The Diamondbacks recently extended GM Mike Hazen in hopes of staying off of the upcoming offseason’s hiring carousel. But prying eyes are still scanning an Arizona front office that has performed quite well over the past several seasons.
Assistant general managers Amiel Sawdaye and Jared Porter are among the execs around the game that figure to draw interest from other teams. But neither will be easy to poach, as Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reports.
As it turns out, both Sawdaye and Porter received new deals long before Hazen’s new contract was hammered out. They are each now a full season into extensions, the details of which remain unknown. Both originally landed with the club along with Hazen, in advance of the 2017 season.
The new contracts may not fully protect the club from a front-office raid, as D-Backs CEO Derrick Hall acknowledges. He says that the team “tried to give [Sawdaye and Porter] a little more security” with those deals. But that’s likely just a temporary protection.
Per Hall:
“We are going to try to do all we can to keep them happy, but we know realistically that the point will come when one or both will move on for a higher position. They both are deserving and will get that chance.”
The expectation in Arizona is that Porter and Sawdaye will remain in place unless there’s an opportunity at a clear promotion. As Piecoro understands it, a position serving as a GM beneath a president of baseball operations would likely not qualify. At the same time, there’s obviously some room for interpretation. And Hall says the organization isn’t taking a black-and-white view of the matter. He expects the duo will mostly be interested in exploring outside possibilities that represent “an advancement,” but the club will consider interview requests on a case-by-case basis.
At the moment, there’s only one major opening in baseball — but it’s a big one, and a notable one for these particular executives. The Red Sox are in need of a new baseball ops chief. Both Sawdaye and Porter have deep roots in the Boston organization, which has continued to make baseball ops moves after parting ways with Dave Dombrowski — perhaps suggesting an internal or old-friend hiring is most likely. At this point, though, it’s mostly conjecture. It remains to be seen what other front office opportunities may present themselves.
I’m a Red Sox fan but I hope Hazen and company stays with the Diamondbacks and work on getting them back to the World Series.
Red Sox are a great team but the owner’s lack of loyalty and constant throwing GMs under the bus is saddening. Like, thank you John Henry for the championships, but you can’t ask your GMs to “go for it” and then fire them for listening to you.
The only metric for John Henry is to win. Last year, DD won; he was, in Henry’s own words, “the best executive in baseball”. This year they didn’t win; so Henry treated DD like a bum. More people probably watched “Dancing with the Stars” than NESN last night; Henry can’t live with that. In Boston, the brand is everything.
Can’t say that I blame him. And yes, they SHOULD win; Lord knows they’ve got the money. But other teams have a lot of money too, and they haven’t won 4 times this century; some haven’t won at all.
Lots of fans would like to have John Henry own their ball club.
To be fair to John Henry, they Red Sox reversed the curse, so to speak, only two years after he became principle owner of the club and Henry has been in the business of owning and building franchises based on projection systems for a long time. He desperately tried to hire Billy Beane before he went with Dan Duquette and then John Henry’s own version of Billy Beane in Theo Epstein. Epstein’s tenure ended awkwardly and they probably should’ve kept the guy. Cherington was a half decade band-aid after Epstein so its no wonder they bailed on Dombrowksi after the Jekyll and Hyde seasons. Henry won’t give GM’s the time they need, which is measured in half decades of development and roster adjustments and trade opportunities but he will throw money at anything that will accept the cash- Price, Sale, Panda, Crawford, Mookie inevitably even if he turns the money down.
Also Henry is never giving up the Red Sox so long as he is alive and as he gets older, he’s gonna get more cantankerous about winning or losing. He’s turning into or has already turned into last decade’s and this decade’s and probably next decade’s George Steinbrenner (remember his sliding door of management?) but maybe worse because unlike Steinbrenner, who’s overall goal as owner was to maintain standards and who bought the team when that was a cheaper thing to accomplish, Henry bought the club with the goal of turning around their legacy (mission accomplished, for sure) but then the winning went to his head and here the Sox are, with more money and hubris than they know what to do with but at a loss on how to put together a winning club between prospect boons because his GM’s clean house and re-boot every few seasons with a new ethos guiding the roster decisions.
I’m a Yankees fan. I don’t want to see the Red Sox turn it around. I also enjoy competition, I have a personal soft spot for Mookie Betts, as I too love to bowl and hope to one day play him in the league semi’s (…if Burkhalter down at the league office doesn’t post a good match up and schedule…) but they’re gonna flounder for many years if they keep going the way they have.
BTW- Yankees went all in in 2009 and it paid off. It was expensive, but the collective 25 or 30 years and $450M or so got them the one championship!
Anyway, I think the Red Sox are going through a similar period, but John Henry has turned into George Steinbrenner circa the Billy Martin years.
“the best executive in baseball”.
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People say these things all the time. I think DD was okay, and nothing more. he was given a huge budget the past two years, like NYY/LAD huge, and traded away a lot of prospects he inherited. And he inherited a lot of players from Theo.
If I came here two years ago, and already had Betts, JBJ, Bogaerts, Vazquez, Benni, Holt, Pocello, Kelly, and ERod, among others, then told I could add another $40M to the budget, and then told I could trade Margot, Allen, Shaw, Moncada, Espinosa, and Kopech, I think I’d have put together a pretty good team. Anyone would.
I always thought DD was rather “meh”; on the better side of “meh”, but “meh” nonetheless.
And it took Henry to OK the additional expenditures for 2018, not to mention all the high bonus monies in the draft and international markets (back when you could do such things) for Moncada and Betts and Bogarts, etc. The artificial limits MLB has placed on such transactions was as much directed toward the Sox as anybody else; and, of course, to limit such monies industry-wide.
But Dave deserves some credit. Every team has a plan; not every GM can execute said plan. Of course, especially in baseball, there’s a lot of luck involved, and DD got a little lucky. Most WS winning teams do.
I agree completely. Way too many fans give credit to a GM only because they win the WS. IMO, a trade doesn’t become a good trade merely because we are on the right side of a 4-3 ALCS. And a trade doesn’t become a bad trade simply because Houston and/or NY lost to a great RS team last year.
A lot of people like the Beckett trade, which was awful in retrospect. Had we lost to Cleveland 4-3, instead of beating them 4-3, a lot of the same people would hate the trade.
Red Sox are a great team but the owner’s lack of loyalty and constant throwing GMs under the bus is saddening.
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In a job that pays millions, loyalty is not an issue. GMs, and managers, are hired to be fired. They should’ve fired Lucchino before they even looked at Theo & Tito, but that’s ancient history.
They deserve it after that Grienke trade to the Astros.
They done more than that. Segura for walker
Goldy to st Lou and those guys coming back have been quite well.
Phx May be a huge market, but it’s also cubs country and they cannot fill their over sized stadium.
Hazen has done quite well.
It’s pretty remarkable what Hazen has done after that bombshell that was Dave Stewart.
This is irrelevant, but that photo looks like your local dad-metal band’s promo picture and I love it.