D-Backs stand pat after whiffing on Teixeira

As for the Dodgers, though they improved themselves by acquiring Casey Blake from Cleveland last week, the parts still don't all fit together.

"Remember when the Dodgers were always so strong up the middle?" one scout asked Tuesday. "Now they're the only team in baseball that puts in late-inning defensive substitutions for their middle infielders. They were bringing in Angel Berroa for Nomar (Garciaparra, who now is sidelined with a leg injury) at shortstop, and they bring in Pablo Ozuna for Jeff Kent."

Into this morass, Teixeira could have made Arizona darn near close to invincible.

Byrnes on Tuesday would not characterize how close the Diamondbacks came to landing Teixeira, but sources with knowledge of the talks say Tracy probably never would have needed a realtor, let alone a "For Sale" sign.

Atlanta was determined to get a first baseman, but Arizona would not part with Conor Jackson. And the Diamondbacks were never going to include even one of their best two pitching prospects in the deal, Max Scherzer or Jarrod Parker.

That's why Casey Kotchman -- deemed by the Braves as significantly better than Tracy -- is a former Angel today, and why the Diamondbacks will take their chances with Jackson, Clark, Tracy, Orlando Hudson, Chris Young, Stephen Drew and the rest in the NL West race the rest of the way.

"I learned my lesson in Seattle that first year when we won," said Arizona manager Bob Melvin, reminiscing back to his rookie season as Mariners manager in 2003, when the club never did acquire the one bat they needed in July and wound up finishing second in the AL West. "You're expecting, hoping that something gets done and, when it doesn't, it deflates you.

"I like our team. I think we have a chance to get better. After the way the first month went, everybody expected a lot of things. We didn't do as well in May or June."

Arizona is hitting .271 in July after a .244 May and a .224 June. It's been mostly ugly since the Diamondbacks compiled a baseball-best 20-8 mark in April, but Melvin and Co. think maybe they're coming out of their tailspin.

At least, that's what the manager is hoping. Remember, despite winning the NL West last season, the Diamondbacks produced the youngest opening day roster in the majors.

Though it's been a far more trying season than they would prefer, Byrnes and Melvin insist that the Diamondbacks still haven't reached their ceiling.

"We're a better offensive club than we've shown the last couple of months when we weren't playing well," Byrnes says.

"We're still finding out who we are," Melvin said. "We had some deficiencies pop up that were confusing to us. We haven't run the bases as well as we did last year. We haven't played defensively as well as we did last year.

"Therefore, we haven't fared as well in close games. Last year, we were phenomenal."

Arizona was 32-20 in one-run games in 2007, the 32 wins being both a major-league high and a franchise record.

This year, the Diamondbacks are 13-15 in one-run games.

They think the trades they've already made, for Rauch and Clark, will help. Rauch provides depth in the bullpen, Clark offers a big bat and a soothing presence in the clubhouse. Which he did last year, too, but why they didn't bring him back, well, that's another story. The contract offer was there last winter, but the club pulled it after acquiring Houston's Chris Burke.

Clubhouse sources say that the Teixeira talks clearly were a distraction, however brief, for the Diamondbacks.

Now, in the final hours before the trade deadline, and with their GM saying he doubts that he'll make any moves, the Diamondbacks can resume life as they knew it before the tantalizing prospect of adding Teixeira floated into their lives.

Even without another big bat, they say, they're good enough to win.

"I think so, absolutely," Jackson said. "We're capable of going to the playoffs again. We're capable of winning the West again.

"It probably will come down to the last game in September, like it did last year.

"We just need to get back to playing like we did in April."