Hall on Mike Hazen extension: ‘a no-brainer’
LOS ANGELES — Two years ago, as the organization was tumbling toward 110 losses, the Diamondbacks opted to stick with their leadership team. Team President and CEO Derrick Hall said they are glad they did.
“I think in the past we may have made changes — and we did for years — and we’ve learned that that’s not always the right move,” Hall said Friday at Dodger Stadium, where he and General Manager Mike Hazen discussed the five-year extension Hazen received late in the regular season.
“We do need that stability. I’m just thrilled that it proved to be the right decision. And here we are a couple years later in, obviously, a much better place.”
In the span of two years, the Diamondbacks have gone from one of the worst teams in baseball to one of the final eight standing. They open their National League Division Series against the Dodgers here on Saturday night.
Hazen’s future appeared somewhat up in the air as recently as last month. After the Red Sox parted ways with their baseball operations head, Chaim Bloom, Hazen was named as a possible replacement per an ESPN report. Hazen, who grew up in the Boston suburbs, had spent 11 seasons with the Red Sox before the Diamondbacks hired him in October 2016.
But Hazen said Friday he told Hall he had no plans to leave.
“From the very first thing, I told him, ‘I’m not going anywhere,’” Hazen said. “‘I want to be here. We need to get something done. We want to get something done.’”
Hazen said he is grateful for the opportunity the organization gave him seven years ago and that he “wake(s) up every day trying to prove that I deserve to keep that job.” And though he appears to have the organization on the upswing, he did not feel like he was close to accomplishing everything he set out to accomplish.
“We committed when we came out here to building something that involved winning, not just doing this job to do this job or some perception of what could be deemed doing this job well, (like) building a farm system or finishing .500,” Hazen said. “(The goal is) going deep into the playoffs and winning a World Series. That’s not done. We’re not even close to that yet.”
Hazen, who lost his wife, Nicole, to brain cancer in August 2022, talked it over with his four sons before agreeing to the extension.
“The vote wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t unanimous,” Hazen said. “But I didn’t really weight all the votes the same. The senior in high school had a little more pull than the eighth-grader had, you know what I mean? But they all love Arizona. We love the community we have here, the family we have here.”
Discussions about an extension were said to have begun weeks before the Boston job opened, which Hall said “just gave us a reason to accelerate it.”
Hazen had one year remaining on his deal plus a team option for 2025. His new contract runs through 2028 with a club option for 2029. Hazen led the club to a postseason berth his first year on the job, in 2017, and fielded competitive clubs each of the next two seasons, as well. The club backslid in 2020 and bottomed out in 2021, losing 110 games, before showing signs of improvement last year.
This year’s team, led by star Corbin Carroll, the rookie outfielder whom Hazen signed to an eight-year, $111 million extension in March, won 84 games and captured a wild-card spot.
“For us, really, a no-brainer,” Hall said. “We’ve loved the direction that Mike has taken us. He and his team have put us in, obviously, a good spot. And it’s something we’ve been building. When we first hired Mike in ‘17, one of the top priorities then was, ‘Let’s fix the farm system.’ And we went from a bottom five to a top five in quick fashion. And at the same time he was also building what we were hoping would be a very sustainable model.
“We’re thrilled with the job that he’s done and with his leadership. And things have been very smooth. I’m excited he wanted to be here.”
For a six-year stretch, the Diamondbacks shuffled through more general managers than any team in baseball, going from Josh Byrnes to Kevin Towers to the Tony La Russa/Dave Stewart regime. If Hazen were to remain in place throughout his new contract, it would be 13 years on the job come 2029.
The longest-tenured GM in club history was its first, Joe Garagiola Jr., who held the position for eight seasons, not counting several years working for the club before its inaugural season. This was Hazen’s seventh season.
“The stability has been great,” Hall said. “It’s been a breath of fresh air for the organization and for our entire leadership team to know that they have the same baseball leadership and place.
“… It doesn’t make sense to continue making changes when you like the direction where you’re heading. And we certainly like the prospects that we have in the organization. We like the results we’ve had the last couple of years.”