GM meetings good for widespread items of interest, including some with Red Sox connections

Résumé détaillé

▪ At 86-76, the Diamondbacks were the best team to miss the playoffs last season. General manager Mike Hazen decided to run it back, signing manager Torey Lovullo to a new…

Let’s empty out the notebook after four days at the GM meetings in Las Vegas:

▪ At 86-76, the Diamondbacks were the best team to miss the playoffs last season. General manager Mike Hazen decided to run it back, signing manager Torey Lovullo to a new two-year contract.

“We have a good young team. We have talented star players. We just missed the playoffs by a couple of games, unfortunately, and I think we still have a good team,” Hazen, a former Red Sox executive who has been with Arizona since 2016, said.

The Diamondbacks aren’t one player away in Hazen’s view. He’s taking a more macro approach.

“I think we probably need to reimagine what the team’s going to look like moving forward, short and long term,” he said. “We need to do a better job offensively of hitting righthanded pitching, and we need to rebuild the bullpen.

“That’s always complicated. I’ve built the worst bullpens in baseball, and then some of the better ones. I can do both. I’m very talented in that area.”

Along with the bullpen, Arizona needs more production at first base. With Ildemaro Vargas getting most of the at-bats, Diamondbacks first basemen had a .636 OPS, the lowest in the National League.

Had Arizona won Game 161, it would have controlled its own fate. But the Diamondbacks couldn’t hold a 4-3 lead at San Diego as the bullpen allowed nine runs in a 10-7 loss.

“That was a tough pill to swallow,” Hazen said. “We’re judged on making the playoffs or not. I failed. We failed. That’s the only way I can look at it. I definitely see the good things that have happened, but you’re judged on getting in and winning. Period.”

Début de l'article, extrait de The Boston Globe. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.