The Diamondbacks announced that they have exercised a club option for the 2023 season for manager Torey Lovullo. He will return for a seventh season as Arizona’s manager.
Signed prior to the 2017 season, Lovullo’s first year as bench boss in Arizona was a rousing success. The club went 93-69, defeating the Rockies in the National League Wild Card game, before falling to the Dodgers in the NLDS. That was the club’s first season finishing above the .500 mark since 2011. For that performance, Lovullo was awarded the Manager of the Year for the National League.
The sailing hasn’t been as smooth since, with the club slipping to 82-80 and 85-77 in the next two seasons. The pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign didn’t go very well, with the D-Backs going 25-35 in that small sample. Last year, however, just about everything went wrong and club fell to a dismal 52-110 record.
Despite that awful season, the club evidently didn’t believe Lovullo was to blame. They agreed to an extension with him in September of that year, just as his contract was about to expire. It wasn’t a tremendous show of faith, as it only covered the 2022 season with an option for 2023. However, 2022 has evidently gone well enough that the club will keep him around for at least one more campaign. Arizona’s 60-67 mark here in 2022 obviously isn’t amazing, but it’s still a huge turnaround compared to last year’s nightmare. There’s still over a month remaining on the schedule and they’ve already surpassed last year’s win total.
Although the club still believes enough in Lovullo to keep him around, it’s noteworthy that they merely picked up this option as opposed to announcing an extension. Most baseball teams generally prefer to not have a manager in “lame-duck” status, wherein they are in the final year of a contract with nothing in place for the future. There would still be time to come to another agreement about his contract in the offseason, though he is only in place through 2023 for now.
Next year, the club will surely be hoping to take yet another step forward after the improved results of this season. Arizona has debuted a handful of intriguing rookies this year, including Alek Thomas, Stone Garrett, Tommy Henry and Corbin Carroll, with Carroll being considered by some to be the best prospect in all of baseball. That bubbling up of young talent has an air of optimism floating around the club, despite lackluster results at the big league level recently. Those youngsters will join key team members like Christian Walker, Daulton Varsho, Ketel Marte, Josh Rojas, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly and Madison Bumgarner. The Arizona brass will be hopeful that Lovullo can steer that crew back into contention for the first time in years.
Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic tweeted the news before the official announcement.
With MadBum getting extra days off before starts and still getting shelled, I am not sure if we can really call him “key member”. Maybe key member in a sense that he isn’t going anywhere with that contract attached to him.
Totally agree regarding MadBum. He is a “key member” in contract only; not performance. Two years left on his contract. Put him at the back of the rotation and hope he doesn’t burn out the bullpen too badly after he throws 100+ pitches in 4+ innings.
Let’s Go
Lost in the excitement and exhilaration of last night’s game, was the sad feeling in the top of the 4th inning when Bumgarner gave up the last of his 7 runs and 11 hits. Brent Strom has worked extensively with MadBum to try to get him back to being an effective pitcher, and MadBum has taken the coaching and tried his best. It just looks like he’s got nothing left in the tank. It was painful and sad to watch what was once a very good pitcher, struggle to get anybody out.
Lame duck thing goes both ways; maybe he’ll do well next year and then decide he wants out of that Arizona heat.
But it’s a Dry Heat,
As for Lovullo, he’s Hazen’s puppet. There is no reason for Mike Hazen to oust him out of that job unless Kendrick is pressuring him. Looks like that is not the case. All is well in Arizona as long as Kendrick can buy his baseball cards.
Why would AZ pick up the option on Lovullo? Dumb move
The answer is obvious! Dumb comment
If you were at the game last night, you would understand why Hazen wants to keep this roster and this coaching staff together for a very bright future!
Dbacks are now only 1 game behind SF Giants for 3rd place in the exceedingly tough NLW.
Be honest, how many of you predicted this possibility at the start of the season?
Be honest, can you admit you were wrong in your assessment of this team and Hazen and Lovullo were right?
Lovullo managed this club to a 25-30 game improvement over last year. If you were GM of a ballclub and that club improved by 25-30 games, wouldn’t you retain the manager?
Especially if you have 1/3rd the payroll and 1/3rd the drama of the San Diego PEDres…
Love the move although we should extend him. This team has the potential to be for real. And fairly soon.
Ghost
This is the most exciting OF I have ever seen. Lovullo calls them “Labrador retrievers”. With their speed, all 4 of them chase down fly balls and line drives like Labrador retrievers chase down frisbees on the beach!
And don’t forget Stone in that mix! He hasn’t looked bad defensively, and he’s AVERAGED 99.4 MPH on the 19 BBE he’s had so far. That’s some hard contact.
Highheat
Stone chokes up about 2 inches on his bat, yet still generates that power! He has a very short stroke, almost looks like he’s chopping at the ball, but very productive thus far and had a great season in AAA.
I hope he can sustain it for a while. I’m still hoping Kristian Robinson gets past his legal problems by November and gets to the bigs by mid-season next year. He has immense potential and big time power.
He’s a fun dude to watch and an easy guy to root for after knowing his story. The wild thing is that so far he’s generating that much EV that consistently, but his hardest hit ball was “only” 108.3 MPH (which is 43rd percentile). There’s no way he maintains that average, but there is some reason to believe that he maintains well above average quality of contact going forward (his wOBA is effectively identical to his xwOBA, so it’s not like he’s been getting lucky).
There’s also finally enough data for BS to have his sprint speed posted, and at 28.6 ft/sec he’s faster than anyone on the roster not named: McCarthy, Carroll, Thomas, or (oddly enough) Hummel. He also narrowly missed reaching on his 3rd CI last night lol.
Dude doesn’t just have tools, he has the whole shed.
The team is in a great spot position player talent-wise, even without Robinson making an immediate impact (although, I’d prefer he makes it also).
Don’t forget Dominic Fletcher. He doesn’t have the physical tools of Thomas, Carroll and company, but if he maximizes the tools he has, like brother David, he may surprise on the upside.
D-backs have trade chips to acquire pitching this off-season and plenty of remaining high upside OFs to fill out a really, really strong, deep 40 man roster.
Angels
Agree, I like Fletcher, he lacks the power profile of the others, but he doesn’t have anything more to prove at AAA. It’s just that he is behind a superb group. I’d like to see him traded for bullpen help.
Any idea of $ value of his 2023 salary ?