2 years means 2 years for Torey Lovullo contract, even with lockout potential

A question Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo and president/CEO Derrick Hall fielded after the club decided to re-sign its manager last week was whether the two years were set in stone.

What happens if their is a lockout that costs the sport — which continues to see its popularity reignite — games next season?

Lovullo clarified that two years means two years.

“Two years are independent and they’re going to be looked at as the ’27, ’28 seasons with no carryover,” Lovullo told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo on Thursday.

“Maybe I should have that language put in my contract,” he joked.

Hall confirmed as much, as saying Lovullo and general manager Mike Hazen are on the same contractual timeline.

Hall acknowledged that there are potential benefits of maintaining continuity going into an uncertain period, even though he and Hazen both claimed that the potential lockout had nothing to do with bringing Lovullo back for an 11th season as skipper.

“After the press conference (on Thursday), Mike comes back up in my office, and he sits down, and we talked about it,” Hall told Bickley & Marotta on Friday. “We said the wild thing here is that it’s good that we have him locked down now, because we don’t have to worry about that. And when it’s go time, those lights need to be turned back on. You got to go, right?

“So we’re all going to be in a strange position as teams. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know if we’re going to lose games. We don’t know how much of spring we would lose, but we’ve got to be ready to go. And I think there’s going to be a lot of mad scrambling when the postseason is over. So it’s good to have our manager in place, but it really didn’t factor in until afterwards when we looked back.”

Lovullo has been the manager through a lockout before, as spring training and Opening Day were pushed back in 2022, although 162 games were played that season.

With the collective bargaining agreement expiring in December, MLB is proposing a salary cap, which the players union has firmly opposed for decades. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that a growing number of executives believe the season will start around Labor Day weekend. The league cannot miss 60 or more games without national television broadcast deals getting rolled over through 2029, according to Nightengale and The Athletic, a potentially massive financial hit for owners.

Related

5 questions the Diamondbacks need to answer this offseasonWhat is Ketel Marte’s future in Arizona? Here’s what each D-backs decisionmaker saidDiamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick expects payroll to be lower next seasonD-backs GM: Torey Lovullo returning is ‘not related’ to Ketel Marte’s futureWhat is Torey Lovullo’s message to Diamondbacks fans after his new contract?Diamondbacks’ Torey Lovullo says he cannot protect Ketel Marte like he used to