Dizzy bats and golf balls: Diamondbacks bond over fantasy football draft order competition

PHOENIX — Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo spun around a bat five times, stepped up to the plate and whacked a ball off a tee at Chase Field before Tuesday’s game.

His swing secured catcher James McCann the No. 1 overall pick.

The Diamondbacks find new ways to set their fantasy football draft order each year. It is a team bonding opportunity that breaks up the day-to-day monotony of a baseball season. McCann and reliever Taylor Clarke devised a new challenge for 2026.

“It’s just a group of us that kind of came together to try and figure a fun way to figure out the draft order,” McCann said. “What we settled on was you got to choose a random staff member, and then they had a random act of getting a ball close to a target. So there’s some fun shenanigans that went along with it.”

 

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There were two hats, one with the names of staff members and another with the means of which they had to hit a ball.

In the pile were different styles of training bats, including a flat bat and an angled bat. Someone had to hit a golf ball. The goal was to get as close as possible to a target, not necessarily to hit it the farthest.

McCann drew Lovullo and the dizzy bat.

“Torey was going to be in there, but he was in here doing meetings or whatever it was, sneaks out there, does a dizzy bat and hits it to 11 yards,” Jordan Lawlar said. “So he just took the top pick from everybody.”

“I thought it was a pretty sick swing,” Lovullo said. “I was a little bit nervous because I was looking at the ball and it was moving. … But yeah, I stuck the landing.”

This is an intense time of year.

September is here, the Diamondbacks are battling to make the playoffs for the first time since 2023 and every game is amplified in that environment. There are injuries to deal with, and Ketel Marte’s no-show saga illuminated a national spotlight on the clubhouse.

For the players, the fantasy football draft order competition, as silly as it was, provided a welcome moment of levity and a change of pace.

“When everyone’s involved, it’s fun and people take it super seriously,” Nolan Arenado, who does not usually do fantasy football but made an exception for this, said. “It gets intense, but it’s been great. It’s fun just being around the boys.”

“Our team does that a lot,” Lovullo said of team bonding. “It’s just not known. It’s not seen. We have a very close relationship. This is a very bonded group. They care about one another.”

It was also an excuse to get a football back in the hands of Tim Tawa, who broke Oregon’s single-season passing record while in high school.

So, should McCann go with Jahmyr Gibbs or Bijan Robinson?

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