Chapter 1: What makes Mike Hazen's return to the podcast significant?
Yeah, there should be some passion. This doesn't have to be boring.
You don't get bored by baseball. Okay, one thing the game needs is more people like you. You. You. You. You. You. You.
You. You. You. You. You.
Chapter 2: How does Mike Hazen feel about the upcoming spring training?
You. You. You. You. You. You.
Welcome to Baseball Isn't Boring. Here's your host, Rob Ratner. There's nobody I'd rather talk to after doing an interview session with a bunch of media than Mike Hazen. Right?
Yeah.
Hi, Rob. You were workshopping this podcast.
I wasn't workshopping the podcast. I'm just wondering how we could have just had the five-minute conversation that you didn't record and now just launch right in.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did the Diamondbacks face during the offseason?
It's like you're an actor. It's like you could just flip the switch, you know? I can do the Cliff Notes version of that if you want.
That's fine. It's up to you. It's your show. All right. All right. Well, while we were talking about what actor you looked like, and you said that a lot of people say you look like Jon Bertholdt, Who is the guy that I said that you look like? Who is that? Do we have a name? The Lincoln lawyer. I don't know. I don't know. I don't watch TV.
I don't watch as much TV as you do.
All you do is build baseball teams. What's the guy's name? Hold on. Oh, Manuel Garcia Rufo.
I'd have to Google that. I'd have to Google that. Yeah. Yeah. Can you put up a picture here for the audience? Yeah, I will. You're not that technically savvy. Baseball is a boring kid. Pull that off.
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Chapter 4: How does Mike Hazen view the importance of team dynamics?
I promise.
I know that you secretly follow it. Your cohort doesn't secretly follow it. I see him all the time.
Who's my cohort?
Got me out.
Oh, okay. Yeah, everybody has their own Instagram likes. I know.
It's all good. It's a friend of the family. We appreciate it. But I'm here. My overall point is that that guy's a good-looking guy. You're a good-looking guy.
I'm here to build you up. This is getting weird. All right. Yeah, I appreciate that. You're like Shallow Hal. No. No. Yeah, let's just agree to disagree on this. And then we can journey into baseball.
Yeah, okay.
All right.
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Chapter 5: What role do veteran players play in team development?
You look like the guy on Lincoln Lawyer, and you've done a good job of building your baseball team. You've never looked better. Your brand has never been hotter.
Huh, huh. You looking for a job, full-time gig over here? Maybe. I might be in the market. I could use a hype guy. I could use a hype guy. Right. That's what I'm talking about. I don't even still have a free T-shirt. And I've done this podcast like seven times. More. Okay, maybe more, and I still don't even have a free T-shirt. You don't? I have a sticker.
We need to be bigger than the sticker, okay?
I think 50 stickers equal one T-shirt. Okay. I'd appreciate a T-shirt. I'll wear it.
I'll wear it.
Which one? You want the Spanish one or you want the American one? Whatever you decide. The hat?
Yeah. Okay. Let's get into baseball.
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Chapter 6: How does Mike Hazen handle player injuries and recovery?
Yeah, no, I'm here. Okay. So when you go in, so as I said, you had your meeting with the media, sort of like the beginning of spring training meeting. Am I wrong? Like you had that, right? Yeah, I did that.
Yeah.
Uh, when you go into that, like, what do you, how do you feel about that? Like, do you dislike, I just want to get this over with, or I know that this question is going to be asked. I know that that question is going to be asked, like, can, you know, compared to whenever you started this thing, I'm always interested in the team meetings and the first interviews.
Yeah. I actually look forward to it because I feel like it's the first time you get, you know, you're talking to your fans and I feel like it's the first time that I get to do that. That's not on the scale of an individual transaction.
You know, like we will do media stuff through the off season as we do transactions and, and, and by and large, you know, there's some, there's some broader questions that get asked in terms of team building or things like that. But yeah,
The majority of that is fixated on that one particular transaction, which any one move that any of us make in a vacuum, barring some type of blockbuster, it's not overly interesting in the grand scheme of things, right? They're all important, but it doesn't eat up an entire press conference.
I think doing the first big press conference is a way you get to ask questions and sort of the aggregate of what you've accomplished or tried to accomplish. And I feel like that's the way for me to communicate with fans on things why they're going to come watch us this year, why we think we're going to be what we are, where we think we can take this thing. And so I kind of look forward to it.
So that expert segue into, did you think – I know that every offseason is different, but I think we did one of the podcasts leading into the offseason or early on in the offseason, and you have best late plans and you have an idea, and you think, okay, I think that when I do my press conference – to meet with the media in Arizona, it might look like this. You never know for sure.
How different did it look? How many times did you have to zig when you thought you were going to zag?
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Chapter 7: What strategies does Hazen use for trading during the offseason?
Also knowing that they weren't going to be ready on opening day. You can't just build two full different rosters and then with major league deals and significant resources and then just move on from those deals in May. That's just – no trades get made really in April and May.
So it was a little more complex in terms of what we needed to do to make sure this team is in a position in the middle of the year to build and grow when those guys come back, but also not be able to just sell out to April and May in terms of what resources, trades, free agency, whatever – And so that was a little complicated for us to put together.
These are really good players that are going to be coming back, and we're very confident in their return. It's not like how they perform when they come back. Sure, there will be some ramp-up time, but we know they're coming back, and we need to bake that in a little bit. So in that way, it was a little bit more challenging in terms of understanding.
We had to rebuild our pitching staff because we lost six free agents, Big free agents, most of which I sold when I sold at the deadline. But we knew those guys were all becoming free agents. So we had to rebuild the pitching staff in a large – in a significant manner.
But then still with Suarez and Naylor and Gritchick and those guys like off that were on the team last year, we also had to kind of fill in there too.
Yeah.
So how, how did the, this is a bigger picture question, I guess, but how did the off season, like you said, you never quite know, but how did the off season as a whole change or differ from what you thought it was going to be in terms of the market, whether it's free agency, whether it's trade talks, every off season is different.
It seems like it drags on more than every single year than ever before. And teams are more willing to do it than ever before. From your perspective, how has this been different?
I don't think it's actually been incredibly different, honestly. There's always things that get dragged into February every year. You say those same things about how it gets longer and longer and longer. I don't really think that's what actually ends up happening. There's a couple guys almost every year that I've done this that migrate into February, sometimes into March.
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Chapter 8: What insights does Mike Hazen share about player performance expectations?
So you have to remain flexible in how it all comes together. The biggest thing that I took going into the season was our defense wasn't very good last year. It really cost our pitching. Our pitching cost our pitching, but our defense cost our pitching too. And I really wanted to shore up our defense and getting Carlos Santana and Arenado and bringing them into the full, bringing McCann back.
We felt like we really strengthened that side of the ball for us. And that was very important to me and rebuilding a pitching staff that had lost a number of guys, either through injury or free agency.
You mentioned those two guys, and immediately when I saw you guys acquired them, I'm like, I thought of Longoria a few years ago.
And I'm not saying it's apples to apples, but we talk about the importance of having those guys, those sort of guys, these, okay, you get the information from the manager, you get the information from the coaches, but it's different when you get information for young players from players like that. How much do you put in that stock into that?
A lot. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, nothing's apples to apples. If we get out of this situation what we got out of Longo, sign me up. I know it's not that simple. One of the main driving reasons we acquired Nolan was what he does not on the baseball field in a game. There's a lot of what he does in the game on the field. I think our younger players are – a lot of our best players are some of our younger players.
And I think – it's not just on the coaching staff or the manager to develop and raise these guys the right way. It's also on the guys in the clubhouse.
And I do very much believe that the players you put these guys around, you know, it's like raising a kid, like the good environment and trying to be a good parent and like that you're going to shape who they are as people, maybe not every bit of it, but you're going to have a chance to round out the edges in a lot of ways. And the, and those subtle development things from a baseball standpoint are
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