Diamondbacks make ‘brutal decision’ to dump Paul Sewald during playoff push

In the week leading up to the All-Star Game, Paul Sewald served as the Diamondbacks’ closer. Now a week after the deadline, Arizona moved on from a reliever who has 24 saves this season in a move that manager Torey Lovullo deemed as “agonizing.” “First of all, it was a brutal decision,” Lovullo said Monday after the team designated Sewald for assignment ahead of its 9-0 home win over the lowly Rockies. “He’s meant so much to this organization. He’s closed our 24 games, he solidified things for our ’23 run, he had a number of saves in ’24 before he got banged up. You learned to appreciate the human being at a certain point. He’s such a great competitor and was having so much success, and on top of that, he’s a friend of all of us. He’s just a good person. … To say goodbye to him, was not ea