Inside the Diamondbacks' unprecedented midseason turnaround

Torey Lovullo took longer than normal to appear at the podium, fulfilling the last of his nightly duties. In those days, that meant deciphering the Diamondbacks’ most recent loss. After this particular game, he didn’t have much of an explanation. He could only lean into the microphone and muster a prolonged “Oh man.”

Lovullo dutifully explained why he pulled a pitcher here, what he saw in an at-bat there. Standard issue stuff. None of it carries relevance now, nearly two months after that blowout loss to the Padres, the Diamondbacks’ ninth in a row.

But before he sat at the podium, behind the closed doors of the home clubhouse, there was nothing standard about Lovullo’s postgame. Even after the worst losses, that room is the players’ domain. Lovullo stops at the clubhouse door, letting them come to grips with a game on their own accord.

Not on this night. In an otherwise silent clubhouse, Lovullo unleashed an expletive-laden message, fighting through tears beginning to tickle the corners of his eyes.

“I had enough,” Lovullo said last week, providing the PG translation. “The entire organization had enough and it was time to turn the page and start doing the things that we do. I let them know that I have certain expectations that weren't being met. I told them that they were underachieving and we needed to figure out right now how we were going to turn it around.”

There can be endless debate over how much one moment matters in a 162-game season. Maybe Lovullo stays in his office that night and the Diamondbacks are still where they are now, preparing for this week’s wild-card series in Milwaukee, their first postseason appearance since 2017.

Except that same week, without the benefit of extended hindsight, Alek Thomas said “the vibe definitely shifted after that meeting.” Playing with more thought of the collective, as Geraldo Perdomo explained it. Winning followed immediately. When Lovullo gave his speech, the Diamondbacks had lost 25 of 32 games — a stretch unmatched by a playoff team in MLB history. Lovullo had gone from a Manager of the Year candidate to the subject of hot seat debates on sports talk radio in record time. Over the next two weeks, his team suddenly won 11 of 13, setting the course for their eventual recovery.

“We recognized, oh we still have a chance to go to the wild card,” Perdomo said. “That's when we realized, what have we been doing?”

In early July, the Diamondbacks stood in a remarkable spot. Not just because they were 50-34, two years after finishing with 52 wins, but because of the way they had achieved that record. The club carried a bulletproof aura. They had neither been swept nor shut out. Their longest losing streak was three games.

Then the Mets came to town, delivering that first sweep. Up 1-0 in the ninth inning of game two, catcher Carson Kelly couldn’t secure a foul tip from Francisco Alvarez to close out a win. On the next pitch, Alvarez hit a game-tying home run, sending an orange-and-blue crowd into screaming fits and stunning the Diamondbacks.

The loss immediately felt inevitable, as did a 9-0 blowout the next day, when the Diamondbacks played their most lifeless game of the year to that point.

“It went from, ‘Ah damn, that was an unlucky moment,’ to us continuing to stumble, to us no longer believing, in my opinion, that we were gonna execute well enough to win a baseball game,” Lovullo said.

The All-Star break, which arrived three days after the end of the Mets series, seemed to be an ideal reset. Instead, the Diamondbacks went to Toronto and looked like a shell of themselves. They made head-scratching decisions on the infield and ran into baserunning outs more reminiscent of their 2021 iteration.

Even worse, they were going to Atlanta to play the best team in baseball. On the first day of that series, Evan Longoria led a meeting among the hitters with a simple message: Bring energy. A potentially fragile plan.

“If you go the first three innings without getting a hit, it's tough to be like, ‘Yeah, we're all happy,’” Longoria said.

The offense, though, responded accordingly. They scored seven times in the first two innings, ultimately winning a 16-13 thriller. The next day, they secured a series win. Write out the script and there could be no better turning point.

It wasn’t to be. In Cincinnati, they undid the positive work, suffering their third sweep in five series.

Publicly, Lovullo’s tone began to change. Instead of repeating the message that everything would turn around, he started calling out mistakes, occasionally mentioning players by name. Privately, he held discussions with his coaches, directing them to lock in on mental errors without losing positivity.

“Every player's gonna come in and look in your eyes and they're gonna look in your soul right through your eyes,” Lovullo told them. “And they better tell the right story that we're here to win a baseball game and it starts with you as a coach.”

The coaches embodied that messaging in their pregame meetings. Lying in bed awake at night or driving into the ballpark in the morning, they let their thoughts run free, wondering if the season would ever turn. It’s part of why bench coach Jeff Banister has always demanded his real estate agents to not show any houses within 35 minutes of his team’s home ballpark. There’s a time to think and there’s a time to put on a coach’s face. Inside the walls of the clubhouse is the latter.

Dave McKay, the outfield and baserunning coach, did so by telling his players the story of the 2006 Cardinals, whom he helped to a World Series title after two midsummer eight-game losing streaks. Banister likes to play the role of a dad, cracking jokes whenever he senses tension.

They weren’t the only ones bringing levity. After particularly demoralizing losses, Longoria and Christian Walker would sit by their neighboring lockers, occasionally joined by Merrill Kelly or other veterans. In those moments, they briefly allowed for frustration, wondering what they had to do to right the ship. But over a reposado or an IPA, they would shift the conversation in a positive direction, embracing their role as clubhouse leaders. Each day, they asked themselves, “What does the message have to be tomorrow?” Each day, the answer was the same.

“Just leaving here with a positive mentality,” Longoria said. “Coming in with that same sort of vibe and if you have that every day, it's very palpable.”

The prevalence of positive examples didn’t eradicate the stress. “We're probably gonna wake up too late, that's the thought I had in that moment,” Perdomo said. It was only a natural belief with how they were playing.

But even if they never knew of those late-night discussions, the Diamondbacks’ younger players felt the impact. “There just doesn't seem to ever be panic with our team.” Jake McCarthy said.

As the Diamondbacks lost nine straight, their faces didn’t tell the story, at least not pregame. Players socialized by lockers, talking and laughing, as they had in the good times. They remained enamored by pregame chess matches with music still booming each afternoon.

“When you go into clubhouses, you can almost feel if teams are defeated,” Longoria said. “You can feel when the energy is so low that you leave that clubhouse going, ‘Man, this team doesn't have a chance today.’ We've never had that.”

That’s the baseline requirement to avoid a collapse hitting full throttle. But on the field, the mistakes that plagued the Diamondbacks continued unabated.

To start their nine-game losing streak, Perdomo was picked off first base to seal a loss in San Francisco. In Minnesota, he popped out a ninth-inning bunt attempt with the tying run on third. Corbin Carroll didn’t run out a game-ending double play four days later, presuming the ball foul. Thomas was doubled off second base on another key bunt attempt. Pitchers not backing up bases was a scene too common to recount.

“The focus and effort was getting to be unacceptable,” Lovullo said.

Gradually, his calculus shifted. Positivity had become insufficient.

“I feel like I'm a very easygoing manager to play for,” Lovullo said. “And I let them definitely see that there was another side to me.”

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In their hitters’ meeting the next day, the Diamondbacks pushed their typical breakdown of the opposing starter to the backburner. The message was to play like themselves, with a focus on their own plan.

That, in itself, wasn’t unusual. Amid the losing, they tried different variations of the same message, all in an attempt to break a habit of impatient at-bats borne from a desire to be the slump-bursting hero. Some days, the stated goal was just to get the bat to the next hitter. Other days, it was to have more conversations about opposing pitchers in the dugout. The one that stuck was the day they focused on themselves.

Maybe it’s a coincidence that came immediately after Lovullo’s speech. Maybe not. By Saturday night, it had been reduced to immaterial.

“The rollercoaster, it all seems minor compared to this,” Walker said, ski goggles pulled over his forehead, a black t-shirt soaked by champagne, inscribed with the words, ‘Take October.’

The best moment of his career?

“Absolutely.”

The reason?

“I love these guys.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks make unprecedented comeback to claim wild-card spot