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Revisiting the D-Backs' fateful Shelby Miller trade

Norm Hall / Getty Images Sport / Getty

It was never supposed to turn out this way.

Sure, the Arizona Diamondbacks coughed up a king's ransom for Shelby Miller during the 2015 winter meetings, a move immediately ridiculed which later bore regret from those who pulled the strings, but the blockbuster gamble did make sense on paper.

Arizona had massive plans for the rotation. Just three days after acquiring Miller, they handed Zack Greinke a six-year, $206.5-million contract. The idea was simple: Improve a starting corps that posted a 4.37 ERA in 2015 in an attempt to unseat the traditional hierarchy in the NL West - the Los Angeles Dodgers, Greinke's former side, and the San Francisco Giants.

Miller had made himself a household name after a pair of impressive seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, but he continued to blossom into a front-line starter after being sent to Atlanta for Jason Heyward and Jordan Walden months before the 2015 season. Though he somehow finished with the most losses in the majors that year with 17, he wasn't to blame.

He'd fashioned a 3.02 ERA in 33 starts and pitched a team-high 205 1/3 innings. He'd earned his first All-Star nod, but he didn't play in the Midsummer Classic. He wasn't an ace by name, but he fit the criteria.

And now, Arizona had two of them.

It came with a price, of course - everything does. Sending Dansby Swanson - drafted first overall just six months prior - along with Ender Inciarte and pitcher Aaron Blair to the Braves was a heavy cost for four years of control for a starter who'd yet to show consistent success at the highest level.

Any trade that involves a club's No. 1 prospect will always be scrutinized. It also didn't help that Swanson took little time to lock up the Braves' shortstop duties after his debut the next season, while Inciarte also went on to earn the first Gold Glove of his career playing center field for Atlanta.

Swanson, Inciarte with the Braves:

Player GP OPS WAR
Swanson 57 .641 0.3
Inciarte 150 .719 3.8

Meanwhile, in the desert, everything was going wrong for the Diamondbacks. Greinke, who battled through a nagging oblique strain, was not the unhittable force he had been in Los Angeles, while Miller was falling as quickly as he had risen. His pitching eventually dropped to a point that Arizona admitted defeat, tried to hide him in Triple-A, and carried on without him. His 101 big-league innings in 2016 were the lowest he'd pitched since his 2012 debut season, and his 6.15 ERA was nearly double his previous high mark (3.74 in 2014).

But that made his 2017 resurgence that much sweeter.

Miller looked a different animal to begin this season. He struck out 17 of 89 batters to begin the year, and allowed just seven earned runs across his first three starts, good for a modest 3.50 ERA. Whatever was broken was somehow fixed. Then, on April 23, a concerning discomfort in his elbow forced manager Torey Lovullo to remove his reformed starter after just four innings against the Dodgers, and it was clear something was horribly wrong.

Those fears were validated Thursday, when Miller admitted he had partially torn his ulnar collateral ligament, and all the progress he'd made was snapped as quickly as the connective tissue that held his prized right elbow together.

Miller likely won't pitch again this season. He may not throw off a major-league mound until well into the 2018 season. Though the Diamondbacks are now sitting comfortably atop the NL West standings a month into the campaign - temporarily displacing the Dodgers-Giants duopoly in the division - his latest setback will undoubtedly draw out the most fervent critics of the trade that brought him to the desert in the first place.

It's easy to call it a bust now.

But it was never supposed to turn out this way.

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