Passan: Why the D-backs belong in the World Series
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
IN THE SEVENTH inning of the game in which the team he built clinched a World Series berth, Mike Hazen repaired to the visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park and sequestered himself in the manager’s office. Hazen, the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ general manager for the last seven years, bebopped around the room — sitting in a chair, squatting on the toilet, standing in the shower of the bathroom with the lights turned off. His nerves were fricasseed; he couldn’t bear to watch the game play out on the field. Instead, he was watching the crowning moment of his career on a 5-inch cellphone screen.
Typically, Hazen’s neuroses don’t prompt him to forsake the live view for a delayed TV feed until the ninth inning. “Got a lot of ninth-inning scar tissue,” Hazen said, a nod at the Diamondbacks’ major league-high nine blown leads in the ninth inning this season. But the gravity of everything in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series overwhelmed him to the point that he needed to seclude himself two innings early — even wearing a pair of noise-canceling headphones to drown out the crowd noise that would spoil his streamed feed.
Yes, it had taken seven years of hard work, but it somehow still felt like it was all happening so fast. Over the last year, Hazen has adjusted to life without his wife, Nicole, who died in August 2022 after fighting glioblastoma for more than two years. His team spent most of the first half of the season atop the National League West division, then cratered in July and bottomed out after a nine-game losing streak left it at 57-59 on Aug. 11. All of this — backing into the playoffs as the final wild-card team with 84 wins, ousting Milwaukee in the wild-card round, sweeping the NL West champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the division series and now, as he witnessed from manager Torey Lovullo’s office, coming to Philadelphia down 3-2 in the NLCS and beating the Phillies in Games 6 and 7 — blindsided him.
“I didn’t really even anticipate us getting to this moment,” Hazen said after the clinch. “We’re not preparing for the offseason, we’re not having meetings. I am stressing and walking the streets of Philadelphia. It’s the end of October, and we’re still playing baseball. That’s what I think about every day when I wake up — and we have at least four more baseball games to go.”
The most improbable World Series ever starts Friday in Arlington, Texas, when the Diamondbacks face the American League champion Texas Rangers, who themselves snuck into the postseason at 90-72. Two years ago, Arizona tied for the worst record in baseball at 52-110, and the Rangers, with a 60-102 record, weren’t much better. This would be the Diamondbacks’ second title, after they won their only other appearance in 2001; Texas has never won a championship in its 63 years of existence. But put pedigree and record aside: This is a pair of teams that make up in quality what they lack in other areas.
Texas, at least, was acting like a team with World Series aspirations. General manager Chris Young arranged a squad of stars, complemented them with talent from Texas’ robust farm system and supplemented them with aggressive acquisitions at the trade deadline. Despite their roundabout journey to this week — backing into a wild-card round, dropping three straight games to the Astros at home in the American League Championship Series — the Rangers found their power stroke in the postseason and followed a tried-and-true October formula: ball go far, team go far. The Diamondbacks are the bigger surprise.
And yet they are not to be discounted. These are not the Diamondbacks of August, whose ninth-inning foibles brought out the irrational in Hazen. They stomped the Brewers, embarrassed the Dodgers and went toe-to-toe with the Phillies — then razed them, too. Arizona embraced a nobody-believes-in-us mantra because it’s true that nobody believed they could find themselves here. For all the consternation about the best regular-season teams missing from the 119th World Series, about this matchup of wild-card teams that happened to save their best baseball for October, it’s advisable to avoid falling into that trap.
So much of the attention paid to the Diamondbacks concerns what they aren’t. Maybe it’s time to focus on what they are.
“WE PLAY THE right brand of baseball,” Diamondbacks outfielder Jake McCarthy said, and by the right brand, he means something very specific: Arizona plays like a team from the 1980s that has time traveled to 2023.
The Diamondbacks are not immune to some modern flourishes of the game — they regularly pull their starting pitchers around when the opposing lineup turns over for the third time — but otherwise, McCarthy is right. They do not rely on home runs. They value excellent defense. They steal bases and take extra ones at will. They bunt, for crying out loud. They operate with an attention to detail that forces opponents to make plays and punishes them if they don’t.
“We play old-school baseball,” Arizona setup man Kevin Ginkel said. “Everyone else wants to slug, everybody else wants to punch out tickets. We do it a little differently. We run the bases really well. Play really good defense. Focus on bunts, bunt defense. And everybody takes accountability for that. That’s a credit to our coaching. That’s a credit to the leadership. That’s a credit to everybody, because we take pride in it. And it’s just one of those things where everybody cares. It’s not what’s going to get you on the highlight reel, but when it comes to crunch time and winning baseball games, we do it.”
Stitching together a roster of 26 players who embrace this philosophy took efforts from all corners of the organization and came together over the course of years. Star rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll and rookie right-hander Brandon Pfaadt, who started Game 7, came via the draft in 2019 and 2020, respectively. NLCS MVP Ketel Marte (in 2016, Hazen’s first major acquisition), ace Zac Gallen (in 2019) and 23-year-old catcher Gabi Moreno (in 2022) arrived in trades. First baseman Christian Walker joined Arizona as a waiver claim after being dumped by three teams in spring training six years ago. Game 2 starter Merrill Kelly was signed in 2018 after playing in Korea for four years. Shortstop Geraldo Perdomo signed at 16 out of the Dominican Republic. The only free agent signings from last winter on Arizona’s roster are veteran Evan Longoria and reliever Miguel Castro.
Not until late August, however, did Arizona find the version of itself that’s been on display all October. On Aug. 27, Ryan Thompson, a 31-year-old sidearmer whose sinker lives around 91 mph — about 3 mph slower than the average big-league fastball, something common on a Diamondbacks team that ranked 28th of 30 teams in fastball velocity this year — pitched a scoreless inning less than a week after Arizona signed him to a minor league deal. He had gone through waivers unclaimed by every team before Tampa Bay released him and the Diamondbacks, desperate for bullpen help, took a flier.
He threw 5.2 sterling innings in the NLCS, paving the way for Paul Sewald, the indomitable closer Arizona acquired from Seattle at the trade deadline, who has allowed three baserunners in eight scoreless innings this postseason. Along with Ginkel’s nine shutout innings, the trio has transformed Arizona’s bullpen from Hazen’s recurring nightmare into a placid dream.
The bullpen saved the Diamondbacks’ season, as they eked out a pair of one-run victories in Games 3 and 4 to send the series back to Philadelphia, where they rediscovered an identity that had temporarily gone missing. Over the first five games of the series, the Diamondbacks stole only one base, a far cry from their serial thievery — 166 bases, the second most in MLB — during the regular season. Then they stole eight in the last two games of the NLCS, their desire to run a constant burr in the side of Phillies pitchers.
It speaks to adjustments that reveal Arizona’s game-planning expertise. While Phillies manager Rob Thomson stuck with the same lineup for all seven games and their starting pitchers did the same with their pitch arsenals, Arizona tweaked and tinkered, trying to exploit deficiencies in Philadelphia’s vaunted lineup.
Arizona’s pitching room is loaded with keen and curious minds, from pitching coach Brent Strom to Dan Haren, a three-time All-Star who serves as a pitching strategist. As the NLCS went on, Kelly and Pfaadt particularly relied far less on the four-seam fastballs that Phillies batters were hunting. Kelly’s six-pitch mix has always vexed hitters, and he used that to his advantage in his second appearance: The changeup he threw more than any pitch in Game 2 was his fourth most used offering in Game 6. Pfaadt went from 32 four-seamers in Game 3 to half that in Game 7, throwing as many sinkers as heaters and unfurling more sweepers than both.
That sort of attention to detail embodies the Diamondbacks’ approach. If their roster doesn’t suit the pervasive style of baseball played these days, they figure out how the information analytics offers can best suit them. It’s the sort of pragmatism perhaps best seen in something as simple as defense. When a team’s offense lacks the firepower to homer its way to wins, the little things matter exponentially more. So from the beginning of spring training, Lovullo preached the import of playing clean baseball. The message took.
Arizona committed just 56 errors, the second fewest of any team in baseball history.
Defense, bullpen, a focus on the little things: This is how a team that homers only five times in the LCS — one-third of the 15 Texas hit on the other side of the bracket — gets to the World Series.
IN MID-AUGUST, smack in the middle of that second-half swoon, some Diamondbacks players gathered around Dave McKay, the team’s first-base coach, for story time. Toward the end of the 2006 season, when he was coaching in St. Louis, the Cardinals lost seven consecutive games. They finished the season 83-78. And over the next month, they beat one division champion (San Diego), conquered another in seven games (New York) and went on to win the World Series. The 2006 Cardinals are the only team with fewer than 84 wins to capture a championship.
“The beauty of a World Series and playoffs is it’s not always the best team that wins,” said McKay, in his 40th year as a coach. “I’ve been to six World Series. Two we should’ve won and lost. Two we should’ve lost and won. It’s just about whoever plays better.”
To be sure, the Rangers are a force. It’s not just their home run power. Game 1 starter Nathan Eovaldi and expected Game 2 starter Jordan Montgomery have owned October. During the regular season, Texas was extraordinary in the field, too, committing just one more error than Arizona. Like the Diamondbacks, the Rangers are far more formidable than their record would indicate.
Consider the Diamondbacks nonplussed. They respect the Rangers, of course — they, too, saw Adolis Garcia single-handedly mash as many home runs in the ALCS as all the Diamondbacks did in the NLCS. Knowing the depth of Texas’ lineup and that future Hall of Fame manager Bruce Bochy is at the helm, the Diamondbacks recognize they can’t rest on what they’ve done. All that matters in October is what you do next.
They also feel prepared for that challenge, in large part because of what this month has already given them. For Carroll and Moreno and Perdomo and Pfaadt, it’s an education. For Gallen and Kelly and Marte and Tommy Pham, the outfielder acquired at the trade deadline who radiates intensity, it’s validation. For Hazen, even with the agita of ninth innings, it’s comfort.
Before Game 7 started, Lovullo walked by his office and saw Hazen sitting with Mike Fitzgerald, a Diamondbacks assistant GM. A few minutes before the most important game of any of their lives, Lovullo poked his head in to speak with them.
“No matter what happens today,” Lovullo said, “I love you guys.”
Who are the Arizona Diamondbacks? They’re a team that knows how lucky it is to be in the World Series. And one that earned it, too.
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Bradford Doolittle
Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese-born player to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous selection, and he’ll be joined in the Class of 2025 by starting pitcher CC Sabathia and closer Billy Wagner.
Suzuki, who got 393 of 394 votes in balloting of the Baseball Writers Association of America, would have joined Yankees great Mariano Rivera (2019) as the only unanimous selections. Instead, Suzuki’s 99.746% of the vote is second only to Derek Jeter’s 99.748% (396 of 397 ballots cast in 2020) as the highest plurality for a position player in Hall of Fame voting, per the BBWAA.
“There was a time when I didn’t even get a chance to play in the MLB,” Suzuki told MLB TV. “So what an honor it is to be for me to be here and be a Hall of Famer.”
Suzuki collected 2,542 of his 3,089 career hits as a member of the Seattle Mariners. Before that, he collected 1,278 hits in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan, giving him more overall hits (4,367) than Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time leader.
Suzuki did not debut in MLB until he was 27 years old, but he exploded on the scene in 2001 by winning Rookie of the Year and MVP honors in his first season, leading Seattle to a record-tying 116 regular-season wins.
Suzuki and Sabathia finished first and second in 2001 voting for American League Rookie of the year and later were teammates for two seasons with the Yankees.
Sabathia, who won 251 career games, was also on the ballot for the first time. He was the 2007 AL Cy Young winner while with Cleveland and a six-time All-Star. His 3,093 career strikeouts make him one of 19 members of the 3,000-strikeout club. He was named on 86.8% of the ballots
Wagner’s 422 career saves — 225 of which came with the Houston Astros — are the eighth-most in big league history. His selection comes in his 10th and final appearance on the BBWAA ballot, earning 82.5% for the seven-time All-Star.
Just falling short in the balloting was outfielder Carlos Beltran, who was named on 70.3% of ballots, shy of the 75% threshold necessary for election.
Beltran won 1999 AL Rookie of the Year honors while with Kansas City. He went on to make nine All-Star teams and become one of five players in history with at least 400 homers and 300 stolen bases.
A key member and clubhouse leader of the controversial 2017 World Series champion Astros, whose legacy was tainted by a sign-stealing scandal, Beltran’s selection would have bode well for other members of that squad who will be under consideration in the years to come.
Also coming up short was 10-time Gold Glove outfielder Andruw Jones, who was named on 76.2% of the ballots. Jones saw an uptick from last year’s total (61.6%) and still has two more years of ballot eligibility remaining.
PED-associated players on the ballot didn’t make much headway in the balloting. Alex Rodriguez finished with 37.1%, while Manny Ramirez was at 34.3%.
The three BBWAA electees will join Dick Allen and Dave Parker, who were selected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee in December, in being honored at the induction ceremony on July 27 at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, New York.
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Ryan McGee
ATLANTA — The 2025 edition of the College Football Playoff National Championship game was not about vengeance. It wasn’t about proving people wrong. Nor was it about wadding up a scarlet and gray rag and stuffing it directly into the mouths of the chorale of outside noise.
Bless their hearts, that’s what the Ohio State football team and coaching staff kept telling us. That beating Notre Dame on Monday night and winning the school’s first national title in a decade wasn’t about any of that stuff.
But yeah, it totally was.
“We worked really hard to tune out the outside noise, truly,” confessed Ohio State quarterback Will Howard, words spoken on the field moments after having a national champions T-shirt pulled over his shoulders and punctuated by slaps to those shoulders from his current teammates as well as Buckeyes of days gone by. “But outside noise can also be a great way to bring a team together. You close the doors to the locker room to lock all that out, bunker down together and go to work. That’s what it did for us. I think anyone on this team will tell you that.”
Well, now they will. Finally.
The “it’s not about that” mantra was what the Buckeyes kept repeating, in unison, beginning way back in the summer weeks leading into a campaign when they were voted No. 2 in the nation in both preseason polls. Those expectations were earned in no small part because of a much-hyped offseason, powered by an NIL shopping spree worth $20 million, according to athletic director Ross Bjork, to lure transfers from around the nation.
We were told that, no, it wasn’t about those players justifying their decisions to change teams. Like Howard, who came to Ohio State from Kansas State, and running back Quinshon Judkins, who became a Buckeye after carrying the football at Ole Miss. Both are still viewed as traitors by many at the places they departed. But no, it was never about sending a message that they were right to pack up and move to Columbus.
Yeah, right.
“When people asked me why I left Ole Miss to come here, my answer was always the same: To go somewhere that I could win a national championship,” said Judkins, who scored three of Ohio State’s four touchdowns against the Fighting Irish. He grew up one state over from the site of the CFP title game, 270 miles away in Montgomery, Alabama. “Now, that championship has happened. And I’m not going to lie: To do it back here in the South, in Atlanta, in front of so many people who have known about me all the way back to high school, that makes it even more special.”
We were told that, no, it wasn’t about the all-star coaching staff, including offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, who once served as head coach with the Oregon Ducks, Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers and left the same gig at UCLA to take a demotion at Ohio State. In no way was this winter about proving that Kelly hadn’t lost the edge that once had him hailed as a mastermind of modern football offenses.
Um, OK.
“For me, it feels good to have fun again,” said Kelly, 61, flashing a face-splitter grin rarely seen during his NFL and UCLA tenures. Buckeyes coach Ryan Day, 45, is a Kelly protégé, having been coached by Kelly as a New Hampshire player. Kelly’s playcalling that has been a CFP bulldozer scored touchdowns on Ohio State’s first four drives. “I never forgot how to coach. But maybe I forgot how to have fun at the job.”
“I know this,” Kelly added, laughing. “It’s a lot more fun when you’re moving the football and winning.”
And, man, we were told so many times that in no way was this season or postseason about hitting a reset button on the perception of Day, in his sixth season as the leader of an Ohio State football program that is second to none when it comes to pride but also exceeded by none when it comes to pressure. Day dipped deep from that “Guys, it’s not about me” well on the evening of Nov. 30, after his fourth straight regular-season defeat at the hands of arch nemesis Michigan. When the Buckeyes were awarded an at-large berth in the newly expanded 12-team CFP, he once again implored to anyone who would listen that the narrative of his team’s postseason should be about its destiny rather than the future of the coach.
For a month of CFP games and days, all the way up until Monday’s kickoff, Day reminded us all that none of this was about him. Even though a security detail was assigned to his home in Columbus ever since the Michigan game. Even as the internet was aflame with posts about his job security and memes questioning his choice of beard dyes. Even as, in the days leading into the title game, his wife opened up to a Columbus TV station about the family’s dealings with death threats.
And even as, during the championship game itself, Ohio State’s seemingly insurmountable lead shrank from 31-7 midway through the third quarter to a scant eight points in the closing minutes.
But as the clock finally hit zeroes and the scoreboard read “Ohio State 34, Notre Dame 23” with OSU-colored confetti raining down over the Buckeyes’ heads, the story — as told by the team itself — was indeed suddenly about Day, and his staff, and his players, and their shared personification of the T-shirts and flags worn by so many of their supporters among the 77,660 in attendance: “OHIO AGAINST THE WORLD.”
Even if, for them, sometimes Ohio’s flagship football team found itself up against a not-insignificant percentage of Ohio itself, including the folks who refused to attend the CFP opener in Columbus because they were still mad about the Michigan defeat and no doubt will still consider this natty as having an asterisk because of that same loss.
Because for all of Day & Co.’s talk of this not being about revenge, the truth was revealed on their postgame faces. Their shared expressions of restraint, the ones we’d seen all fall, were instantly replaced by a collective look of relief. Their frowns washed away by Gatorade dumps, revealing the smiles of men who had indeed just sent a message and were finally willing to admit that had been their motivation all along.
You only had to ask. Because, finally, they would answer.
“I feel like, from the start of this thing, we were knocking on the door. But you have to find a way to break through and make it to where we are right now,” said Day, no longer stiff-arming the question but definitely still working to stifle his emotion. “In this day and age, there’s so much noise. Social media. People have to write articles. But when you sign up for this job, when you agree to coach at Ohio State, that’s part of the job.
“I’m a grown-up. I can take it. But the hard part is your family having to live with it. The players you bring in, them having to live with it. Their families. In the end, that’s how you build a football family. Take the stuff that people want to use to tear you apart and try to turn that into something that makes you closer.”
For 3 hours and 20 minutes, the Buckeyes pushed back on Notre Dame with both hands. They also pushed back on those would-be team destroyers and head coach firers. When it was over, they extended one finger in the direction of those same haters. It wasn’t a middle finger, but it was close. It was the finger that soon will be fitted for a national championship ring.
“Ohio State might not be for everybody,” Day added, smiling once again. “But it’s certainly for these guys.”
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Max Olson
Ohio State transfer quarterback Devin Brown has signed with Cal, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
After winning a national championship with the Buckeyes on Monday night, Ohio State’s No. 2 quarterback is seeking an opportunity to start and will move on to join the Golden Bears. Brown has two more seasons of eligibility.
Brown entered the NCAA transfer portal on Dec. 9 but remained with the team during their College Football Playoff run.
The redshirt sophomore was the No. 81 overall recruit in the ESPN 300 for 2022 and lost a competition with Kyle McCord for Ohio State’s starting job entering the 2023 season. This season, Brown appeared in nine games while backing up Will Howard.
Brown threw for 331 yards with three touchdowns and one interception on 56% passing and rushed for 37 yards and one score over three seasons at Ohio State. He earned one start in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic at the end of the 2023 season but exited with an ankle injury in a 14-3 loss to Missouri.
After losing to the Tigers, Ohio State coach Ryan Day brought in Howard, a Kansas State transfer who guided the program to its first College Football Playoff national championship since 2014. Howard earned offensive MVP honors in the Buckeyes’ 34-23 title game victory over Notre Dame after competing 17-of-21 passes for 231 yards and two touchdowns.
The Buckeyes are losing Howard, Brown and freshman backup Air Noland, who transferred to South Carolina, as they begin preparations to defend their national title in 2025. Julian Sayin, a former five-star recruit, is expected to be the frontrunner in the Buckeyes’ quarterback competition entering his redshirt freshman season.
Brown is joining a Cal team coming off a 6-7 run through its first year in the ACC that must replace starter Fernando Mendoza, who transferred to Indiana. Brown will compete with touted incoming freshman Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, who joined the program after a brief stint at Oregon.
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