The Diamondbacks are bringing back manager Torey Lovullo for what’ll be his 10th season, as first reported by Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic. Lovullo was already under contract for one more year after signing an extension shortly after the team won the National League pennant in 2023.
While the Diamondbacks aren’t making a managerial change, it seems they’ll keep Lovullo in a lame duck setup. John Gambadoro of 98.7 FM reports that the 60-year-old Lovullo is not expected to sign an extension this offseason. Teams generally shy away from having managers and top front office personnel on expiring deals, but it seems leadership in Arizona is content with that arrangement heading into 2026.
The D-Backs have come up short of the playoffs in each of the two seasons following their league championship. Last year’s team won 89 games and finished on the outside on the final day of the season. They backed up to an 80-82 finish that placed fourth in the NL West this year. The Mets’ collapse helped keep the Diamondbacks mathematically alive into the final weekend, but they finished with their first losing season since 2022.
They’ve dramatically ramped up spending in each of the last two winters. They’ve focused most of their free agent activity on the rotation. None of the deals for Corbin Burnes, Eduardo Rodriguez or Jordan Montgomery have worked out. All three pitchers have been some combination of ineffective or injured. The Snakes signed each of Ketel Marte, Brandon Pfaadt, Geraldo Perdomo and Justin Martinez to extensions last winter.
With all that mind, owner Ken Kendrick told Gambadoro on Sunday that he’d “never been more disappointed in a season than this one because (their) expectations were so high.” Kendrick expanded on that comment during an appearance on the Burns & Gambo show this afternoon, saying it’s rooted largely in the injuries that wrecked the pitching staff. Losing Burnes to Tommy John surgery was the biggest blow, but the Snakes were also left with a patchwork bullpen for four-plus months by season-ending injuries to Martinez and A.J. Puk.
The Diamondbacks sold impending free agents Merrill Kelly, Eugenio Suárez, Josh Naylor, Shelby Miller and Randal Grichuk at the deadline. It’s to their credit that they didn’t phone in their last two months. The Snakes went 29-24 after the deadline. It ended in disappointing fashion with a five-game losing streak, but they improbably remained on the postseason periphery with a bullpen comprising mostly rookies or journeymen depth pickups.
Lovullo came under some fire in the middle of August when reports emerged that some players were frustrated with Marte for taking too many games off. The manager defended his star second baseman, who subsequently apologized for missing the first few games of the second half after returning to the Dominican Republic following the All-Star Break. Marte later said he was upset upon learning that his home in Arizona had been burglarized while he was attending the All-Star festivities. D-Backs’ ownership and the front office are evidently confident that Lovullo handled the situation well enough to not lose the clubhouse.
General manager Mike Hazen is also headed into his tenth season. Lovullo had worked with Hazen with the Red Sox and followed him to the desert not long after the GM’s hiring. The D-Backs have made two postseason berths in their nine seasons. They won 93 games and were bounced in the Division Series in 2017. The ’23 NL championship season is their only other playoff berth during that stretch. The D-Backs have a .490 regular season win percentage under Lovullo.