The Arizona Diamondbacks announced on Thursday that they have extended manager Torey Lovullo through 2022 with a club option for 2023.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations and we feel like Torey is still, even though all the things we’ve gone through this year, has maintained stability and structure around what we’re going to try to accomplish moving forward,” executive vice president and general manager Mike Hazen said before Thursday’s game.
“I think he does a very good job of managing a baseball game, I think to the degree that — obviously the results are the results — I think that I have to take some reflection and some introspection on where some of those things fell down for us this year and where that’s going to impact us moving forward. I think that in a lot of cases we could just sort of start over and I don’t necessarily believe that holistically that was the right decision for us to make right now.”
It has been a disastrous season for the D-backs, one in which they have set dubious record after dubious record both at a franchise level and at an MLB level.
However, injuries, a lack of depth and a failure to keep up with the rest of the constantly improving NL West have all impacted this team this year, with those factors being out of Lovullo’s control.
Hazen said he personally decided to make the offer to Lovullo “probably a week, 10 days ago.”
“I have seen him improve as a manager,” he added. “I think he does a good job of running a game and running a bullpen. That’s a piece to being a good manager in my mind. I think he has been very proactive with a lot of our younger players. He does a great job with the veteran players, but he’s also been very proactive with a lot of our younger players.
“I just think that’s going to be the ultimate deciding factor for us here is how we take our young guys and put them in positions of being very good players at the major league level, a collection of them, and then certainly there’s going to be a piece of how we build a bullpen and add from the outside, that’s always going to be a piece to any successful club.”
The deal does include a club option for 2023, but Hazen wasn’t ready to address that at this time. “Look, I don’t want to get too bogged down into 2023. We’re sitting where we are in 2021 and we have a lot of work to be done between now and then. Next year you can ask me all about 2023. I’m not going to get too far down the road here.
“We are working to strategically plot the next 12 months. We have an idea and a vision beyond 12 months, but we are looking to strategically plot for 12 months. He’s going to be the guy to lead us. We are very happy about that and we think he’s going to do a really good job.”
The D-backs are currently tied with the Baltimore Orioles for the worst record in MLB at 48-104.
In five seasons managing this team, the D-backs are 333-365 under Lovullo and have made the playoffs as the Wild Card one time in 2017.
