This story was excerpted from Steve Gilbert’s D-backs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
The last two days have been filled with hellos and goodbyes for the D-backs as they had several departures and arrivals ahead of Tuesday afternoon’s Trade Deadline.
After the 3 p.m. MST deadline, manager Torey Lovullo was finally able to take stock of what had transpired and then he looked at his newly tweaked roster.
“I love it,” Lovullo said. “And you know -- three o'clock the walls come down, everything is done and we're in a very relaxed state of mind. And you kind of process what happens, and I think the front office addressed a couple of really important needs.”
Two players who spent Tuesday’s pregame introducing themselves to their new teammates were closer Paul Sewald, who came over from the Mariners, and infielder Jace Peterson, who was acquired from the A’s.
Sewald was the biggest prize for the D-backs, fulfilling their desire to have an established closer not just for this year, but next year as well.
The right-hander pitched against the D-backs last weekend at Chase Field and with all the trade talk swirling, he did find himself wondering if he was facing players who would soon become his teammates.
“I can't lie and say that it didn't,” Sewald said. “It had been a long month of thinking, like, 'What are we going to do?' And there was a thought that maybe I would pitch and then walk over across the tunnel [to the D-backs' clubhouse]. This worked out just fine going home trying to figure everything out in Seattle and getting that cleared and then coming here, but I'm glad to be here.”
While he was disappointed to leave teammates that he had grown close to with the Mariners, Sewald was excited that he ended up in Arizona.
“Once we get moved to Phoenix, everything will be very nice,” Sewald said. “[The trade speculation] has been eating me a lot. It's been tough on my wife trying to figure out what’s going to happen. Just the unknown. But we're so lucky that we're going to a place that we already love. We have friends and family down there and you know, that makes it a lot easier and we know the area and so we'll get settled and then we'll be very excited to be here for as long as we're here.”
Peterson was also excited to go from a team with one of the worst records in baseball to one that finds itself in the thick of a division race.
While he doesn’t have a history with many of his new teammates, he said it doesn’t take long to get comfortable and he already had a good feel for how the D-backs approach things.
“Obviously the team here is really, really good,” Peterson said. “So I'm looking forward to coming in here and trying to be a piece and just help this team in any way I can. I know they're young. I know they're talented. I know they're athletic. They play the game the right way. They play the game hard every game.”