Torey Lovullo Responds Honestly to Fan Criticism

Fans generally crave transparency from their MLB team's manager, even if the answers are not as satisfying as they might hope. Often was that the case for Arizona Diamondbacks skipper Torey Lovullo in 2025.

Lovullo has a tendency to keep many things internal — taking responsibility for missed opportunities himself, rather than calling out the mistakes of his players publicly. That leads to fans choosing Lovullo as the blame recipient at a high rate.

On Thursday, in his final appearance of the year with Arizona Sports 98.7's Burns & Gambo Show, Lovullo addressed some of the fan criticism and explained his reasoning for some of the information he chooses not to divulge.

Arizona Diamondbacks' Torey Lovullo Responds to Fan Criticism

One such recent example came from a heartbreaker of an extra-inning loss. Lovullo called for Geraldo Perdomo to bunt the winning run over — which he did successfully.

That led to the opposition walking Corbin Carroll and Geraldo Perdomo, loading the bases with one out to get to Jake McCarthy, who failed to score the winning run. Lovullo then later revealed he had called for McCarthy to bunt — a sign he did not pick up.

Lovullo explained why he initially held back on revealing the mistake by his player.

"They're like my kids and I want to protect them," he said. "At some point... I've got to take the gloves off a little bit and say this is what happened and here's the reality of it."

With McCarthy not executing the gameplan, that put most of the scrutiny on Lovullo's decision to ask Perdomo to bunt. The skipper touched on that outcry.

"The interesting part about the Perdomo bunt is a month and a half ago I didn't bunt him against San Diego and the same people were in an uproar, I bunt him this time and they say I shouldn't have bunted him," he said.

"That's crazy-making. You can't figure out how to hit on 16 every single time and nail it and get it right."

"As long as there's consistency with what people are thinking and what they want to get to I have no problem with it and I will talk about it until I'm blue in the face. Protecting the guys is where I come from innately but... sometimes I do have to take the gloves off and ring some bells externally," he said.

But that's only part of the equation in terms of irking fans with decision-making. Questions swirl about pitching decisions — particularly reliever usage.

"During the course of the season [sometimes] I'm not using a reliever because he's got an injection and he can't throw for two days or three days," Lovullo said.

"I don't necessarily want to start spraying that around for the competitive advantage or disadvantage it may create when we're facing a team in a couple of days."

Whether or not the decisions made by Arizona's manager end up paying off, there is often more beneath the surface than what might be obvious.

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