Another year, another collapse from an Arizona franchise

With Monday’s doubleheader between the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves ending in a split, the Arizona Diamondbacks are on the outside looking in as playoff baseball begins Tuesday.

89 wins wasn’t enough for a team that won 84 last year prior to a World Series run… that’s baseball!

There are many games and moments that manager Torey Lovullo, players, management, and of course fans are pointing at to explain why this team blew a seven game Wild Card lead over the final month.

There’s the 8-0 blown lead against Milwaukee last Sunday. Losing two-of-three to Colorado, San Francisco and San Diego to end the year didn’t help either.

There’s also the blown saves by Paul Sewald back in June.

If you want to look at losses, why not look at a sweep to Atlanta (who owned the tiebreaker over Arizona) all the way back in April?

The point: Baseball is a 162 game season. All games hold the same amount of weight in the win and loss column. Pointing out one or two games (or 10) is natural, but doesn’t truly explain what happened. 

Even a September collapse can be un explainable.

Who is to blame?

Ahhhhhhhh this question floats all over X and social media. Is it Torey Lovullo? What about Mike Hazen? The players? Only the pitching? The staff?

What if no single individual is to blame? That seems the most logical.

Torey Lovullo has the love and respect of his players. Yes there are games you can point to where he makes “poor” managerial decisions. So does every manager. He wears his mistakes on his sleeve. Even when he defends his decisions. That is admirable and something this club can continue to build around.

Mike Hazen built the best roster this team has had since 2001 and 2002. But Eduardo Rodriguez only pitched in 10 games. Jordan Montgomery signing right before the season caused all sorts of issues. Merrill Kelly missed three months. Zac Gallen missed a month. Paul Sewald started on the IL.

All those injuries are just on the pitching staff. And almost none of them pitched consistently well after returning from injuries. That happens. To win 89 games with that much uncertainty on a staff that should’ve been more certain on paper, is very impressive.

I haven’t even touched on Corbin Carroll and Eugenio Suarez being below average at the plate for two and a half months. Or Alek Thomas struggling then getting hurt. Or Geraldo Perdomo missing time. Or Gabi Moreno playing though multiple injuries. 

And despite the struggles and all the missed games, Arizona scored more runs than any other team in baseball.

What AZ history tells us

The Phoenix Suns got to the 2021 NBA Finals, before blowing a 2-0 lead to the Milwaukee Bucks. New ownership comes in six months later and the roster that was built on continuity was blown up. So far it hasn’t worked. And three years later, the Suns are on coach number three.

A championship may still be inbound and Mat Ishbia is doing a great job in many ways, but keeping that team together may have paid off. We’ll never know…

In 2021 the Arizona Cardinals started 8-0, before squeaking into the playoffs at 11-6 and losing in the first round. Since then, there have been 10 total wins from the Cardinals. Firing Kliff Kingsbury a year later may have been (it was) the correct move, but guess who just received a game ball as the offensive coordinator in a 42-14 win over Arizona? Kliff Kingsbury…

The grass isn’t always greener. Many fans are calling for Torey Lovullo’s job, but that isn’t the right move.

This team has shown continual progress over the last three years. Ken Kendrick seems to be allowing money to be spent (Christian Walker will be the true test of that in the coming months). And the young players on this team all overcame adveristy this year. That combination will only help the team moving forward.

With all of that said, we’ll wait to see how the offseason shakes out, but expecting 90-95 wins in the 2025 season isn’t far fetched…