D-backs extend Lovullo through 2026 after epic run

PHOENIX -- After steering his team to the 2023 World Series, D-backs manager Torey Lovullo was rewarded on Wednesday with a contract extension that will take him through the 2026 season.

This is the second extension Lovullo has received this season. In June, Lovullo was given a one-year extension through 2024 after the D-backs got off to a hot start and were leading the National League West.

The decision to extend him by one year at that point lined him up with general manager Mike Hazen, whose contract was also set to expire after 2024. Hazen, though, was inked to a contract extension at the end of the regular season that runs through 2028.

At the time of his extension, Hazen said he had told Lovullo that he would sit down with him once the team’s playoff run was over to come up with an additional extension for the manager.

While the D-backs postseason went longer than anyone could have expected -- they were eliminated in Game 5 of the World Series by the Rangers -- the extension talks between the two longtime colleagues did not take long.

Lovullo was hired by Hazen after the 2016 season not long after Hazen took over as GM, and he led Arizona to a Wild Card berth in 2017, winning the NL Manager of the Year Award from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in the process.

The D-backs were in the postseason hunt in 2018 and ‘19, but they came up short both years. Lovullo and the organization hit a low point in 2021 when the team lost 110 games, yet Hazen never lost faith in his manager. That faith was rewarded this year when the D-backs won 84 games, secured a Wild Card berth and then played deep into the postseason.

“I think he's always been an incredible game manager,” Hazen said before Game 1 of the World Series. “I think he does a great job in our clubhouse, relationships with our players. I think that has taken on a new level. I think when we went through the skid in the middle of July and August, I think that's where we really started to see him take control of some things -- in the clubhouse, a little bit more aggressively -- that I think that could have sunk a lot of seasons, and it didn't sink ours. And I think he was a big reason for that.”

Lovullo is the longest-tenured manager in D-backs history and holds the most wins with a 495-537 regular-season record.