NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DIAMONDBACKS VS PHILLIES

October 15, 2023

Michael Hazen

Citizens Bank Park

Arizona Diamondbacks

Workout Day Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We can start with Mike Hazen.

Q. When you guys were kind of going through that little slump at the end of the year, the four games before heading into the playoffs, could you have envisioned that the switch getting flipped quite the way it did? I know you still expect your guys to be successful, but to just kind of roll the way you have.

MIKE HAZEN: We've played like this throughout the season. We've had fits and starts at times where we've -- the first three months of the season we were one of the better offenses in all of baseball, and then went through a little bit of a lull. Certainly picked it back up near the end, but yeah, that last -- the last four games, we didn't swing the bats well at all.

It's been good to see. I think our approach has sort of 180'ed. We're doing a good job of getting good pitches to hit, and we're not missing and starting to drive the ball quite a bit.

It's definitely been a big piece to why we're standing here today, for sure, is the offense has turned around.

Q. You may have just answered it. I was going to say what do you make of all the power? I know you have guys that can leave the park, but at the rate that they've been doing it is wild.

MIKE HAZEN: We're getting good pitches to hit. I think during that period in July and August, we weren't impacting the balls that we should have been on a consistent basis. I think we had quite a few home runs going up through that period in the middle of the season, and then I think the dry spell was more that than anything.

Q. It's impossible to be perfect even for a baseball team, but are there things you would like to see this team either improving upon or things you saw in the regular season that still maybe haven't carried over to the postseason that you think can take them even to a higher level?

MIKE HAZEN: Yeah, there's nothing we're not doing. There's nothing that I would say from a criticism standpoint or being critical of the way we're playing. I think the style with which -- I mean, if the offensive power output doesn't continue at the rate it is, we're going to still need to be able to do the things that we've done well during the course of the season, which is get on base and run and create problems on the bases.

Q. To the casual fan I'm sure they think Tommy Pham, the thing that went on and off the field with him most recently with fantasy football and all of that. When you are going to pick a guy up like that, what kind of due diligence do you have to do, because that was a very public thing.

MIKE HAZEN: We asked a lot of questions. We asked a lot of questions of players in clubhouses that he has been on, teammates, staff members, and what you got back didn't align with what you may have seen publicly.

We were told how hard he worked, how obsessed he was with being good in his practice every day. I think our team is fairly serious under the hood. I think we work really hard. We have a good young group of guys that do that, so we felt like that was going to be a really good match, and it has been a great match.

Q. I know it's way too early to evaluate a trade this early, but it seems like without the Gabi Moreno, Lourdes Gurriel trade, you might not be here at this point today. Just curious your thoughts on that in retrospect.

MIKE HAZEN: I think that trade is still a win for both sides honestly. Daulton Varsho is an elite defensive player. He has power. Gabi has had a fantastic season. So has Lourdes. Would we be here without them? No. Because Carson Kelly went down for the first eight weeks of the season. I don't know where we would have been standing from a catching standpoint. If we'd done that, we wouldn't have got a starting catcher. We probably would have acquired somebody else in the off season.

And then Gabi has done a really good job shutting down the running game. I think with the new rules that became a big deal for us being able to shut down the running game.

Q. I wonder if you can go back to the 2019 draft two picks apart: Stott and Carroll. What were the conversations like around that time? I wonder to what extent was Stott on your board at one point?

MIKE HAZEN: We love Bryson Stott. Yeah. I mean, that added to the best walk-up song in baseball, I think. The guy gets where he plays, you know? He gives the people what they want with that song.

We love both players. We were on Bryson very early. We loved the way he played the game. We had Corbin a little ahead of him, but I know they were neck and neck, and we were hoping one of them was going to get to us at the time when it happened, yeah.

Q. The TV cameras caught you at the end of the last game going crazy up there. Just what was the feeling like to get to this point?

MIKE HAZEN: We won a playoff series. I mean, if they want me to, you know -- I don't know. You win a playoff series in this league -- we haven't been to the playoffs in six years. There's been a lot of hard work, a lot of stuff that's been lived through, a lot of effort by manager, coaches, players to get to that point.

The Dodgers have wiped the floor with us for six straight years. Yeah, being able to beat them, there's no -- there wasn't an added satisfaction. Winning the playoff series was the added satisfaction. But one of the things that I feel like I'm trying to learn -- I've never been good at this -- is enjoying and appreciating certain moments that you have in your life that I don't think I was very good at before.

So, yeah, if we win games at home, I'm going to jump in the pool four times.

Q. The moment before the game with your kids throwing out the first pitch, what was that like for you to watch?

MIKE HAZEN: Incredible, incredible. You know, we were such a baseball family, like the Diamondbacks meant so much to her. The Red Sox before that, the Indians before that. And it wasn't necessarily because of baseball. It was because of how much it meant to me and to our kids.

So to watch them sort of have that moment, you know, where the one thing that Nicole said to me as she was dying was she didn't want to be forgotten. We can all understand that feeling. Time moves on. Everybody knows what happens. She didn't want to be forgotten.

That moment gave us another opportunity to talk about her, and what I'm most appreciative is when Ken and Derrick asked if that would be okay. That's what I'm most appreciative of is we got another chance to talk about her.

Q. What is your impression of how close these players are and how important do you think that is to going on a deep run like this?

MIKE HAZEN: Yeah. I think a lot of them have come up together. We have some experience with that in other places of watching some of the kids come up together, develop together.

I think it means a lot. I do. I think it matters. I think in the moments in the postseason when the anxiety rachets up, when everything matters a little bit more, I think the trust around and playing for and with the people that you love in your clubhouse, I do. I don't know. I can't objectively prove that, but it feels that way.

This is a very close clubhouse, and it's an enjoyable team to be around. Not just because they're good people, but they work so hard, they're passionate about this. The guys like Tommy and Longo and C. Walk, it's a good group of guys to be able to feel good about the success that they're having.

Q. When you guys lost 110 games two years ago, was there any apprehension that, boy, we're not heading in the right direction or could you even envision being in this spot two years later?

MIKE HAZEN: Yeah, there was a lot of apprehension around that. Yeah, you don't lose 110 games by accident.

I think the biggest piece, and Nick and Steve and I have talked about this a lot, the biggest misinformation around that, we weren't tanking that season. We weren't trying to lose. We were trying to win.

I felt we put a team out there that had a chance to compete. So we didn't just lose 110 games. We weren't doing it on purpose either.

Yeah, that was a long offseason. That was a long offseason. We knew we had the formation of some good players in the Minor League system. But we've all been through this before. Players come up through your system. You never know how they're going to move on to this stage and how they're going to perform when they get there.

It's satisfying to be here in this moment to this point. We have a lot of work left to do. Our goal is to win the World Series. That's been our goal since day one. I know it hasn't always looked the brightest for us, but yeah, it's satisfying to be playing in the middle of October when the alternative is being at home.

Q. Thinking back to after that season, what was your pitch to Strommy to come out of retirement to join 110-loss team?

MIKE HAZEN: It wasn't a huge pitch. I think he obviously has the fire. He is as intense as anybody we have.

I think the motivation, we had a lot of the younger pitchers around. I think he was excited about that. I think he had that when he was in Houston at one point, and then that team developed into sort of an older club. I think they first started out, it was a young team that they kind of brought along, and I think he saw some of that in us. But you have to ask him that question.

Q. Is this what you envision his impact being on the pitching staff? I know it isn't 100 percent to where you want it to be, but certain pieces.

MIKE HAZEN: Given the fact that I handed him three rookie starters for the majority of the season, to see our pitching getting us to this point, I feel pretty good about where our pitching is.

Q. Catching position is probably the hardest to quantify the intangibles on a spreadsheet or a box score. When you went out and traded for Gabi Moreno over the offseason, what were some of the things about him that made you feel comfortable going and acquiring a catcher that maybe you didn't have a whole lot of experience with?

MIKE HAZEN: I'm not sure I can honestly tell you that in retrospect that we had those -- all those boxes checked. You do your due diligence. You ask a lot of questions. You try to figure it out. Not just a young player, but a young player at the hardest position in baseball.

There's a lot of unknowns there. We knew he could really throw. We knew his makeup. We knew he could block. How the game-calling has come and matured and moved along, I don't know. Nobody knows those things. I just don't.

It's through good coaching, I think. A lot of the work, a lot of the preparation that we do is not just for preparing the pitcher. It's preparing the catcher. He works hard at what we need him to work hard at, and he has improved tremendously.

You hope that's what the outcome is going to be. That's why I think you acquire the makeup that you acquire in the hopes that that's part of what comes along, and he is a smart kid. Yeah, like I said, we probably wouldn't be here without him.

Q. I know you guys made a difficult decision at one point in the year to send down Kevin Ginkel. Just curious how he has emerged in the second half of the season.

MIKE HAZEN: We've sent down our entire roster at some point during the season. It's not what you hope to have happen, but we got to that point.

I mean, some of the guys that you are proud of -- Kevin, we sent down our All-Star from 2022 in the middle of the season with zero complaints, full accountability. We sent down our starting center fielder, full accountability. And that's what you are proud of to see them now standing on this stage and having success.

Without Joe, without Kevin in our bullpen, I don't know how we navigate through those last five games. They were so good for us.

Q. What were the greatest impacts that you picked up from Dave Dombrowski the years you worked with him in Boston?

MIKE HAZEN: He rarely misses when he goes and acquires big game players. And, yeah, I don't maybe have the ability at all times to go, you know, map out a roster, but he puts star players on his rosters, and they come and they perform. He's done that everywhere he has gone.

I think at times some of us can get caught up, myself included, in what's the plan for now and what's the plan for tomorrow, which we're responsible for for sure. Not taking a season for granted and pushing into your team even when things aren't going great, that's probably one of the biggest take-aways I have. And the fervor for which he goes after being in this position.

And I think he's one of the best executives in all of baseball for a reason, and he has done it with, I don't know -- we're on team number four now, team number five. I lost count. But he does a really good job.

Q. This run some people said might have been a year ahead of schedule, but hopefully it was always going to be a run fuel fueled by young players you drafted and developed. One of them, Jordan Lawlar, his role right now in this postseason hasn't been one as a starting one. Whenever this postseason comes to an end and you have those conversations with him, what do you hope he takes away from this and the expectations from him certainly moving forward as you hope to come back here year after year?

MIKE HAZEN: I hope all the young players are absorbing this. I hope the young players are appreciating that this doesn't come around all the time, that it takes a lot to get here, it takes a lot of things going well for you to get here. It takes your team playing well at the right time for you to get here.

I hope that watching what our good players are doing in these moments that you're going to learn from. He's going to have a chance I think at some point in the next few games to make an impact somewhere, somehow, and hope that he is ready. He will be. He's going to be a big part of what we're doing now and in the future.