It’s no secret that Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo and general manager Mike Hazen share an unusually close relationship for people in their respective MLB positions.
It was that friendship adding a complication to the Diamondbacks’ decision whether or not to fire the manager as the 2025 season appeared to go into a slow tailspin.
Arizona somehow pulled out of that tailspin despite a sell-off at the trade deadline. Asked by Arizona Sports’ Wolf & Luke how much the late run had to do with the D-backs’ decision to have Lovullo return for 2026, Hazen used the opportunity to push back on the assumption that their friendship swayed him.
“Continuity is not at the top of my priority list, honestly,” Hazen said of Lovullo’s nine years as Diamondbacks manager. “I know I hear this a lot — our relationship is not at the top of that list. That is false. We are in a business, a very significant business, and my job is to win baseball games. It’s not to have a great dynamic everywhere. I think we have a very challenging dynamic.
“I felt like he brings a lot to the table. I feel like the work he puts in … it’s not a given that a team that loses eight of its Opening Day starting players at the deadline with two months to go, playing … the hardest schedule in baseball from Sept. 1 on … and is playing to the last couples days. If I’m going to penalize him for the things I penalize him for and the coaches for, then I’m also going to have to look at the positive stuff, too.”
D-backs GM Mike Hazen tells @WolfandLuke his relationship with Torey Lovullo is not among the top reasons why the manager will return for a 10th season.
“That is false.” pic.twitter.com/80CdHtS94w
— Arizona Sports (@AZSports) October 1, 2025
The D-backs went 29-19 after the deadline and into the final week, chasing the last Wild Card spot before the wheels finally fell off with a five-game skid to end the season.
That stretch developed clarity that Lovullo hadn’t lost the locker room. And it was a much less talented roster that it had to begin 2025, something that Hazen, owner Ken Kendrick and CEO and president Derrick Hall couldn’t ignore.
As Lovullo’s job looked in jeopardy this season, Hazen’s close relationship with his manager remained an interesting piece of context. But so did his two playoff appearances in nine seasons since taking the job in 2017, Hazen’s first year as well.
Their families’ ties were put in the spotlight most notably last year, when MLB sat the D-backs duo and their families down for a feature on how a cancer battle for Hazen’s late wife, Nicole Hazen, brought them even closer.
When long-time ESPN writer Buster Olney looked at potential managerial hot seats in mid-September, he couldn’t leave that bit of context out.
It seems almost silly to include Lovullo on this list, given the devastating injuries incurred by the D-backs’ pitching staff this year and the fact that they played in the World Series just two years ago. But Arizona owner Ken Kendrick is known to be a challenging boss, someone who demands answers from those who work for him, leaving the door open for change.
However, Lovullo is very close with head of baseball operations Mike Hazen — to the degree that if you ranked the symbiosis of GMs and their managers among the 30 teams, a rival exec agreed that Hazen and Lovullo would be No. 1. Presumably, the desire for a change at manager would have to come from Kendrick.
Arizona’s post-deadline run made that a complication for another day.
Hazen said the decision-making isn’t “black and white.” He strongly considers how easily it is to cultivate the good and dump the bad. Because he saw enough good late, Lovullo’s willingness to continue evolving gave the GM confidence they could fix their problems moving forward.
“If the motivation, mindset and push to still be good at your job is still there, then there’s stuff that we build on,” Hazen said. “If after the trading deadline all I heard is about how everybody was being screwed down there because of look what I, me, and the position I’m in, did to them, I didn’t hear that once.”
