Mike Hazen has developed himself a reputation for making his impact moves at some rather unexpected moments. Jalen Beeks is no exception. Despite having solid results for four of the previous five seasons, Beeks looked first to the Houston Astros on a minor league deal for the 2025 season. Less than two weeks later, he was released. Then, the day before Arizona took the field for their first game of the season, Hazen took a chance on the veteran left-hander.

Beeks has spent the majority of his career flying under the radar. Such tends to be the fate of many of the relievers that Tamp Bay cuts loose, as they did with Beeks in 2023. Beeks is of unassuming size by baseball standards. He doesn’t throw particularly hard, though he has respectable speed in the low-to-mid 90s. Beeks arrived on Arizona’s roster with a history of below average strikeout rates and above average walk rates. Take all together, there were plenty of reasons for the Arizona fandom to view the Beeks signing with a heavy dose of skepticism. As it turned out, Beeks was arguably the most reliable relief arm for the 2025 season. Unlike some of his peers, he did not miss time to injury or suspension. He dropped right into the 26-man roster, put his head down, and got to work.

Used mostly in middle relief situations, Beeks did not accrue many holds or saves. In fact, he only had one save all season long, despite the numerous bullpen arm injuries. That save came on 4 May, in extra innings against Philadelphia.

Beeks was solidly reliable all season long. He did not go through the wild ups and downs commonly associated with relief pitching. His performances, most of them being one-inning affairs, were eerily consistent. Only once all season did he hit something of a hurdle. This came at the end of June. It was then, on back-to-back nights, that Beeks had his “meltdown period”. Over the course of two games against the Miami Marlins, Beeks managed only one total inning of work, while allowing eight runs on five hits and four walks. In the first outing, he had his bacon saved by Ryan Thompson, before Shelby Miller ended up blowing the save in one of Arizona’s many bullpen meltdowns. The next night, Beeks took the blown save and the loss.

Come September, when Arizona was charging hard for a playoff berth, Beeks showed up when called upon. He only allowed 2 runs to score in the month, spread out over nine appearances. In those, he only allowed three hits and he didn’t walk anyone. For a low-to-medium leverage reliever eclipsing 60 appearances on the season, that is the sort of performance to take to the bank.

Beeks was granted free agency when the 2025 season concluded. He remains unsigned as of this writing, despite the flurry of relievers being signed by clubs across the league. At age 32, with yet another solid season under his belt, Beeks will almost certainly find another MLB contract before spring rolls around. His age and his peripheral numbers may continue to limit him to one year deals, but there are plenty of scenarios that could see Beeks landing a two-year deal as well. Arizona still has work to do on its bullpen. Beeks is nothing special, but he is competent. This raises the possibility of Mike Hazen establishing a reunion with the veteran left-hander. But, such a move will depend on cost and also on what other moves Hazen has up his sleeve for this winter. Beeks will almost certainly be toeing the mound for a Major League team in 2026. It just remains to be seen which one.

A haunting selfie taken by an Arizona man hours before he suffered a fatal brain injury during a routine dental implant procedure has resurfaced as his distraught parents settled his wrongful death lawsuit.

Derek Swanson, 40, took a picture of himself beaming in a dentist’s chair on March 3, 2023. He captioned the photo: “Yesterday, new car. Today, implant! Fun never stops.”

Swanson, an avid gym-goer, was eager to receive a long-awaited dental implant. He booked the procedure at Scottsdale Facial and Oral Surgery, but never woke up following complications with the administered anesthesia.

He was placed on life support after suffering a brain injury and died on March 10, 2023, according to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner.

“He was so excited. He had fixed a lot of teeth, and they were looking really nice,” his mother, Brenda Swanson, told ABC15.

Brenda told the outlet that she was with her son the day of the surgery and was left waiting in the lobby for hours.

“They called Derek back, and that I won’t forget. He turned around and he gave me a wink and said, ‘love you,’ and he walked back,” she said.

“I just kept waiting and waiting, and Derek wasn’t coming out,” she added.

Brenda and Bill Swanson filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the dentist, Dr. Derek Lamb, and the Scottsdale surgery clinic.

The lawsuit was finally settled this week for an undisclosed amount.

The Swansons’ lawsuit alleged that the Lamb and the clinic made an error during the anesthesia process, which deprived Derek of oxygen and triggered a fatal brain injury.

The grieving parents are also looking to amend Arizona law to require a dentist and an anesthetist to be present during dental surgery.

The current laws state that a dentist can perform surgery and administer anesthesia without an anesthetist present so long as they have the proper state permit.

“We would like to not have another family go through what we had to go through and are going through and will be for the rest of our life,” Swanson told the outlet.

An Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill this week directing state health authorities to study the so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS), an invented medical condition that the president and his allies have accused of afflicting his strongest critics.

Senate Bill 1070, introduced Monday by State Sen. Janae Shamp, gives the Arizona Department of Health Services a year to study the “origins, manifestations and long-term effects on individuals, communities and the public discourse” of the so-called condition, which is not recognized by mainstream medical organizations.

Beyond just directing a study, the bill would enshrine a series of legislative findings, including the claim that the “irrational animus” of TDS caused the two assassination attempts against Trump last year, while other findings praise the president’s “contributions to America’s prosperity,” such as “eliminating harmful mandates and affirming biological truth in federal policy to protect family values.”

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs is unlikely to sign the bill from Shamp, a registered nurse and ardent Trump supporter.

Will Humble, former director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, told Arizona’s Family the proposal is “silly.”

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“You’re ordering a state agency to do a bunch of work that has no objective, no meaningful outcome,” he said. “And, by the way, it’s outside their mission — they’re not social scientists.”

The Independent has contacted Shamp for comment.

The Arizona effort follows Republican attempts in Minnesota and at the federal level to codify or study the invented syndrome.

The term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was coined during Trump’s first term, and since then, the president and his supporters have often used the term to dismiss the strongest critics of the president as mentally ill.

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Most recently, the president claimed TDS was responsible for the slaying of director Rob Reiner and his wife, provoking widespread outrage. Reiner, a lifelong progressive, was a frequent public critic of the president.

The president used a similar tactic last year, claiming that his former chief of staff John Kelly was suffering from TDS after Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Individual psychological providers have claimed some of their patients report to be suffering from TDS.

“Is ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ real? No serious mental-health professional would render such a partisan and derogatory diagnosis,” Jonathan Alpert wrote in a November op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. “Yet I’ve seen it in my own psychotherapy practice.”