News Diamondbacks Team Notes

Former Gold Glove catcher Tucker Barnhart is set to retire, as agent Steve Rath of the Ballengee Group tells Robert Murray of FanSided. Barnhart played for the Reds, Tigers, Cubs, Diamondbacks, and Rangers across his 12 seasons in the majors.

Born and raised in Indiana, Barnhart was drafted by the Reds in the tenth round of the 2009 draft out of Brownsburg High School, just two hours from Cincinnati. As a high school catcher, his path to the big leagues was a long one. Barnhart didn’t make his debut until 2014, and only appeared in 21 games when he did finally make it to the show. The 2015 season saw him take on a much larger role, however, as Devin Mesoraco was sidelined by injury. That left the catcher position to Brayan Pena and Barnhart, the latter of whom proved to be a strong defender but hit a fairly lackluster .252/.324/.326 in 81 games.

Despite that unimpressive offense, Barnhart’s work behind the plate was impressive enough that he became Cincinnati’s primary catcher starting in 2016. His offense trended upwards enough from 2016 to 2018 that he was more or less on par with the average catcher in the league (87 wRC+), and he won the first Gold Glove award of his career in 2017 amid a 3.6 bWAR season. That 2017 campaign was enough to convince the Reds to sign Barnhart to a $16MM extension, locking him in with the club for at least the next four seasons. His offense took a step backwards starting in 2019, as he hit just .235/.318/.375 (79 wRC+) over his final three seasons with the Reds, but he remained a stalwart defender and won his second career Gold Glove during the shortened 2020 season.

After parts of eight seasons in Cincinnati, Barnhart was traded to Detroit ahead of the 2022 season, giving the Tigers the opportunity to exercise a $7.5MM team option on his services for that year. Barnhart struggled in his lone season with the club, however, hitting just .221/.287/.267 (67 wRC+) while his defense behind the plate slipped somewhat. Barnhart was still able to secure a two-year, $6.5MM guarantee from the Cubs that offseason, but he posted just a 55 wRC+ in 43 games before being designated for assignment by the club. Since then, Barnhart has caught for the Diamondbacks and Rangers in the majors after signing minor league deals with both organizations and also spent a brief stint in the Dodgers’ farm system. He’s appeared in 39 MLB games over the past two seasons with a .181/.294/.213 that’s offset somewhat by his continually solid defense.

Barnhart was let go by the Rangers earlier this month but re-signed with the club on a minor league deal shortly thereafter. Evidently, he’s decided he’d rather call it a career than play out the season in the minors. He’ll finish his career with 920 games played in the majors, two Gold Glove awards, 6.9 bWAR/5.8 fWAR, 662 hits, and 53 home runs. He hit .241/.318/.351 overall during his time in the majors. MLBTR congratulations Barnhart on a fine career in the majors and wishes him all the best in whatever comes next.
 
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Prior to yesterday’s 6-5 loss to the Angels, the Diamondbacks placed left-hander Jalen Beeks on the 15-day injured list due to lower back inflammation, with a retroactive placement date of July 8. Right-hander Kendall Graveman was activated from the 15-day IL in the corresponding move.

It doesn’t appear as Beeks’ injury is overly serious, as manager Torey Lovullo told reporters (including the Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro) that the hope is that Beeks will miss just the minimum 15 days, with the retroactive time and the All-Star break factoring into that number. This means Beeks should be able to return in plenty of time before the July 31st trade deadline, which is perhaps noteworthy if the 46-49 Diamondbacks end up being sellers.

Beeks is just a couple of days removed from his 32nd birthday, and he has a 4.39 ERA, 51.8% grounder rate, 22.9% strikeout rate, and 8.9% walk rate over 41 relief innings this season. While the K% and BB% numbers aren’t anything special, Statcast has liked Beeks’ work on the whole, and his ability to induce soft contact and keep the ball on the ground have helped the southpaw deliver some respectable numbers. Beeks’ numbers are somewhat inflated by two nightmarish outings against in the Marlins in late June, which accounted for eight of the 20 earned runs he has allowed all year.

Should Arizona indeed decide to sell, Beeks is a natural trade chip as an impending free agent, and plenty of clubs should have interest in an inexpensive veteran lefty. The D’Backs signed Beeks to a one-year, $1.25MM just before Opening Day, after Beeks was released at the end of spring camp from a previous minor league deal with the Astros.

An IL stint this relatively close to the deadline could throw a wrench into Beeks’ trade candidacy, as he has now joined the long list of Diamondbacks pitchers sidelined by injuries. Graveman has been on the IL twice this season, first due to a lumbar strain and then this latest placement due to a hip impingement that cost him a little over a month of action. These two IL stints have limited Graveman to just 10 appearances and 9 1/3 innings this season. Graveman’s ERA is 8.68, though one six-run implosion against the Reds on June 7 is largely responsible for Graveman’s ungainly bottom-line statistics.

The D’Backs have faced such a swath of pitching injuries that it may impact their deadline plans as either buyers or sellers. Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly are both impending free agents and oft-cited trade candidates, yet according to the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, the Diamondbacks “are unlikely” to move both starters at the deadline for the simple reason that the club still needs to fill innings for the remainder of the year. The Snakes have already seen their starter depth depleted by Tommy John surgeries to Corbin Burnes, Jordan Montgomery, and Blake Walston, while Tommy Henry underwent an internal brace procedure in late June. A shoulder strain has also sidelined Cristian Mena until at least the second week of August, as per his timeline on the 60-day IL.

Gallen is in the last few months of his final arbitration-eligible season, while Kelly is in the last year of what has now become a three-year, $24MM contract when Arizona made the easy call to exercise its $7MM club option on the right-hander last November. Kelly has been the significantly better of the two pitchers this season with 2.0 fWAR to Gallen’s 0.1 fWAR, though Gallen is perceived to have the higher upside as a former front-of-the-rotation type. The Diamondbacks figure to receive plenty of offers for both pitchers prior to July 31, so the decision of who stays and who goes will just come down to which offer the Snakes prefer.

In another injury update, Lovullo said Shelby Miller will be visiting Dr. Keith Meister to get a second opinion about the forearm strain that sent Miller to the 15-day IL earlier this week. Lovullo said that surgery may well be an option for the reliever, but Miller is also still considering treatments that would allow him to return to action at some point in 2025.

At the very least, it certainly doesn’t seem like Miller will be able to return before the deadline, which reduces or (more realistically) wipes out his trade value. This injury has cast a pall over what had been an outstanding season for Miller, a minor league signing who has delivered a 1.98 ERA over 36 1/3 bullpen innings for Arizona.
 
After operating with a short-handed rotation for much of the season, starting pitching is a natural need for the Blue Jays as the deadline approaches. The Jays “are looking for a front-line pitcher,” USA Today’s Bob Nightengale writes, and Diamondbacks right-hander Zac Gallen is one of the hurlers on Toronto’s target list.

The D’Backs took a 46-50 record into today’s game with the Angels, and they sit 6.5 games back of the final NL wild card spot. A team with such high expectations (and a club-record payroll) might wait until closer to the deadline before finally deciding to sell, but barring a major winning streak after the All-Star break, it certainly looks like Arizona will be moving some talent at the deadline. Nightengale writes that the Diamondbacks are already open to discussing impending free agents, which could make Arizona a sought-after trade partner if such players as Gallen, Eugenio Suarez, Josh Naylor, or Merrill Kelly are available.

Gallen is perhaps the most difficult player of that group to evaluate in terms of trade value, as he is posting the worst season of his seven-year MLB career. The righty has a 5.40 ERA in 115 innings and a slate of unimpressive Statcast metrics, including some of the worst hard-contact rates of any pitcher in the league. Gallen has been prone to hard contact even in his best years, but a declining walk rate over the last two seasons has contributed to his struggles. A 4.18 SIERA indicates that Gallen should be out-performing his actual ERA, though those are still the numbers of more a mid-rotation arm rather than a front-of-the-rotation type.

The catch is that Gallen has looked like an ace in the past, with three top-nine finishes in NL Cy Young Award voting on his resume. His best finish was a third-place result in 2023, when Gallen had a 3.47 ERA over 210 innings for an Arizona team that made a surprise run to the NL pennant. The 210 frames was a career high for Gallen, and he added another 33 2/3 innings on his arm during the Diamondbacks’ lengthy playoff run. It can’t be overlooked that Gallen hasn’t quite looked the same since that signature season, as his production took a step backwards in 2024 before his sharper downturn this year.

Arizona is surely still going to put a significant asking price on Gallen, hoping that rival teams could view him as a change-of-scenery candidate. The Diamondbacks’ trade efforts will also naturally be helped by the fact that basically every contender could use a starter, plus Gallen is relatively affordable (around $5.625MM remains on his $13.5MM salary). A pitcher with Gallen’s history will draw interest even if his most recent results haven’t been good. From the perspective of trade suitors, however, those 2025 numbers will surely loom large, as clubs will have to gauge how much they’re willing to offer for a rental pitcher who isn’t in top form.

The Blue Jays have leaned hard on Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, and Chris Bassitt as the top three starters in their rotation this season, as Max Scherzer’s injuries and Bowden Francis’ struggles left Toronto operating with what felt like a three-man rotation for a big chunk of the first half. Scherzer has since returned to the mound (though is still managing thumb discomfort) and minor league signing Eric Lauer has pitched really well since joining the rotation in May, plus Alek Manoah has started a rehab assignment and is expected to be back at some point late in the second half in his return from UCL surgery.

With this much uncertainty, another solid starter would go a long way towards helping the Jays’ chances of keeping their lead in the AL East, or at least making the postseason bracket. Gallen figures to be one of many names linked to the Blue Jays as GM Ross Atkins evaluates what promises to be a typically busy trade market for pitching.
 
The Diamondbacks remain on the fringes of the NL postseason picture, sitting five and a half games out in the Wild Card chase. General manager Mike Hazen has said he hopes the team performs well enough to position itself as a late buyer, but the GM has also at least been listening to offers on some of his outfielders, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports. That does not include star Corbin Carroll, unsurprisingly, but Heyman suggests names like Alek Thomas, Jake McCarthy, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Randal Grichuk have likely been discussed.

Of the four outfielders, Grichuk is the most obvious trade candidate. He’s playing the 2025 season on a one-year, $5MM contract. He’ll unlock a $250K bonus when he reaches his 200th plate appearance — he’s currently at 174 — and another $250K if he reaches 275 plate appearances.

Grichuk’s contract is structured such that Grichuk is owed a $2MM salary and a $3MM buyout on a $5MM mutual option for next year. That makes him a bit more expensive for the rest of the season than a standard one-year, $5MM contract would imply; he’d have about $634K in salary remaining at the time of the trade deadline but also that $3MM buyout and some potential incentive pay. Of course, the D-backs could make a trade more appealing by including cash to offset some of that backloaded 2025 salary.

The 2025 season hasn’t been Grichuk’s best, but he’s still hitting for power. The 33-year-old is batting .242/.282/.466 with seven homers, 13 doubles and a triple in his 174 trips to the plate. His 5.7% walk rate is right in line with his career mark. His 21.6% strikeout rate is down from his career level of about 25% but noticeably higher than the personal-best 16.5% clip he turned in last year in a more productive season with the Snakes.

Gurriel, 31, is a tougher sell from a trade standpoint. He’s being paid $14MM this season and is guaranteed $13MM in 2026 plus at least a $5MM buyout on a $14MM club option for the 2027 season. His .251/.299/.421 batting line (98 wRC+) already represents a down year, and any team to acquire him would know Gurriel will either opt into the remaining $18MM he’s guaranteed beyond the current season or go on a second-half tear and opt out. It’s not an appealing structure, and the Diamondbacks would probably need to eat a significant portion of the remaining money he’s owed to facilitate a trade.

Thomas and McCarthy are both controllable lefty-swinging outfielders, but neither is having a good season at the plate. Thomas, once touted as one of the top outfield prospects in baseball, has yet to hit in parts of four major league seasons. He’s an above-average runner and strong defensive center fielder, but this year’s .245/.295/.366 batting line (84 wRC+) is actually the best of the 25-year-old’s young career. He’s a lifetime .230/.276/.360 hitter in just under 1200 big league plate appearances.

McCarthy, on the other hand, has had plenty of big league success at the plate — just not in 2025. He hit .283/.342/.427 in 99 games back in 2022 (116 wRC+) and slashed .285/.349/.400 (110 wRC+) as recently as last season. He had a down year in 2023, however, and the 27-year-old has struggled to a career-worst .144/.228/.244 line (33 wRC+) in 102 trips to the plate this season.

That’s a relatively small sample, of course, and McCarthy has had some demonstrably poor luck. He’s hitting just .151 on balls in play — less than half the .328 career mark he carried into the season and some 130 points lower than the league average. McCarthy isn’t hitting the ball hard at all (83.9 mph average exit velocity, 23.7% hard-hit rate), but he also had poor batted-ball metrics even in his more productive 2022 and 2024 seasons. His 15.7% strikeout rate remains excellent, and McCarthy has walked at a solid 8.8% rate.

The D-backs optioned McCarthy to Triple-A after a rough three-week start and only recalled him back in late June. He batted .314/.401/.440 in 237 plate appearances with the Diamondbacks’ top affiliate in Reno and has put together an improved (albeit still diminished) .222/.300/.400 slash in his past 51 major league plate appearances.

Both Thomas and McCarthy are controllable for an additional three seasons. Both are eligible for arbitration for the first time this offseason. The Diamondbacks burned McCarthy’s final option year when they sent him down to Triple-A back in April. He’ll be out of minor league options next year. Thomas also entered 2025 with one option year remaining, but his is still intact, as he hasn’t been sent down at any point this season.
 
D-Backs catcher José Herrera went unclaimed on waivers and was assigned outright to Triple-A Reno, according to the MLB.com transaction log. Arizona designated him for assignment when Gabriel Moreno returned from the injured list last week.

Herrera has played parts of four seasons as a light-hitting backup. He’s worked behind Moreno for the past three of those. The switch-hitting Herrera has tallied 204 plate appearances this season. He has slashed .187/.285/.259 with a pair of home runs. He has hit a trio of homers among his 562 career trips to the dish.

The Diamondbacks valued Herrera’s glove and clubhouse presence enough to stick with him as a backup despite his lifetime .200/.280/.259 batting line. Veteran James McCann, signed when Moreno went on the IL in late June, has hit three homers with a .326 on-base percentage in 30 games. McCann figures to pair with Moreno for the final month of the season. Herrera will become a minor league free agent at the end of the regular season unless the D-Backs add him back to the MLB roster in the next few weeks.
 
The Diamondbacks announced that they have recalled infielder Jordan Lawlar and left-hander Brandyn Garcia. First baseman Pavin Smith has been placed on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to August 28th, due to a strained left squad. Right-hander Taylor Rashi has been optioned to Triple-A Reno in the other corresponding move.

Lawlar, now 23, has been one of the top prospects in baseball for a while now. He forced his way up to the majors late in 2023, just after his 21st birthday. However, he didn’t immediately hit the ground running, producing a .129/.206/.129 line in is first 34 plate appearances. The Snakes were in contention then and weren’t in a position to just throw him out there as an experiment.

Going into 2024, the Diamondbacks weren’t quite ready to just hand him a big league job, given his youth and those numbers. They already had Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte at the middle infield spots. They could have tried Lawlar at third base but instead acquired Eugenio Suárez from the Mariners. At the time, he had one guaranteed year remaining on his contract.

Lawlar could have forced his way into taking the job from Suárez, especially when Geno struggled badly early in 2024. However, Lawlar required thumb surgery in March and was out of action for several months. Then a hamstring injury cost him more time. He would only play 23 minor league games that year. Meanwhile, Suárez had such a strong surge in the second half that the Snakes picked up his $15MM option for 2025.

That left Lawlar fairly blocked for big league playing time this year. He did his best to unblock things, as he slashed .336/.413/.579 in Triple-A through mid-May and basically forced the Snakes to call him up. They believed that they could spread the playing time around but it didn’t really work out. He was recalled on May 12th but optioned back down on May 29th. In that stretch of barely over two weeks, he got into eight games and received 22 plate appearances. He didn’t take to the sporadic playing time, not recording a hit in that span.

The Diamondbacks fell out of contention and sold at the deadline, which included sending Suárez back to the Mariners. Ideally, Lawlar would have come up to take over at the hot corner but he had suffered a hamstring strain in late June. He got back on the field a couple of weeks back. After ten Triple-A games to get back in shape, he’s now coming up.

The Snakes can now use the final month of the season to finally give Lawlar some regular big league playing time and see how he handles it. His performance could then impact their offseason moves. He will still have one option season after this one, so they don’t have to give him the job in 2026. However, he doesn’t have much left to prove in the minors, so it’s probably time to let him sink or swim in the show.

That’s perhaps especially true given the club’s other priorities. Arizona traded away impending free agent Merrill Kelly at the deadline. Zac Gallen is still on the club for now but is an impending free agent himself. Corbin Burnes is had Tommy John surgery and will miss at least part of 2026. The bullpen lost Justin Martínez and A.J. Puk to UCL surgeries. The front office will definitely be looking for pitching this winter. Outfield upgrades might also be on the menu, given the struggles of Alek Thomas and Jake McCarthy.

With all of that going on, the front office might lean towards going into 2026 with Lawlar and Blaze Alexander competing for the third base job, as opposed to spending money or prospect capital to bring in someone else.

Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas, Imagn Images
 
Pavin Smith is “likely” done for the 2025 season, manager Torey Lovullo told reporters (including Jacob Gurvis of MLB.com) earlier today. Lovullo noted that Smith has not been officially shut down for the season, but after he went on the injured list with a strained left quad yesterday it seems unlikely he’ll be able to get healthy and back up to speed in time to appear before the end of the season.

Smith, 29, appeared in 87 games for the Diamondbacks this season and has slashed .258/.362/.434 with a wRC+ of 122. That’s solid production on paper, but those surface level numbers cover up what was a strange, up-and-down season for the former seventh-overall pick. Smith started the year as one of the hottest hitters in the majors, as he slashed an unbelievable .342/.373/.640 through the end of April. Even during that hot stretch, he was striking out at a hefty 28.1% clip but made up for it by hitting for significant power and floating a massive .488 BABIP.

That batted ball luck was going to run out at some point, however, and his next 48 games saw him hit just .232/.336/.384 in 146 plate appearances. His 13.7% walk rate in that stretch remained quite impressive, but his power largely disappeared and he struck out at an ugly 32.9% clip. It wasn’t long after that when Smith suffered an oblique strain that left him sidelined for the majority of July and much of August. He’s appeared in just 14 games in the back half of Arizona’s schedule, and in those limited appearances he’s hit .195/.244/.268 with a 32.6% strikeout rate in 46 plate appearances.

With such a hot start to the year followed by a lengthy cooldown later in the first half, it would be easy to write off Smith’s early-season performance as a simple flash in the pan. There could certainly be merit to that assessment, but it’s also worth noting that his injury-marred second half left him with little opportunity to make adjustments in order to respond to those struggles he began to have after the calendar flipped to May. In conjunction with Smith’s brilliant partial season in 2024, where he slashed .272/.371/.568 in 97 plate appearances after the All-Star break, it’s anyone’s guess what sort of production the Diamondbacks will be able to get out of Smith next year. It seems likely he could be tasked with sharing time at first base with Tyler Locklear in at least some capacity, though Locklear’s .169/.256/.247 slash line in 23 games for Arizona this year hasn’t exactly inspired confidence to this point.

In the short term, Smith’s at-bats at DH will be handled by Ketel Marte. That’s because, as Lovullo noted to reporters (including Gurvis) this evening, Marte is dealing with what the manager described as “fatigue” in his right forearm. That forearm issue has led the Snakes to play Marte out of the DH spot in each of the past two games rather than play him at his usual position of second base. With Jordan Lawlar now on the roster to get increased reps at the hot corner, perhaps more DH time for Marte down the stretch could mean additional opportunities for Blaze Alexander to remain in the lineup even when Lawlar is playng. Alexander has hit a respectable .234/.331/.441 in 49 games this year while splitting time between second and third base.
 
The D-backs have released catcher Rene Pinto, who’d been playing with their Triple-A affiliate in Reno, per the MiLB.com transaction log. He’s a free agent and can field interest from any teams seeking to bolster their catching depth in the season’s final month.

Pinto, 28, hasn’t played in the majors this season but saw big league time with the Rays in each of the past three seasons. He’s drawn solid framing grades in the majors but has struggled to control the running game and has drawn poor marks from Statcast for his ability to block pitches in the dirt. Pinto is a career .231/.263/.404 hitter with 10 homers but a 36.7% strikeout rate in 237 major league plate appearances.

While his big league numbers aren’t much to look at, Pinto has been far better in Triple-A. He batted .268/.324/.517 with 11 round-trippers in 225 plate appearances with Reno this season and carries a career .256/.307/.493 slash with 57 homers in 1132 plate appearances at the top minor league level. Strikeouts have been an issue in Triple-A as well, however. He’s fanned in 29.9% of his career plate appearances there.

There’s not much on the market for catching depth right now, so teams that have recently incurred injuries behind the dish could take a flier on the former Rays backstop. The Reds (Tyler Stephenson), Mets (Francisco Alvarez) and Nationals (Keibert Ruiz) all have catchers on the injured list at the moment, for instance. With rosters set to expand to 28 players on Sept. 1, it’s also possible that another club will look to use one of those extra spots to carry a third catcher, which could create further opportunities.
 
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