LOS ANGELES - The Diamondbacks' disastrous first two months of the season have prompted the club's ownership to consider all avenues of change, including a drastic retooling of the major league roster.
But Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick said all areas of the organization are under review, from General Manager Josh Byrnes' baseball operations department on down to the players, whom Kendrick says are drastically underperforming.
"When the team is playing as badly as this team is," he said, "and we've had a consistent period of questionable performance going back into a full season last year and the second half of the '08 season, you really need to look very broadly at everything and try to objectively determine what kind of changes you really want to make. We're going to go through that process."
blog Read Kendrick's comments in full
Though they were outscored, the Diamondbacks managed to win 90 games in 2007 and advance to the National League Championship Series.
Since jumping to a 20-8 start in the first month of the 2008 season, they are 152-198 (.434). They missed the playoffs by two games in 2008, lost 92 games last season and are 20-34 this year - and it appears that the club's core group of players might not be together much longer.
"We can't keep going down the same path and adding a piece here and there to this team that has not had success recently," Diamondbacks President and CEO Derrick Hall said. "Collectively there's just something missing."
Trouble everywhere
The team's payroll ticked upward this season as the Diamondbacks made several changes to the roster in the off-season, many of which have worked out well individually, but the collective group continues to struggle. The club's everyday players remain inconsistent, the bullpen has failed epically and the rotation has not pitched well enough to offset those shortcomings.
"We've relied on a core group of young guys," Kendrick said. "They're not all the same guys, but we're in the third or fourth year with guys who were anticipated, as a group, would move along and mature and become better performers, and collectively it hasn't happened at the level we would have expected.
"You use 2007 as a benchmark, but you have to look hard at the concept of the core that we were trying to build around and question whether that core is as strong a core as we thought it would be."
Asked whether he still believes in Byrnes' ability to lead baseball operations, Kendrick reiterated that he and Hall are looking closely at the entire organization and have begun to take a more hands-on approach in the club's daily operations.
"When you succeed, it's not one guy that made you successful and when you're performing poorly it's not one person - we're all responsible," Kendrick said. "I certainly am. I feel it very, very strongly - the sense of responsibility to make this right. I did not get into this to fail. I don't identify well with failure."
Byrnes signed an eight-year contract extension before the 2008 season; it runs through 2015.
Imminent changes
The Diamondbacks entered the year with razor-thin profit margins, needing to compete, and the accompanying revenue increases, in order to avoid losing money. Since fielding a contending team is seemingly out the window, the club might look to start changing its roster construction immediately.
"We're going to have to look at the budget and at doing business a little differently," Hall said. "Sticking with the same guys year after year when their salaries are going up and we're not getting results, that's not efficient or responsible."
One place Kendrick refused to pin blame was on manager A.J. Hinch, whom Byrnes controversially hired more than a year ago to replace Bob Melvin. Hinch, who had never coached at any level, is 78-108.
"When performance on the field isn't what you expect, people automatically focus in on the manager," Kendrick said. "I don't think in this setting that is a particularly fair conclusion. . . . The personnel mix is not working and he isn't the guy who is primarily responsible for putting the personnel together.
"I think players need to look themselves in the mirror and I think there needs to be real accountability on the part of the players. It's always the outsider's view of blaming general management or field management for the lesser performance of players. Certainly general management and field management have responsibility there, but as I said it's all our responsibilities, and I think the players should really look at themselves pretty directly and ask why they aren't getting the results out of their talent that they ought to."
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