The Dan Haren Trade: In their own words

"We were able to add to our club now, provide for our club's future and, at the same time, we were able to create a better balance and flexibility in the way our dollars have been allocated...to better tend to the different holes on our major-league club."
  -- Arizona GM Jerry DiPoto

"I think it's going to decrease," Hall said. "To what level, I'm not sure. We're going to do what we need to do. There's also going to be some pieces that we're going to have to go out and get like a closer next year. We're going to have to spend a little."
   -- President Derrick Hall on the team's payroll

"[On Saunders] A guy who quite frankly has been one of the winners in Major League Baseball. I think he trails only Roy Halladay among major leaguers in total wins. He’s won 63 percent of his games since coming to the major leagues... [on Corbin] All he’s done is go out and lead the minor leagues in wins. To this point in the minor league season, he’s 13-3 at two A levels."
   -- Jerry DiPoto on the new arrivals

"I had a lot of high expectations from myself and the team this year. It didn’t really work out that way... I’m kind of sad it didn’t lead to what I was brought here for, which was bringing the team to the next level. I had some good years here. This year hasn’t been that great for me personally. I was brought here to put us over the top and didn’t happen that way unfortunately. I’ve got to move on and the organization has got to move on as well."
  -- Dan Haren on his time in Arizona

"What we wanted to address was take our club today and connect it with our prospects for tomorrow. That’s something that we grossly needed. We can’t deny the volume and the depth that this brings us as an organization. The names involved in the deal on a prospect level, particularly Corbin, and the player to be named, give us extreme prospect depth, at a position, left-handed pitcher, that anybody would covet. "
  -- Jerry DiPoto, discussing the aims of the trade.

"The Angels depantsed the Arizona Diamondbacks. They stole Dan Haren in a trade and left the directionless D’backs naked and with nowhere to hide. First, Arizona panicked by firing general manager Josh Byrnes earlier this season. Now, with suitors from coast to coast putting together packages for Haren, they jumped at one centering around Joe Saunders."
  -- Jeff Passan, Yahoo!

"Say what you want about the return, but at least the Diamondbacks have begun to restock their minor league pitching inventory. Jarrod Parker, assuming he can return from Tommy John (like most do), could be a No. 1. Some think Skaggs could be a No. 2 or No. 3. They’ve already got Kennedy -- a solid No. 4-type already who has shown flashes of being more than that -- for the next five years. Beyond that, there’s now Corbin, RHP Barry Enright, LHP Mike Belfiore, RHP Eric Smith, RHP Charles Brewer, RHP Josh Collmenter, LHP Wade Miley and RHP Chase Anderson, all of whom have had varying degrees of success this season."
  -- Nick Piecoro, Arizona Republic

The Diamondbacks traded Haren and got back no top-50 prospects, maybe no top-100 prospects. If the goal was to save money, they failed as well; the difference between what they'll pay Saunders and what they would have paid Haren is likely to be washed away by the damage done by what has now been made clear: the Diamondbacks are focused on the long term, and unlikely to be contenders in the NL West for a few years. If there's a model for how not to handle the trade of a high-priced, high-value player, this is it.
  -- Joe Sheehan, Sports Illustrated

 "If Corbin and Skaggs reach their ceilings, it will be a real good deal for the Diamondbacks. If they hit on one, it is a pretty good deal. If you don’t, it might work if Joe Saunders is decent. It’s a risk. Prospects are never a sure thing. There is no question you are taking a step back in going from Haren to Saunders."
  -- Jim Callis, Baseball America

The D-Backs saved money. But forget all that for now. It is the unknowns, as always, that eventually will cause the trade to be classified as a shrewd move to help the D-Backs reload and return to contention (see San Diego, the current NL West leader) or a payroll dump.

  -- Jack Magruder, Fox Sports Arizona

Someone seems to have messed up here. If Joe Saunders plus some (relatively) unheralded prospects was the best the Diamondbacks could do, 1) they should have just kept Haren until they could get more for him, and 2) a bunch of other teams looking for a good starting pitcher really, really messed up by not offering the Diamondbacks a more attractive package than the Angels... I'm sure they've got a bunch of bright people working there. But it would be odd if they were so right about this deal and everyone else were so wrong.
  -- Rob Neyer, ESPN

"The Diamondbacks get ripped for this deal because they didn’t get a prospect with the promise of superduperstardom. But is there any guarantee that Justin Smoak, the centerpiece of the Mariners’ return for Lee, will ever stop striking out for long enough to display his prodigious power on a regular basis? The chance that Arizona took is on a player getting back to where he’s been, rather than getting to where he’s expected to go. And Dan Haren, good as he is, is not Cliff Lee - nobody was offering a Smoak or a Jesus Montero for a pitcher who has given up 50 home runs since the start of the 2009 season."
  -- Jesse Spector, NY Daily News

The idea of this is to present Arizona’s side of the trade but frankly I have been sitting here for an hour and still cannot even come close to justifying this... That is not a good haul; it’s not even a decent haul. It’s downright bad. It’s the sort of return you’d more expect if the person getting traded was a liability due to his contract,
  -- Matthew Carruth, Fangraphs.com

"I'm having a hard time believing this was all the market would give up for Dan Haren. Were three bodies, a player to be named later (believed to be Tyler Skaggs, though it's not a lock) plus salary relief really the going price for a pitcher who rated among the top five in the NL last season, was reasonably compensated and was suffering from a lot of bad luck this season?"
  -- Keith Law, ESPN