The Rockies have acquired outfielder
Jake McCarthy from the Diamondbacks in exchange for right-handed pitching prospect
Josh Grosz. Both teams have officially announced the trade.
Selected 39th overall by the D’Backs in the 2018 draft, McCarthy’s tenure in Arizona has been marked by trade rumors and flashes of potential. McCarthy’s first full MLB season in 2022 saw him finish fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting, off a .283/.342/.427 slash line, eight homers, and 23 steals in 26 attempts over 354 trips to the plate. This translated to a 116 wRC+, but McCarthy’s production then drastically tailed off to a 78 wRC+ during the 2023 season, and he wasn’t involved in any of Arizona’s playoff rosters during the team’s run to the NL pennant.
The pendulum swung again in 2024 when McCarthy played in a career-high 142 games, and hit .285/.349/.400 with eight homers and 25 stolen bases over 495 PA. This past season, McCarthy had only a 60 wRC+ from a slash line of .204/.247/.345 over 222 PA, and he spent two months in Triple-A in a fruitless attempt to get his bat on track.
With a 431-game sample size to work with, McCarthy’s strengths and weaknesses are clear. He can play all three outfield positions at least passably well, and he is one of the very fastest players in baseball, ranking in no lower than the 98th percentile of speed since his debut in the Show. McCarthy makes a lot of contact, yet with very little hard contact or power, leaving him somewhat at the mercy of batted-ball luck.
Coming up as one of several left-handed hitting outfielders in the Diamondbacks farm system, McCarthy has been a trade candidate for years. During the 2023-24 offseason, the White Sox were
reportedly given the option of acquiring either McCarthy or
Dominic Fletcher in exchange for
Cristian Mena, and Chicago opted to go with Fletcher. It is easy to second-guess the D’Backs by arguing that McCarthy could’ve garnered more of a return if they’d moved him much earlier than January 2026, though McCarthy’s up-and-down performance made him something of a difficult player for the Diamondbacks to gauge, let alone shop to trade suitors.
Even with
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. set to miss most or all of the 2026 season recovering from a torn ACL, the Diamondbacks still felt comfortable moving McCarthy out of their outfield mix. McCarthy is out of minor league options, so sending him back to Triple-A again would’ve first required a trip through the waiver wire. Today’s trade allows the D’Backs to get something back in return for a player who simply no longer seemed to be in their plans.
Corbin Carroll is locked into right field and
Alek Thomas will probably get the bulk of center field work. Any of
Blaze Alexander,
Jorge Barrosa, or utilityman
Tim Tawa could be utilized in left field, plus former top prospect
Jordan Lawlar played some center field in winter ball action and might also eventually get some looks in left field. The Diamondbacks could also explore adding another outfielder over the course of the offseason.
The 28-year-old McCarthy now heads to the Mile High City for a fresh start, though he’ll be joining another somewhat crowded outfield picture. If anything, there had been an expectation that the Rockies
might deal from their outfield rather than add, given that it is perhaps the only real position of depth within the organization. That said, acquiring McCarthy could be the Rockies’ way of retaining their outfield depth in advance of another trade later this winter. For now, McCarthy joins
Mickey Moniak,
Brenton Doyle,
Zac Veen, and
Jordan Beck in Colorado’s outfield mix, with McCarthy probably lined up as the fifth outfielder.
Since being hired as the Rockies’ president of baseball operations in November, Paul DePodesta has swung two other trades, but this is the first that brought a brought a big league player back to Colorado in return. DePodesta has a long road ahead of him in trying to bring the Rox back to respectability, but adding a former well-regarded prospect like McCarthy is a way of both raising the talent floor, and seeing what McCarthy can perhaps do with a change of scenery. McCarthy is arbitration-controlled through the 2028 season, and is earning $1.525MM in 2026.
Grosz is on the move for the second time in less than six months, as the righty was one of the two pitching prospects the Yankees sent to the Rockies for
Ryan McMahon at the last trade deadline. Grosz was an 11th-round pick for the Yankees in the 2023 draft, and he posted a 4.67 ERA, 25.2% strikeout rate, and 10.3% walk rate over 125 1/3 innings at the high-A level in 2025 (87 IP with the Yankees’ high-A affiliate, and the rest with the Rockies’ affiliate).
MLB Pipeline ranked Grosz as the 20th-best prospect in Colorado’s farm system, projecting him as a multi-inning reliever or perhaps a back-end starter. Grosz’s fastball (which sits 93-95mph with a good spin rate) is his best pitch but also “his lone better-than-average offering,” as per Pipeline’s scouting report. The 23-year-old is something of lottery ticket that the Diamondbacks can continue developing as a possible rotation piece.
