Not many people expected the Arizona Diamondbacks to make the playoffs last year, let alone make it all the way to the World Series for the first time since 2001. So when general manager Mike Hazen saw his team in the mix at the trade deadline, he went out and bought some key pieces.
Hazen explained the psychological impact of buying at the trade deadline and his thought process behind it while appearing on the Audacy original podcast “Baseball Isn’t Boring” this week.
“There’s a real psychological impact on the deadline, in my opinion, in the clubhouse. There’s a real psychological impact,” Hazen said (25:10 in player above). “If you’re going to say that you’re in it and then I don’t do anything, it’s hard. And now look, I will stand up there if everything that’s available to you is ridiculous from a long-term perspective – again, I’ve always said this, there’s a difference between being aggressive and being reckless.”
Hazen mentioned that some team executives may be more aggressive – or even reckless – given the fact that they know they might not be with that organization in the long run. However, you still have to be responsible for that organization in the short- and long-term.
“Being reckless is not the way, I think, doing this job should be viewed,” Hazen continued. “It gets you more clicks … but being aggressive, to me, is important. We all love prospects. Everybody loves their prospects. We value our prospects higher than every other team does. Everyone falls into that same mindset. There’s a time and a place where your major league team needs you to bring stuff into the clubhouse because they need help going through that 162-game grind.”
The Diamondbacks had their ups and downs last season but Hazen saw the potential of the group. They were coming off three straight losing seasons and had only made the playoffs once in the previous 11 years.
That helped Hazen make the decision to buy at the deadline.
“When you lose for six straight years, it makes it much easier to reconcile in your mind that this is why you do this job is to go buy at the deadline. It’s why you do your job. There’s no other reason to be here. Honestly,” he continued. “Everything’s important in what we do but there’s no other reason to be here than to go buy at the deadline because that’s when you know you’re pushing towards something that can be great.
“We felt very strongly that no matter what was happening on a night-in, night-out basis that this team had played so well for the first few months – and we were terrible in the end of June and July –, but this team was in the hunt. I think we had fallen out of the wild-card spot at that time but we felt like this team deserved for us to go out and be aggressive.”
And that’s just what Hazen and the Diamondbacks did. They added infielder Jace Peterson and outfielder Tommy Pham, but no one was more important than Paul Sewald.
“Getting Paul for the bullpen, for where our bullpen was at, was probably the single biggest thing that impacted our team moving forward.”
Sewald allowed the rest of Arizona’s bullpen to fall into place, which became crucial down the stretch and into the playoffs given the Diamondbacks’ starting pitching situation.
Hazen put his team in a great position to win last year and the Diamondbacks will once again be a fun team to watch this season.
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