The Arizona Diamondbacks wasted no time showing displeasure in their awful 2016 season (69-93 record), as they fired general manager Dave Stewart and manager Chip Hale on Monday, one day after the season ended.
The move to fire Hale was fairly surprising, as he wasn’t the reason the Diamondbacks were bad. The 2016 Diamondbacks wouldn’t have had close to a .500 record even if they had Joe Maddon, Bruce Bochy, or _ highly regarded manager. They were bad because of poor roster construction, which was 100% the fault of the front office, or more specifically, Dave Stewart (team chief baseball officer Tony LaRussa certainly deserves his blame too, and should be the next to go). No general manager — in all of professional sports — made more head-scratching moves over the last two years, as our own Joe Lucia alluded to in his article on the firings:
Arizona finished 69-93 this year, ten wins in the wrong direction after going 79-83 last year. Stewart was hired in September of 2014 after the firing of Kevin Towers, and he hired Hale soon thereafter. Not much went right after that, including numerous salary dump trades, the bizarre signing of Cuban Yoan Lopez, the over-market signing of Zack Greinke, and the disastrous trade of Aaron Blair, Ender Inciarte, and Dansby Swanson to the Braves for Shelby Miller, who had a 6.15 ERA in 2016 with the Diamondbacks.
If you want a more detailed look at Stewart’s laughably awful tenure, CBS Sports’ Matt Snyder ranks Stewart’s five worst moves in that time. It’s like reading the script to a horror film.
After the news of Stewart’s dismissal came out on Monday, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale spoke to him. Stewart said he has no hard feelings towards the organization, and said, “To be honest with you, I’m kind of relieved. Quite frankly, I’ve got better things to do.”
“They may think I’m going to blast people, but I’m not,’’ said Stewart, who already had dozens of clubs and sports agencies reach out to him. “It is what it is. It’s that side of the business. To be honest with you, I’m kind of relieved.
“Quite frankly, I’ve got better things to do.’’
Oh boy. Hey, technically he’s right- he does have better things to do. There have to be some jobs out there where he wouldn’t cause so much turmoil and disappointment. But will he get a better job opportunity? Probably not. He will not be a significant part of a major-league front office again, at least.
Stewart told Nightengale how “everybody keeps talking about the Shelby Miller trade” (maybe because it’s already one of the worst trades of the last 20 years?), but he thinks he “did a pretty good job” with the Diamondbacks, and that we “may not know it for a couple years, but [we] will”:
“Everybody keeps talking about the Shelby Miller trade,’’ Stewart said, “but I made other trades too. We made plenty of other trades, too. I trusted my scouts. I valued their opinion. I was the one who ultimately made the decisions, and I’ll stand by that.
“But you look at everything, and I feel like I did a pretty good job here.
“You may not know it for a couple of years, but you will.’’
Whatever you say, Dave.
