2025 Arizona Diamondbacks Review: #18 Torey Lovullo

Rating: 6.00

Date of birth: July 25, 1965

2025 stats: 80-82

2025 salary: A reported $5 million

2026 status: Possibly the hottest seat in the Majors

Torey Lovullo is the longest tenured manager in Diamondbacks history, and it isn’t even close. His nine seasons are nearly double that of the next closest, Bob Melvin, and then after that the length of terms just gets even shorter. In part, that’s been due to success he’s had here. His current three year extension that he is working through came about as a direct result of him managing an overperforming team to Game 5 of the World Series. In another part, it’s because of a softer, less reactionary side of Ken Kendrick we’ve seen over the past decade than we’d seen in the decade before. An owner more willing to trust the process than throw it all out and start over at the first inconvenience. That combines to a manager who is not just the longest tenured manager in team history, but currently the second longest tenured manager in the sport.

As we all know, there were astronomical expectations for the Diamondbacks going into the season, and Lovullo’s job transitioned from the task of developing young players to directing stars and getting their highest potential out of them. It marked a stark difference than his role had been for most, if not all, of his time on the top step of the Chase Field dugout, and it remained to be seen how he would adapt to the change. With a team anchored by the likes of Burnes, Gallen, Marte, and Carroll, it was undeniably different.

We all know how that worked out, though. The injuries started piling up almost immediately. Jordan Montgomery didn’t throw a single regular season pitch for the Diamondbacks. AJ Puk barely made it three weeks into the season before needing Tommy John. Burnes and Martinez followed about six weeks later. Ketel Marte missed the first month of the season with yet another hamstring injury.

Then you throw in the players that were just ineffective. Gallen looked less like a Cy Young candidate and more like the worst qualified pitcher in baseball (by ERA). Brandon Pfaadt did not live up to his preseason extension in any way, shape, or form. All around it was a mess.

This lead to a team that famously limped to the trade deadline. They were mired in a five game losing streak, twelve games behind in the NL West. More damningly, they were nine games behind in the Wild Card. Expectations of waltzing to the postseason, rampant in Spring Training, were long gone. Hazen was left with no choice but to sell everyone that didn’t have control past the end of this season. Suarez, Naylor, Kelly, Grichuk, Miller (as a salary dump of Jordon Montgomery), all gone. The moves of Miller and Kelly were especially tough, as it was selling from a position of weakness. The already taxed depth of the bullpen and rotation would have to be stretched even further, all but guaranteeing the end of the season. Fans were understandably upset, but it was the responsible thing for Hazen to do.

Then something wildly unexpected happened. The team… started winning. July saw them secure a .360 winning percentage. August? It jumped all the way up to .586, among the best in baseball. It is an endless debate in baseball, how much impact a manager has on a team, but personally, I believe that their biggest impact is on the motivation and drive of the team, rather than the on field, which was completely on display during the stretch run of the Diamondbacks season. A boss tells people what to do. A leader pushes them and along side them to make it happen. In recovering the Diamondbacks season to not just watchable, but very nearly playoff bound, Lovullo did exactly that.

It was a masterclass of motivation, changing management styles, and addressing difficult conversations and realities with those he was managing. We saw a Lovullo who was much more outspoken in defending his positions and even publicly pushing back on the assumptions that some of those decisions were his in the first place. He fought for his team to the media, and he pushed them to live up to those standards behind closed clubhouse doors.

I know that the sentiments that I’m sharing here are not universally agreed upon in the Diamondbacks fanbase. There is a very vocal minority that will settle for little less than Lovullo served up to the baseball gods on a silver platter in penance for his perceived sins. However, in the modern game, the manager has become the face of upper management in the clubhouse and just one of several voices at the decision making table. Long gone are the days of fully autonomous managers doing whatever they please with player management and in game decisions, and in that context, I’m not sure there is a manager I’d trust more with the role than Torey Lovullo.

2026 Outlook

All that said, his outlook is murky at best. As I said before, it is a far gentler Ken Kendrick than we’ve known before, and many of the teams struggles can be explained away by issues outside of their direct control. Some of them can even be laid directly at Ken Kendrick’s feet *cough* Jordan Montgomery *cough*. But patience always runs out and eventually something, even if it is more symbolic than anything, needs to be done. Ken Kendrick, the Diamondbacks, and Torey Lovullo may be shortly reaching that point.

As it stands right now, the team is going to start the season already hampered by injuries, with a less than stellar starting rotation, and a bullpen that is currently even murkier than Lovullo’s future. That does not matter. If anything is clear, it’s that Lovullo needs to continue the motivation, management, and leadership that lead to the post-deadline Diamondbacks overperforming and bring that same energy to the start of next season. I won’t try to guess what the deadlines are, or what the winning percentage needs to be at that point in the season for Lovullo to keep his job. I will say it seems pretty certain they exist, though, and because of that I don’t believe that anyone in the sport is going to go into the season with less job security that the Arizona skipper.