MLB

How Tony La Russa is attacking his first front office trade deadline

Tony La Russa enjoyed the pinnacle of a career on Sunday – and then was back at work on Monday, “living and dying,” in his words, with a 15-inning game.

This was not the job, however, that led to his enshrinement over the weekend in Cooperstown. La Russa, among the most successful managers in history, now heads baseball operations for the Diamondbacks.

Thus, he is going through his first trade deadline as the ultimate decision maker. He says he is mostly listening to the insight and experience of general manager Kevin Towers and Arizona’s scouts. But La Russa was hired two and half months ago to bring his wisdom, competitiveness and history to a stumbling franchise.

And he is not hiding what is going on either.

“There aren’t a lot of sellers right now,” La Russa said by phone. “We are sellers.”

They already have begun, dealing Brandon McCarthy to the Yankees and lefty reliever Joe Thatcher to the Angels. And there could be more coming with Arizona willing to move pretty much any veteran making some money such as second baseman Aaron Hill, third baseman Martin Prado, outfielder Gerardo Parra and lefty reliever Oliver Perez.

Aaron Hill is one of the Diamondbacks’ trade chips.Getty Images

“What is clear – and Kevin has been articulate with this – we are not in position to make a bad deal just to get rid of guys,” La Russa said. “If some team sees value in our players or our pitchers and both sides would benefit, fine. We are not looking to unload payroll. We don’t have bad situations. On one hand, we see there are not many sellers, so that improves our chances to do something. But we are not in position to make a move just to make a move. If not now, then winter may be more reasonable.”

Actually, when it came to improving his team, La Russa did not talk about additions from outside. He spoke about his core beliefs – “the first building block, the first priority” – as he called it, and that was about playing hard for nine innings every day. Effort, toughness. These are the central tenets for La Russa and they sound quaint in an era of WAR and ERA-plus.

But La Russa will not be shaken from what he believes establishes a winning culture that enables a club to endure and succeed year after year.

He actually praised manager Kirk Gibson and his staff for keeping the team motivated after a destructive 8-22 start (the team is 38-39 since) and he also had kind words for how hard-working Towers and the Diamondback scouts were. This is tea-leaf reading time, since the assumption was La Russa was brought in to clean house, start anew.

He would not divulge his plans either short term with the trade deadline nor long term with his GM and manager. He was definitive only in that he is loving this second career after his glorious first one and also on what he thinks his job is moving forward.

“I do think my clearest responsibility is to evaluate the players and pitchers we have against championship quality,” La Russa. “So that we can improve in what makes our players more championship-like. I believe I have acquired some insights over 50 years on what that takes. And I would like to share it.”