D-Backs’ Daniel Hudson Trade Falls Through

July 30: General manager Dave Stewart tells Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic (Twitter link) that he’s had a deal which he believed to be close to completion before “the tide changed.” MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert tweets that Stewart was referencing the Hudson trade.

July 28: 2:33pm: The D-backs don’t expect to finalize a Hudson swap today but are getting heavy interest from three teams, Nightengale further tweets.

2:28pm: Despite the fact that the Mets have been linked to Hudson on occasion this summer, they’re not the team nearing a deal for him, tweets Joel Sherman of the New York Post. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that three teams have been “aggressively” pursuing Hudson, though he doesn’t specify which teams.

2:13pm: The Diamondbacks are nearing a trade of right-hander Daniel Hudson, reports MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert (on Twitter). The team with which Arizona is negotiating remains unreported.

Hudson, 29, was  a key piece to the D-backs’ bullpen in 2015 — his first season back from his second career Tommy John surgery — posting a 3.86 ERA in 67 2/3 innings with 9.4 K/9, 3.3 BB/9, a 43.2 percent ground-ball rate and a heater that averaged a strong 96.1 mph. However, this season has been a struggle, as he’s logged a 6.08 ERA with 7.5 K/9 and 3.7 BB/9 in his 37 innings. His ground-ball rate is largely the same, and his heater is down just about a half mile from last year, but Hudson has struggled enormously with men on base, stranding just 52.5 percent of the baserunners he’s allowed/inherited.

All that said, Hudson is still reasonably young with a hard fastball and fairly promising peripherals to go along with a modest $2.7MM salary. He has about $974K of that sum remaining through season’s end, making him an affordable roll of the dice for a club in need of some upside at the back of its bullpen.