Eugenio Suarez describes his grand slam in the Diamondbacks’ victory over the Rockies
Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez talks about what happened when he hit his grand slam in his team’s victory over the Colorado Rockies.
BOSTON — The Diamondbacks are pushing left-hander Jordan Montgomery into the bullpen and keeping right-hander Ryne Nelson in the rotation, ignoring Montgomery’s high salary and focusing instead on his poor results.
Montgomery has posted a 6.44 ERA in 19 starts this year, including an ugly outing Wednesday in Miami in which he allowed six runs to a Marlins team that has one of the worst lineups in baseball.
The decision to take him out of the rotation appears to increase Montgomery’s likelihood of sticking around next year; the one-year, $25 million deal he signed in March included a player option for 2025 that would pay $20 million after 10 starts this year. The option increased to $22.5 million after he reached 18 starts earlier this month.
Manager Torey Lovullo called it an “agonizing” decision for him, but Nelson’s performance over the past two months – during which he was the Diamondbacks’ best starter – was too hard to ignore.
“He’s been one of the best pitchers in all of baseball, not just the National League, since July 1,” Lovullo said. “I didn’t want to run away from that.”
Nelson’s performance in his last two starts seemed to have tipped the scales in his favor, especially considering they came as Montgomery’s problems continued. Lovullo said he could have gone in a different direction before Nelson shut out the Phillies in 7 1/3 innings on Aug. 9 and then went 6 1/3 innings against the Rays last weekend, allowing just one run in each of those games.
“The last two starts have definitely been eye-opening for me,” Lovullo said. “He’s in top form. He’s throwing the ball really well. I don’t want to stop doing that. I have to make the decision now as to who is going to help us win as many baseball games as possible, and the decision was made with Ryne.”
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With perhaps six starts left, Montgomery could have turned his season around enough to decline his option for next year. Given his strong track record before this season — he was considered the best left-handed pitcher on the free-agent market last winter — a good run of games at the end of the year could have shown teams that his problems are behind him. Now, however, it seems very likely that he will trigger the option.
General Manager Mike Hazen said the financial component played no role in the decision.
“We have 30 games left,” Hazen said. “We’re trying to win every single game. I’ve pushed Torey to make the best decisions for the team every night so we have a chance to win. Period. I don’t care about anything else. I told him, ‘We’re going to handle whatever we have to.'”
Montgomery’s offseason didn’t go as he had hoped. He had posted a 3.48 ERA over the previous three seasons and many expected him to sign a nine-figure contract as a free agent. Instead, he fired his agent, Scott Boras, after signing with the Diamondbacks just two days before Opening Day.
Because he signed so late, he missed all of spring training, which he acknowledges as a likely reason for his difficulties. Hazen said the club weighed the risk of what missing spring training could mean for Montgomery, but decided to go through with the signing anyway — and he said he wouldn’t shy away from making another deal like that.
“I don’t think you can turn off that area of trying to get people to sign,” Hazen said. “I don’t know if we would have had access to him if we hadn’t been in that situation at the time. We had already spent most of our money at that point and the only way to do that would probably have been a shorter contract. And that was possible at that time of year.”
If it weren’t for Montgomery, Nelson would have been the one moved to the bullpen, a move Lovullo said the club considered in part because his explosive ability would have suited him well in relief.
“That was definitely part of the calculation,” Lovullo said. “We felt Nelson could really be a threat out of the bullpen. We talked about it for three or four days. But we lose a lot of runs as a starter. We have to get that under control. If we can do that, everything will fall into place in the bullpen and we’ll be really good out there.”
