Hazen has put the team in a position to do both with a strong draft this June, but the early picks need to pan out better than in previous seasons.

If Hazen can pull this needle-threading act off for the second time in his three years with the team, the Dbacks will be able to connect the two different periods of contentions, a strategy that runs completely counter to what most of the league is operating under. A “normal” team would fully rebuild, but the Dbacks are still interested in keeping the present strong. While they are making direct moves for the future, they also aren’t making the normal follow-up moves to reinforce the blockbuster. Hazen is seemingly biding his time with the same passivity he has shown in past offseasons. While most teams are either in win-now or win-later modes, the Dbacks don’t appear to be in either.

At the least, Hazen has put the team in a position where if a strong north wind blows, they could be competing for a playoff berth. PECOTA projects the Dbacks to 82-80, ironically the identical record as last season, and one can dream of players like Ray, Lamb, and Souza over-performing their projections and sending the Dbacks back to October. With Goldy, Pollock, and Corbin gone, however, it’s far easier for the fan’s dream to become a nightmare in which the team “fights” for the first overall draft pick. As the projections show, the answer likely lies somewhere in between these two extremes. The team will certainly be watchable and even exciting at times, but they will likely fall short of the goal.

Perhaps Hazen deserves props for not trying to lose when most other General Managers in the game would. At least as fans of the team, we can enjoy that. Hazen has become popular with many for leading the team to the playoffs far before anybody expected him too but unpopular with others for trading away Goldy. His legacy depends on the next few seasons. If he can manage to bring the team back to the playoffs, he’ll be remembered quite fondly here in the desert. However, if this unorthodox strategy backfires, and the Dbacks can’t find the playoffs in the long run or the short run, then Dbacks’ fans will always wonder if a more aggressive 2019 strategy or large-scale rebuild would have been better. With Hazen and his strategy, only time will tell.