Like their namesakes, the Diamondbacks sent out warnings.

The unlikely National League champs took their swings all season.

Brandon Pfaadt

The first sign of seriousness came in April, after 34-year-old Madison Bumgarner had yet again proven his obsolescence. The Arizona Diamondbacks could have carried him through a season in which a .500 record seemed to be the ceiling. Instead they cut him loose on April 26, four starts in. In doing so they also cut a check for the $34 million they owed him.

Other signs emerged. In August the Diamondbacks released shortstop Nick Ahmed, a Golf Glover, a 10-year fixture, popular in and out of the clubhouse. They promoted hotshot Jordan Lawlar, but in the meantime they gave the fulltime shortstop job to Geraldo Perdomo, a good-field, occasional-hit 23-year-old with a mastery of Little Ball.

They brought up Brandon Pfaadt for the third time. Pfaadt had gone down the second time bearing an 8.27 ERA. But the Diamondbacks knew he was part of their future, a righthander with velocity, a changeup and a clue. Could he handle stress? He started 11 times after his third promotion and shaved that ERA to 5.27. Out of nowhere he could summon brilliance, as he did in San Diego and San Francisco, working seven innings both times, giving up two hits and one hit, losing because Arizona was shut out. In September Pfaadt got wins over the Cubs and the White Sox when his team needed anything it could get.

And they remodeled their bullpen on the fly, as if this were a pit stop. In August they shuffled some kids to Seattle to get Paul Sewald, the closer that they didn’t have. Sewald, 33, didn’t have nuclear stuff, but he threw strikes and had the coarse hide that is required of a closer. He had set a National League record with the Mets by losing his first 14 decisions. So when he blew his first save chance for Arizona and watched his new team suffer a 9-game losing streak to fall to 57-59 and apparent doom, he shrugged and kept pitching. On August 14 he saved the game that broke the streak and by the end of the month he had saved seven more.

After that, Arizona kept a rapt eye on the waiver wire and when Tampa Bay gave up on submariner Ryan Thompson, it swooped in. Thompson had a sizzling 0.538 WHIP in 13 games and hasn’t let up in the postseason.

Without any of the above, the Diamondbacks would be holding organizational meetings and touting their bright future this week. Instead they are one of the two teams left standing. They came into Philadelphia, where they had lost Games 1 and 2 of the National League Championship Series, where all visitors risk insult and possibly injury, depending on your view of tinnitus, and they won Games 6 and 7. On Tuesday, Sewald steamed through the ninth inning, and Arizona will open the World Series at Texas on Friday.

The Diamondbacks bring an 84-78 record with them. Only the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals took fewer wins into a Series, but they won that one. Amid the celebration, the Diamondbacks kept stressing that the job wasn’t over. Hidden in plain sight, they had been applying for it all along.

The Diamondbacks were in the 2017 playoffs, too, with a much glitzier team. They won 93 games that year but were swept by the Dodgers. They had Zack Greinke and Robbie Ray on the mound, Fernando Rodney in the bullpen, Paul Goldschmidt and J.D. Martinez and Jake Lamb on the lineup card. Economic reality set in, and the Diamondbacks traded Goldschmidt to St. Louis, traded Ray to Toronto, and let Martinez, who had hit four home runs in a game against the Dodgers, sign with Boston. In 2021 the Diamondbacks would lose 110 games. Pitchers Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Joe Mantiply and Kevin Ginkel were on that team. So were Perdomo, 2023 NLCS Most Valuable player Ketel Marte, first baseman Christian Walker, and outfielder Daulton Varsho, whom Arizona traded to Toronto to get emerging catching star Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel, the two righthand hitters the ‘23 team needed.

Through every inch of the roller coaster, Mike Hazen was at the wheel. He is the general manager, a former outfielder at Princeton, groomed in Cleveland and Boston. His first move was to hire Torey Lovullo to manage, since he’d known Lovullo at his previous stops.

In much of today’s baseball, the general manager is at least an impediment to the manager, an obstacle, armed with spreadsheets and tendencies in a game that, especially in October, laughs uproariously at such minutia. He visits the manager’s office beforehand and dictates the lineup, and he returns after the game to second-guess all the moves. Hazen and Lovullo have had their moments, but they are bound by much more than their working address. They are best friends, knowing their baseball fates are linked, knowing that life at any moment could intervene on this adventure.

Hazen’s wife Nicole became a brain cancer patient in 2020. She died in 2022, right after the August trade deadline. She had given birth to four sons. Lovullo’s wife Kristen, who had become Nicole’s best friend, came to the rescue, as did Lovullo. As Alden Gonzalez reported at ESPN.com, Lovullo volunteered to put Christmas lights on Hazen’s house that year, and now that’s a routine.

So, in executive parlance, the “alignment” is immeasurable. It means Hazen and Lovullo can work like nobody’s watching, can make audacious decisions without blowback. The Diamondbacks couldn’t find a third starter to augment Gallen and Kelly, so they sped up Pfaadt’s timetable, and when he got to October he became the first pitcher to give up no runs and no walks in his first two postseason starts. Not first rookie. First pitcher.

He did give up two runs in Game 7, but he also struck out seven Phillies in these four innings. He had already taken the Diamondbacks on a U-turn in Game 3, striking out nine in five and two-thirds shutout innings, and then Marte won it in the ninth. Arizona was down 0-2 at the time and had just been bludgeoned 10-0 in Philly.

Pfaadt went to Bellarmine University in his hometown of Louisville, as did his grandfather and two brothers. There are no seats behind the plate at Bellarmine, so the coach, Larry Owens, had to get folding chairs for the scouts to see Pfaadt. He was drafted in the fifth round in 2020, which was also the final round, because of Covid-19 complications. He eventually surpassed Tommy Henry, the Michigan lefthander who was drafted ahead of Pfaadt but couldn’t stay in the rotation.

Arizona is a good landing spot for pitchers. Former All-Star Dan Haren is in charge of pitching strategy, and Brent Strom is the pitching coach, as he was in Houston when the Astros were ascending. Strom, 75, worked in the Dodger organization and listened to anything and everything Sandy Koufax had to say. His pupils learned the value of the high fastball long before others did.

But Hazen’s scouting staff also gets some credit in this busy pie-chart of reasons why. Corbin Carroll will be the Rookie of the Year and got better with each game of the NLCS. He was the 16th pick in the phenomenal 2019 draft, which featured Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Bobby Witt Jr. and Josh Jung. The Angels had the 15th pick and went with North Carolina State shortstop Will Wilson.

Carroll, from Seattle, is 5-foot-10 but disproportionately strong, and his speed and instincts are deluxe. As a corner outfielder he often plays next to centerfielder Alek Thomas, whose dad is the strength coach for the White Sox. He is another strong, small package, a former quarterback who considered trying out for football at TCU.

Walker was Baltimore’s fourth-round pick from South Carolina, got designated for assignment, got waived by Atlanta and Cincinnati, and won the Pacific Coast League batting title once Arizona signed him. He has become one of baseball’s most productive first basemen, with 69 home runs and 197 RBIs his past two seasons.

Hazen risked losing a longtime star when he dealt Jazz Chisholm to Miami for Gallen. That might still happen, but Gallen has become a Cy Young contender.

Kelly, who went to Arizona State, spent four years in the Korean Baseball Organization, going 46-32. He returned with purpose and is one of the top No. 2 starters in the game.

Ginkel, from the U. of Arizona, gave up a .318 batting average in 2020. It was .181 this year. It was .188 this year. The disciplined Phillies flailed mightily at Ginkel’s slider, and he got Bryce Harper to hit a manageable fly ball when Harper could have tied Game 7.  He and Mantiply survived the great bullpen makeover.

There’s more, and there will be more, but even if Arizona upsets Texas like it upset Milwaukee, the Dodgers and Philadelphia, Hazen’s most vivid memory will be from Oct. 11, before anyone said Play Ball. His four boys were lined up, crouching with gloves, just prior to Game 1 with the Dodgers, and they all caught ceremonial first pitches.

Four tough kids, four freeze-frames, four wins away from parades and lifelong identity. Some teams that rank 21st in payroll use the season as recreation. One team, this season, was as serious as a rattlesnake.