The 84-win Diamondbacks ‘love proving naysayers wrong’ en route to pennant

Booze was literally dripping from the ceiling of the visitors’ clubhouse late Tuesday night as General Manager Mike Hazen tried to put into words what his Diamondbacks team had just accomplished. It was an already difficult task made harder by the constant stream of players dousing him in Budweiser.

“It blows my mind,” Hazen said. “It probably blows a lot of people’s minds, quite frankly.”

That it does. The Diamondbacks won a paltry 84 games during the regular season, but after winning Game 7 of the National League Championship Series on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, they are headed to the second World Series in franchise history, an outcome that has led to no small amount of hang-wringing from fans and commentators.

That the Diamondbacks are still standing while 100-win clubs in both leagues have long since gone home has drawn complaints about their viability as a playoff team and, by extension, about baseball’s postseason format.

For some, it is sacrilege that a sport that for decades has weeded out also-rans through a marathon regular season is now letting so many clubs into the postseason sprint.

This is not entirely new. Divisional play has been around since 1969, and the advent of the wild card in 1995 further expanded the playoff field. But with six clubs from each league now advancing to October, the potential for things to get weird has never been greater.

Most with the Diamondbacks do not seem as if they could care less. Manager Torey Lovullo pointed to the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, a World Series-winning team that won 83 games during the regular season, and suggested that most people — himself included — remember how a team performs in October, not how it got there.

Lovullo said he had forgotten about that club’s win total until it was mentioned by Diamondbacks first-base coach Dave McKay, who coached for the Cardinals at the time. Lovullo also brought up the 1987 Minnesota Twins, an 85-win regular season team that won a title.

“I would have never know that (the Cardinals) won 83 games, but I did know that they won two world championships while Tony La Russa was there,” Lovullo said. “They’re hanging banners in their stadiums. That’s all that we think about. That’s all that anybody plays for.”

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The expanded playoff field is viewed as a sort of equalizer for smaller-market teams like the Diamondbacks. Baseball does not have a salary cap, often leading to massive payroll disparity, and the additional points of entry are meant to create more interest in more markets throughout a season.

“Playoff baseball is the best part of the entire season,” Hazen said. “Pennant-race baseball is the best part of the entire season. And having more teams competing deeper into the season, I think, is good for the game. I think that’s what fans want to see. They want to see their teams being competitive.”

The Miami Marlins, another 84-win club that claimed a wild-card this year, were buyers at the deadline despite being 12 1/2 games back of the first-place Atlanta Braves in the NL East on Aug. 1. That would not happen without the wild card.

The Diamondbacks, who twice in club history have won more than 84 games while failing to make the playoffs, believe they are better than their record would suggest, arguing that were it not for an ugly stretch in July and August they would have won far more games.

“We’re a good team,” right-hander Zac Gallen said. “I mean, we were a team that was on pace to win 100 games in the first half of the year. Why is that any different than a team that’s playing now?”

Of course, winning 100 games and being “on pace” to do so are two different things. Moreover, the Diamondbacks became the first team in baseball history to endure a 32-game stretch like their 7-25 skid and still reach the postseason for a reason: they had the benefit of a sixth seed that clubs prior to last year did not have.

Based on the sentiments of Lovullo and many players, it is possible the Diamondbacks might not have made it this far were it not for all of the disrespect, which many of them have repurposed as motivation, saying they have keeping “receipts” on those who have doubted them.

“I just know there is an under-riding theme here that we, A, don’t deserve to be here,” Lovullo said before Game 7 on Tuesday. “B, that we’re going to get our butts kicked. And, C, there’s bullies all over the National League that can manhandle us. It really excites me to know that we’re playing in Game 7, and we’re right on the verge of doing something that’s unbelievable. And we love proving naysayers wrong.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks ‘love proving naysayers wrong’ on way to World Series