Jordan Montgomery was among the best MLB free brokers in the marketplace final winter. The veteran beginning pitcher was glorious after a mid-season commerce to the Texas Rangers, posting a 2.78 ERA in his 11 begins with the membership on the best way to a World Collection championship. The staff Texas beat to win the World Collection was the Arizona Diamondbacks. As Montgomery lingered in the marketplace till Spring Coaching, Diamondbacks proprietor Ken Kendrick noticed a possibility to enhance the staff’s rotation and pushed for the entrance workplace to signal him.
The 2024 MLB Playoffs at the moment are set, and the Diamondbacks have been left on the skin trying in. The staff was eradicated from the postseason throughout Monday’s electrical double-header between the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets. Arizona one staff to comb the double-header to make the postseason, however as a substitute the groups cut up, leaving the D-Backs out the playoffs.
Because the Diamondbacks have been reckoning with lacking the playoffs a yr after taking part in within the World Collection, Kendrick went on native radio in Arizona and did one thing you hardly ever see from a professional sports activities proprietor: he blamed himself for signing Montgomery.
“If anybody desires in charge anybody for Jordan Montgomery being a Diamondback, you are speaking to the man that must be blamed.”
D-backs managing normal companion Ken Kendrick on the signing of Montgomery within the offseason.
Full interview: https://t.co/c9zHhCcebT pic.twitter.com/4wfNmwihSX
— The Burns & Gambo Present (@BurnsAndGambo) October 1, 2024
Right here’s the total transcription:
“If anybody desires in charge anybody for Jordan Montgomery being a Diamondback, you’re speaking to the man that must be blamed,” Kendrick instructed Arizona Sports activities. “As a result of I introduced it to [the front office’s] consideration. I pushed for it. They agreed to it — it wasn’t in our sport plan. You recognize when he was signed — proper on the finish of spring coaching. And searching again, in hindsight, a horrible choice to take a position that cash in a man who carried out as poorly as he did. It’s our greatest mistake this season from a expertise standpoint. And I’m the perpetrator of that.”
Montgomery had by far the worst season of his profession with Arizona. He completed posted a 6.23 ERA and 1.65 WHIP in 21 begins, giving up 149 hits in 117 innings. Yikes.
It looks like participant efficiency has extra peaks and valleys in baseball than some other sport. Montgomery had been a dependable beginning pitcher all through his profession, but it surely all fell aside this season. Arizona gave him a two-year, $47 million cope with a participant possibility for 2025. That possibility stands at $22.5 million for subsequent yr, and he’s sure to select it up.
May Montgomery bounce again subsequent yr? Certain. Baseball is bizarre like that. It’s simply so uncommon you hear an proprietor throw a participant below the bus like this whereas on the similar time blaming himself for the signing.
