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.

When a team deals away its veteran players at the Trade Deadline, it is usually a waving the white flag moment on a season, a sign that the focus has turned from the current season to the future.

So when the D-backs traded away veterans Randal Grichuk, Josh Naylor, Eugenio Suárez, Merrill Kelly and Shelby Miller this year, it seemed their hopes of making the postseason went along with them.

At the time of the Deadline, the D-backs had lost eight of nine games and were 51-58. Their chances of making the playoffs were about as good as getting a cool day in Phoenix during the summer.

Since the Deadline, though, Arizona is 2

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