MLB: Assessing the NL West GMs at the midway point
By Bill Felber
Arizona Diamondbacks, Mike Hazen, -8.5 games
Hazen’s season from hell began innocently enough. The Diamondbacks were 15-13 in late April and looked to be bound for a decent, if not contending, season. The long losing streaks, 13 games in May and 17 in June, changed that narrative.
It’s a fair question how much of that failure accrues to Hazen and how much of it is a simple matter of player under-performance. But it’s also an academic question; in the big leagues, as in much of the business world, the boss gets the credit or blame.
Statistically, the simple answer is that Hazen’s failures have been a product both of errors at the free agent table and in the farm system production. He’s utilized seven first-year players, and their combined impact on the D-Backs amounts to an unsustainable -4.9 WAA.
Most of that damage has been inflicted by young pitchers. Kevin Ginkel (-1.0) has a 6.35 ERA, Riley Smith (-1.1) is 1-4, 6.20, and Jon Duplantier (-0.9) turned in an 0-3, 13.15 before being shipped off the IL. During one of the losing streaks, J.B. Bukauskas (-0.7) got a tryout, resulting in 10 earned runs allowed in 12 innings.
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Hazen devoted copious winter energy to rebuilding the pitching staff, mostly with distressing results. He signed or re-signed nine arms, among them Joakim Soria (+0.1), Brad Peacock (-0.6), Nick Frankoff (-0.5), and Joe Mantiply (-0.6). The net impact of those nine signings or re-signings: a 5-16 record, a 5.41 ERA, and -2.4 WAA.