Arizona Diamondbacks Ownership Blocks Trade, Firing
The Arizona Diamondbacks have been a hot mess since winning the offseason, and reports are surfacing that ownership could have a big role in calling the shots.
According to an article by USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, Diamondbacks ownership is so concerned with their team’s image that they have told GM Dave Stewart and chief baseball officer Tony La Russa that not only can they not fire manager Chip Hale, but they were unable to move forward with a deal with the Miami Marlins that would have sent last offseason’s addition (which cost them a bounty), Shelby Miller away from the desert because “it wouldn’t look good.”
Instead, there are internal discussions being held as to whether the team should pick up Stewart’s option before (or after) the August 31 deadline, and whether La Russa should be brought back once his contract expires after the season. If Stewart’s option is not picked up, the Diamondbacks will be pinning their hopes on their seventh GM in eleven years. Continually rotating through GMs is a much better look. Firing Tony La Russa, who is a Hall of Famer, also fits that mold the ownership is apparently striving for.
While their moves this past offseason have been at least questioned, if not flat-out laughed at, the duo has been at the helm in Arizona for roughly two seasons. Nightengale outlines a number of general managers that would have been fired after questionable trades early in their tenures with teams, including Dayton Moore of the Kansas City Royals, who would have been fired seven years before his team won the World Series, and Jon Daniels in Texas, who went on to claim consecutive American League pennants and has built one of the best big league teams with a tremendous farm system.
But yeah, those two guys in Arizona are totally the problem. The two that were brought in and told to reduce payroll (which they have) while improving the team in short order.
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Before the season began, I was totally on board with what the Diamondbacks were doing. While the Miller deal certainly hasn’t worked out to date, their window is small and they went for it. Yes, they gave up too much to acquire Miller, but it’s not Dansby Swanson that was the deal breaker, but Ender Inciarte. His outfield defense helped that team overachieve last season and perhaps provide false hope for the front office, which is notably not terribly fond of sabermetrics.
Terrible jerseys and all I was still on board. Yet, the more that the season unfolds, with injuries to key players derailing what could have been a slightly better team, it appears that the Arizona Diamondbacks have two big obstacles.
The first is their ownership. Sometimes owners are very behind the scenes and just write the checks while the people they pay to produce a winner do their best to do just that. Other owners meddle too much in the daily affairs and make rash decisions based upon public perception and ticket sales rather than producing a winner. Keep in mind that the ownership group is also fighting with the county over who should pay for stadium upgrades. I for one think it should be the billionaires.
The second problem with the D-Backs could be solving their own ballpark. The team went out to acquire pitching last winter because Chase Field plays like Coors light, in that the ball flies the heck out of there. While the thin air certainly isn’t a concern in the air conditioned Arizona ballpark, perhaps there is some finesse that needs to be worked on on the mound. That, or adding better pitchers, which is something that Stewart and La Russa have been trying to do.
While I am not completely sold on the job that the duo has been doing thus far, two years isn’t quite enough time to determine whether or not the job they are doing is adequate. In situations like these I tend to go against ownership, and given the amount of turnover the Diamondbacks front office has had in the last decade it’s not hard to make a case as to why.
I’ll even throw out a theory. What if Stewart and La Russa felt the pressure to win now, given ownership’s track record of terminating contracts, and felt that they had to produce a winner in 2016 or find a new job? At worst they go for broke and find themselves on the unemployment line which they would have anyway, and at best they hit all of the right buttons and miraculously turn the team around in just two years.
While the above scenario is just a theory, is it that farfetched? After a decade of change, some consistency could do this club some good. Twice since 2003 have the Diamondbacks gone to the playoffs. In ten of those 14 seasons they have finished at least eleven games back in the division. There’s your consistency. The change that should be made is not with those that are in question, but instead with sticking with a plan for more than two years.