There’s no denying, 2025 has been a very disappointing season for the Diamondbacks and their fans. Coming off an 89-win season, adding major signings like Corbin Burnes, and with the largest payroll in franchise history, expectations were high. But a poor May (a record of 11-17) and dreadful July (9-16) crushed expectations of challenging for a playoff spot. The team was instead sellers at the trade deadline, clearing the decks of three highly significant pieces in Merrill Kelly, Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor, and effectively putting a stake through the campaign. It’s been a long time since there was such a large, negative gap between hopes and reality. But who is responsible?
We asked you that question earlier in the week, giving five options to chose from, as the person or group who were most responsible for the situation. Before we get to the results, let’s quickly go through each of those and see what could have been done better.
The owners
While the team payroll was pushed to record levels, the opening day figure still ranked outside the top ten for 2025. It didn’t help that $22.5 million of that was committed to Jordan Montgomery, whose signing Ken Kendrick accepted responsibility, saying, “If anyone wants to blame anyone for Jordan Montgomery being a Diamondback, you’re talking to the guy that should be blamed. Because I brought it to [the front office’s] attention. I pushed for it.” It has also been noted how the team was suddenly able to find money late in the winter to sign Montgomery: if that money had been available to GM Mike Hazen at the beginning of the winter, it might have been spent in a different and more successful direction.
The General Manager
I just realized I omitted the GM from the poll – certainly a mistake. For consistent success has eluded Hazen – the team has yet to manage consecutive seasons with 85 or more wins, during his tenure. Overall, Arizona is a mediocre 18th in win percentage since Hazen took over at 646-676. The struggles in assembling a pitching staff, in particular the D-backs bullpen, have been well documented: the team ranks only ahead of the Rockies by pitching fWAR during the Hazen era. This season is precious little better, Arizona currently sitting 28th in this metric. There have been a slew of high-profile, big contract signings which have failed to live up to expectations, and almost no production on the mound for the Diamondbacks has come through their farm system.
The manager
It feels like calls for Torey Lovullo’s dismissing have been almost a weekly occurrence over the past few years, but does it seem they have become louder of late? As well as the usual complaints about bullpen management, line-up construction and days off, there has been pointed criticism of his apparent ignorance of Corbin Burnes’s pitching approach, and his handling of star player Ketel Marte. Obviously, leading his team to the World Series less than two years ago cannot be denied as an achievement. But the narrow failure to reach the playoffs last season, followed up by the greater deficit almost certain in 2025, seems to have more people wondering if a change in approach might be better going forward.
The coaches
We already saw the first victim, with third-base coach Shaun Larkin relieved of those particular duties just yesterday (though he will remain as an infield coach). Lovullo said he had noticed the players losing confidence in Larkin’s decisions. I suspect he may not be the last. Particular scrutiny has been applied to pitching coach Brian Kaplan, who took over from veteran Brent Strom this season. However, the team’s ERA has shown almost no improvement from the figure that got Strom fired: 4.63 last year, compared to 4.55 in 2025. The ongoing struggles of Zac Gallen and Brandon Pfaadt, both of whom have seen their ERAs increase on last season, don’t bode well for Kaplan, and bullpen coach Wellington Cepeda doesn’t appear to have solved many issues either.
The players
Of course, in the end, it all comes down to the players performing, or not performing. On the pitching side, it’s perhaps telling that nobody currently in the organization has a higher bWAR than Corbin Burnes – who last pitched on June 1st. Pfaadt and Ryne Nelson are the only active pitchers worth more than 0.7 bWAR, while Gallen and Eduardo Rodriguez have combined for 266.2 innings of replacement level pitching by bWAR. As last year, the hitting has generally got it done, but – despite his ninth-inning heroics yesterday – Lourdes Gurriel Jr has barely been better than replacement-level, and well short of value for his $14 million. Jake McCarthy was unutterably dreadful early: while he has been much better since his recall, he’s still in negative territory.
Injuries
The Diamondbacks currently have eleven players on the injured list: ten pitchers, plus Gabriel Moreno (and it might become all pitchers, as soon as tomorrow). It has been an epidemic across all of baseball, no question. However, in terms of total salary on the IL this season, Spotrac has Arizona fifth most impacted. Please do not ask me how they came up with this figure. But this ranking also doesn’t take into account the payroll of the teams either: of the four teams ahead of us, three (Yankees, Dodgers and Mets) had significantly higher Opening Day payrolls, so had more room to withstand losses, and the fourth (the Angels) was almost the same, under $5m less than the D-backs. Bad luck, or bad medical care? That’s a lot harder to tell from the outside.
The results
As mentioned, I forgot to include the GM as an option, but here are how the votes split across the five options presented in the poll.
Almost, but not quite, a majority of respondents felt that injuries are the major culprit for the D-backs’ season circling the drain. The losses for the vast majority of the season of Burnes, and our two closers in Justin Martinez and A.J. Puk, certainly had an impact. The fact our active saves leader on the staff is currently Andrew Saalfrank with two, tells you all you need to know about the bullpen churn. But Lovullo certainly does not escape his share of criticism either, and one wonders what might happen this winter. Results over the remaining six weeks might decide: will the team come together for Torey, or fall apart? We shall see: since the trade deadline, it feels like we have had a little bit of both!