D-backs’ La Russa: ‘We are all responsible’ for disappointing 2016

At one point during the 2016 season, the Arizona Diamondbacks were a very good road team.

Despite massive struggles at home, the D-backs had managed to be one of the best road squads in baseball.

Now, even that has gone away. Monday night, the D-backs started a four-game series in Milwaukee with a 7-2 loss. Since sweeping a four-game series in Philadelphia in mid-June, the Diamondbacks are 4-9 in their last 13 away contests.

The struggles have led to rumors about the job status of manager Chip Hale. Reports circulated late last week that the organization was considering making a change and would tab Triple-A skipper Phil Nevin to take over the club. Of course, that hasn’t happened.

Chief baseball officer Tony La Russa isn’t pointing a finger at Hale for the D-backs’ failure this year. He told Fox Sports Arizona’s Jody Jackson Monday night that it’s been a collective losing effort.

“We’re all very disappointed, we’re not playing well,” La Russa said. “The record is not good and we are all responsible.

“I think what (general manager Dave Stewart) came in here to say was that the best approach, is we we were 15 games over .500, there is this urgency that we’ve got to keep winning so we can keep it going. If you’re behind, you can never give in, you can never give up and there were some times there toward the end of the homestand where it looked like the club had maybe started to think ‘look, this is not going to be our year.’ Dave just came in to say, no matter what the injuries are, we’ve got to go out there and play as hard as we can and as good as we can. It was not a focus on Chip. It’s a focus on all of us.”

The D-backs are in last place in the National League West at 41-58 — 17 games behind the San Francisco Giants entering Tuesday night’s game. Not surprisingly, a season like this will lead to speculation about a manager’s future. But La Russa doesn’t think that’s fair.

“It’s one of the irritating things that happens,” he said. “There’s such a rush to scoop or be on top of what’s going to happen and you sacrifice the fact that rumors start and people are affected. I know when Chip had to read about it before he heard anything, other than Stew was coming in, that’s just not fair.”

La Russa was asked specifically if Hale was still doing the things that he was hired to do, and if there could be something that would necessitate a managerial change before the end of the season. La Russa deflected that question and took further personal responsibility.

“If anybody wants to point a finger,” he started. “(The Diamondbacks) gave me this unique responsibility to improve who plays and how we play in October. We’re further from October now than we were last year at this time, so I think we’ve all got to blame ourselves and commit to doing better.”

Tony La Russa talks to @Jody_Jackson about Chip Hale, the state of the #Dbacks & #MLB trade deadline possibiliteshttps://t.co/Z96k8NRcLI

— FOX Sports Arizona (@FOXSPORTSAZ) July 26, 2016

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