Diamondbacks furlough employees, cut jobs amid pandemic

The Arizona Diamondbacks furloughed or laid off part of their staff as the coronavirus pandemic has the baseball season on hold, Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro confirmed.

The decision affects about 25-30% of employees, Gambadoro added, while other employees took pay cuts. The highest-paid employees took the biggest paycuts.

All employees will get medical benefits through the end of the year. Some could be brought back once games resume.

“We care deeply about our employees which makes these decisions even more difficult,” team owner Ken Kendrick and CEO Derrick Hall said in a statement. “We have tried to minimize the impact as much as possible but these are truly unprecedented economic times and we recognize that this is affecting everyone in our organization and community.

“We continue to hope and believe that we will play baseball in 2020, but it has become clear that this will be without fans, that the financial losses will be very significant and will undoubtedly carry into next season. Unfortunately, these changes were necessary in order to be in a position to recover when we are able to return to normal operations.”

Major League Baseball’s season was halted before it began, with the pandemic putting the brakes on sports during spring training. The players association and MLB have recently negotiated the economic terms under which a season would resume, but points of contention in that process have come up.

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