Arizona Diamondbacks Top 51 Prospects

Lawlar has been beset by injuries basically since he was drafted. He needed surgery to repair a torn labrum in his shoulder almost immediately after he drove his pro career off the lot, then was sidelined by discomfort caused by a bone growth on one of his ribs in mid-2022, before suffering a fractured left scapula when he was hit by a pitch later that season. Lawlar had a healthy 2023 and cracked the big league roster for the first time, but he didn’t hit enough to usurp Evan Longoria during the Snakes’ postseason run. He then tore a ligament in his right thumb during 2024 spring training, had surgery, and dealt with recurring hamstring issues a couple of times after he returned. He played just 14 games at an affiliate and was sent to play for Licey in the Dominican Winter League until around Thanksgiving, doubling his 2024 plate appearances to just over 200 total.

Lawlar has a below-average hit tool but does everything else well. He’s an acrobatic defender who finds all kinds of crazy ways to contort his body and send the baseball where it has to go, which is especially evident on his feeds to second. Lawlar is often positioned so he can make plays moving right to left, which he’s most comfortable with. He struggles to make accurate throws off the backhand, so putting him in position to make as few of those as possible makes a lot of sense. Lawlar got some third base reps with Licey and did fine, putting him on the depth chart at both spots on the infield’s left side.

On offense, Lawlar is going to hit for power, but he’ll also probably strike out a ton. He’s on time to pull lefties with power, and shows gap-to-gap spray against righties. He has plus bat speed, but requires a ton of effort to generate it, often so much that he stops tracking the ball. It’s possible that the considerable amount of time Lawlar has missed means that his hit tool will develop late, and that he’ll improve enough in this regard to produce offense like Trevor Story or Willy Adames did during their years of team control. At least initially though, his offensive output might look more like like that of Danny Espinosa and Paul DeJong.

Del Castillo looked like he might be the best catcher in his draft class and a potential future top 10 pick during his freshman year at Miami, a season that saw him also play some third base and right field. A COVID-shortened sophomore campaign meant he didn’t get the opportunity to repeat that performance and solidify his spot in the class, and then Del Castillo regressed as a hitter during his junior season and was a buy-low of sorts at pick no. 67. After a rough, strikeout-prone introduction to pro ball in 2021 and 2022, Del Castillo has been raking, and debuted with the big league club late in 2024. The hitting environments at Arizona’s upper-minors affiliates — Amarillo and Reno — should generate some skepticism about his overall statline from the last two seasons, but importantly, Del Castillo posted a career-best strikeout rate (by a huge margin) in 2024, and his strength and conditioning looks as though it has taken a meaningful step forward.

Del Castillo still has some issues on defense. Most significantly, his 2.05-ish second pop times are at the bottom of what tends to be acceptable for a regular catcher (he hasn’t played other positions as a pro). His excellent accuracy makes up for this to some extent, but he has allowed a career 80% stolen base success rate in the minors, with a 93% success rate on 29 attempts during his call-up to Phoenix. Other aspects of Del Castillo’s defense are also below average, but not so bad that he needs to change positions. Speedy opposing offenses will turn games against him into a track meet, but with Gabriel Moreno entrenched as the primary guy, los Serpientes get to pick their spots with the way Del Castillo is deployed.

He’s going to hit enough to justify some DH/1B reps, too, and depending on whether Arizona re-signs or replaces Joc Pederson and Christian Walker, Del Castillo could see 400 PA in 2025 as a combo backup catcher and platoon DH. He can still be beaten by well-executed fastballs up and away from him, but you had better put it there because he can do damage throughout the rest of the zone, especially against stuff on the inner half. His added strength shows in his TrackMan stats, as Del Castillo’s measurable power has taken a leap in two consecutive years; for example, his hard-hit rate has risen from 29% to 46% during that time. The big question here is whether Del Castillo’s significant improvement in strikeout rate will hold multi-year water. It’s logical that the added strength has had an impact on Del Castillo’s raw power, but has it also somehow made him a more skilled hitter? His batting stance changed somewhat in 2024, but the rest of his swing really hasn’t. He has always had lovely hitting hands, and he tracks and identifies breaking stuff, he just struggles to get on top of a somewhat large subset of heaters. Were Del Castillo definitely a “no” at catcher, then maybe a strikeout rate regression to his career norm would be something to fear, but there’s enough playable power here for him to be considered a primary catching prospect in a vacuum.

Diaz entered 2024 as arguably the best D-backs pitching prospect even though he didn’t obviously project as a starter. At the very least, the lightning-armed little righty seemed poised to race to the big leagues on the back of his plus stuff and play a meaningful late-season bullpen role for a contending club. This is largely what happened, but Diaz did a lot to solidify himself as a starting pitching prospect in our minds, mostly because of the way his breaking stuff looks like it will play against lefties. Diaz began 2024 at Double-A Amarillo, but pitched his way to Reno in June and then was called up to Arizona in July. He made four big league starts, went back to Reno for a month, and then returned to Phoenix in a long relief role in September. In total, he worked 132.2 innings across 28 games (23 starts), posting a 3.80 ERA, a 1.29 WHIP, 159 strikeouts and 59 walks. Diaz posted a 12% walk rate prior to his big league debut and then a very reasonable 8.7% the rest of the year. His fastball averaged 96 mph across the whole season and 97 mph when he was deployed in relief.

Though Diaz’s fastball command is spotty, its velocity, shape, and angle give it bat-missing margin for error in the strike zone, and it’s reasonable to hope that Diaz’s feel for repeating his high-octane delivery will continue to improve as he matures, and that his fastball command will follow. We now know that, even at his size, he’s capable of sustaining plus velocity across a lot of innings. His mid-80s slider and low-80s curveball each have vertically oriented movement and bat-missing depth. At times, the curve also has some arm-side action, which should help make it a platoon-neutralizing weapon and allow Diaz to navigate lefties without using a changeup. Ideally, Diaz will find a pitch with cutter-y glove-side movement at some point during his career just to give hitters a different direction to worry about, but what he’s working with now plays enough for him to profile as an inefficient, strikeout-heavy no. 4 starter. Over time, Diaz’s athleticism should facilitate polish in the areas that most need it and allow him to be a competitive team’s mid-rotation guy, the sort who you feel good handing the ball to in a playoff game.

Luis is a hard-swinging teenage infielder with a chance to grow into plus power. His hands are incredibly fast and authoritative from both sides of the plate, and he’s a threat to do extra-base damage on basically any pitch he makes contact with. He won’t turn 20 until March, and his well-composed frame has room for another 15 or 20 pounds of muscle without compromising his agility. Luis can also move the barrel around the zone fairly well for such a young switch-hitter, but he doesn’t track the baseball. He chases and swings through hittable pitches that he just seems to lose sight of mid-hack. These issues create bust risk associated with Luis’ hit tool, especially if he gets too big to play shortstop, or if his skills there stagnate.

Luis has a similarly exciting-but-raw look on defense. He’s a good athlete with great range and a well-calibrated internal clock, but he also has below-average hands, which not only prevent him from completing some spectacular plays but from making some more routine ones as well. His throwing stroke is also a little bit odd, but Luis can pretty effortlessly zip the baseball over to first base from anywhere on the left side of the infield, and this might only get easier for him as he matures. Luis remains more of a developmental prospect than one of imminent big league relevance, but he has a big ceiling as a switch-hitting middle infielder with power and is a potential everyday player, even if he continues to have issues with chase.

Groover spent his freshman season at UNC Wilmington (Nate Furman, David McCabe, and Jake Cunningham were teammates) before transferring to NC State, where he raked for two years (259 total bases in 114 career games) and became one of the more interesting prospects in the 2023 draft. Groover’s prospect case was very strong on paper (he had a rare blend of high-end contact rates and measurable power) but was spottier in more subjective, visual ways (he was a mistake-prone third base defender with kind of a weird swing, but rare hand speed). Groover entered 2024 as a Pick to Click, but he never really got the chance to, as he fractured his wrist in a collision with a baserunner during the first week of the season and missed several months. He returned in late July, hit well for a little over a month at High-A Hillsboro, and finished his year with a couple weeks at Amarillo and then the Arizona Fall League.

After 88 career minor league games, Groover is hitting .281/.362/.450 with a 10% career strikeout rate. He is short to the baseball and most dangerous against pitches on the inner third of the plate, which he can pull with authority. His style of hitting might leave him vulnerable to better breaking balls on the outer half, but so far Groover has been able to spoil these pitches. His measured power was unimpressive in 2024, but he was coming off a wrist fracture, so it’s fine to mostly ignore this. Matt Vierling presents a pretty good comp for the way Groover both swings and is projected to produce on offense.

Like Vierling, Groover is a native third baseman who has not always looked capable of playing there, and he began branching out on defense in 2024 with reps at both first base (where he got hurt, and then didn’t play again until the Fall League) and the keystone. Groover has improved at third and is getting rid of the baseball quicker on the subset of plays he has historically struggled to make cleanly. Rather than airmail some tough throws, he’s throwing accurate one- and two-hoppers over there as quickly as he can, and it’s working. It looks like Groover’s going to be capable of playing all three spots, while also crushing lefties and matching up well against righties whose stuff tends to live in his happy zone. He projects as a complementary regular who gets 400 or so annual plate appearances at multiple positions.

Radney, who signed for $1.85 million, has a non-zero chance of maturing in the Goldilocks Zone as an athlete who retains the speed to play center field while also developing big power. He was viewed as one of the few prospects from the 2024 IFA class with a chance to do at least a little bit of everything (and a lot of some things), and he was also one of the youngest. He played 34 games between both of Arizona’s DSL clubs and slashed .225/.331/.288 with 25 strikeouts (19.2%) and 14 walks (10.8%) over 130 plate appearances. More notably, Radney didn’t produce a single homer over the summer and only had five extra base hits total. He was dealing with a back issue all summer, which may have limited his output on both sides of the ball (he didn’t play center field in 2024).

Radney still showcases impressive bat speed, but his downward path creates issues getting the ball off of the ground (53% groundball rate last year). He’s going to repeat the DSL in 2025. We still love the athleticism, projection, and bat speed here and think it’s encouraging that Radney didn’t strike out a ton even though he was apparently compromised. Before he signed, Radney was evaluated like a draft’s top 10 pick; now he’s graded as if he’s more of a late first rounder as we wait to see if his debut was an injury-influenced blip or not.

Mena is a precocious and athletic 21-year-old righty who made his big league debut in 2024 and then was shut down for the rest of the season a few weeks later with a forearm strain. The White Sox signed Mena in 2019 and the start of his career was delayed due to the pandemic, yet he was still just 18 years old when he first took a pro mound in 2021. In 2023, at age 20, he was the youngest pitcher in baseball to reach Triple-A. Stocked with tweener outfielders, the Diamondbacks acquired Mena from Chicago in exchange for Dominic Fletcher just before the 2024 season.

Since arriving in Arizona, Mena has trimmed his physique, changed his delivery (it’s more cross-bodied now), and is throwing his breaking balls much harder; they now bend in around 84-87 mph rather than the 82-84 mph range they did while Mena was with Chicago. But the issues that have otherwise plagued Mena during his prospectdom largely remain. His fastball lacks effective movement and he was once again homer-prone in 2024. Some of his 21.1% HR/FB rate in 2024 has to do with the PCL hitting environment, but Mena has had a HR/FB rate of 15% or more in three of his four pro seasons and has allowed an OPS over 1.000 against his heater each of the last two years. The two-seamer and Mena’s changeup, a glorified sinker in the 88-91 mph range, should give him a way to stay off barrels, and his delivery and arm action are so athletic and lovely that you can project heavily on the changeup. Two good breaking balls — a slider and a curve with velocities that have tended to blend — have long been the staple of Mena’s profile and remain so. Both are tough to pick up out of Mena’s hand, and he tends to locate them when he isn’t overthrowing.

Mena’s season-ending forearm injury clouds his immediate future a little bit, and his fastball’s vulnerability caps his ceiling, but he has plus breaking stuff and a delivery/athleticism combo that indicates he might develop a plus changeup and plus command. Mena is likely to be a steady, strike-throwing no. 4/5 type of starter.

Troy was exposed by pro-quality breaking balls during a rough 2024 at High-A Hillsboro, where he hit .227/.319/.347 and missed time with a hamstring injury. Though Troy posted a stellar Arizona Fall League statline, he still looked allergic to spin there. He now has a utilityman projection here because it looks unlikely that he’s going to hit enough to be an everyday player. Troy can really swing hard and rotates with more explosion than is typical for hitters his size. His scissor-kick swing is geared for banging high fastballs to the opposite field gap but, especially against breaking balls, he isn’t on plane with the pitch for very long. Per Synergy, Troy missed 47% of the sliders he swung at in 2024 (reminder: this was at High-A), which is a gigantic spike from his 31% rate at Stanford. For context, Mason Miller‘s slider had a 48% miss rate in 2024. Troy can crush a fastball, but if he is essentially turning opposing sliders into elite pitches, then big league hurlers aren’t going to let him see heaters. Troy now has a pretty extreme power-over-hit offensive profile. His speed is going to add a relevant element to what he brings to a lineup, but his issues with breaking balls are going to make him a streaky hitter at the very least, and on the whole probably it probably won’t be enough for him to be an everyday player.

If there’s good news here, it’s that Troy has been improving at shortstop. Though he played all over the place at Stanford and looked like he had settled in at third base in his draft year, the Diamondbacks have mostly deployed Troy at short. He’s very tightly wound, a much more explosive athlete than an elegant and fluid one, and in the past he struggled with some of the tougher, off-platform throws that big league teams expect their shortstops to make, though he has improved in this regard. He began playing more second base in 2024, especially in the AFL, and based on Troy’s look at third base in college, it’s reasonable to expect he’ll also be able to play there. Troy’s speed also gives him a shot to play center field if the D-backs want to give that a try; he played some corner outfield in college but never center. Unless Troy’s contact ability miraculously improves in 2025, he isn’t on the fast track to the big leagues. He and Arizona have all of 2025 and 2026 to flesh out his fits on defense so that he can compete for a superutility role on the big league roster in 2027.

Waldschmidt spent his first college season at Charleston Southern playing a mix of third base and outfield, then transferred to Kentucky for his sophomore and junior years and moved full-time to left field, where he remains a speedy work-in-progress. Like a lot of college hitters, he enjoyed a huge uptick in power output in 2024, clubbing 14 homers and doubling his career total in the process. Waldschmidt had an OPS north of 1.000 and performed well in several key statistical categories at Kentucky, including plate discipline, contact, and measurable power. He had one of the more well-rounded statistical cases of any college hitter in the 2024 draft.

Visual evaluation of Waldschmidt’s hit tool comes in south of his data. His swing is hellacious but atypical. He takes a really healthy hack but does so with basically no stride. Waldschmidt’s swing is all hands and torso, and requires a ton of effort, so much that his head kicks around and he often loses sight of the baseball as his body ignites. His hardest swings are truly over in the blink of an eye, like a cobra strike — this guy has big time bat speed and power that plays best (by far) against pitches down-and-in. If he can sustain this approach all the way up the minors, we’re talking about a LF/DH who’s in the lineup every day. The left field-only profile puts Waldschmidt on thin ice if he can’t, in which case, we’d be looking at a Clint Frazier type outcome.

Chalas is a projectable relief prospect who quickly moved from the DSL to the Arizona complex in 2023, and then was pushed pretty aggressively again from Low-A Visalia to High-A Hillsboro in 2024. He is forecast here as a late-inning weapon.

Chalas is already reaching back for upper-90s heat at 20 years old, he’s lanky and projectable, and he’s a visually explosive athlete with very powerful and exciting mechanics. He takes a huge stride directly at the plate, he generates big hip and shoulder separation, his arm action looks fluid and natural even though it’s relatively curt, and he’s balanced over his landing leg throughout his delivery. Though its shape limits its bat-missing utility to the high-and-arm-side quadrant, Chalas has pretty good feel for living in that area; he’s going to have a monster fastball at maturity, maybe even an elite one. As soon as Chalas’ slider feel clicks, he’s going to race to the big leagues. Right now, he struggles to get depth on the pitch (82-86 mph, up to 88 — again, a pitch that we anticipate will have plus velocity at peak), which is common for young pitchers with a lower arm slot like Chalas. In 2025, signs that he has either made any kind of progress or has been tinkering in this area are key variables to monitor.

His slider is far enough behind that it’s the main thing keeping Chalas from having a slam dunk setup man grade here. He’ll be able to live off his fastball alone in a meaningful relief role, but a high-leverage job is plausible if any kind of secondary pitch emerges for him.

Caldwell is a plus-plus running quarter stick of dynamite with the tools to be a turbo-charged leadoff man. Resembling the D-backs’ outfielder draft pick prototype of recent years, Caldwell is a short player with catalytic offensive qualities who had superlative contact performance on the showcase circuit. He got just over $3 million to sign rather than go to Ole Miss, but didn’t play at an affiliate after the draft. Caldwell is incredibly muscular and strong for a 5-foot-9 guy. His build is maxed out, in the Jasson Domínguez/Jett Williams area physically, where there’s really nowhere to go except too big. Caldwell swings really hard, but had no discernible swing-and-miss issues in high school. He doesn’t often make flush airborne contact, but he’s dangerous against high fastballs and wreaks havoc with his speed when he makes lesser contact. Caldwell’s ceiling is that of a leadoff-hitting everyday center fielder, though his mature physique creates some profile volatility.

The D-backs took Dix with the 35th overall pick in the 2024 draft out of Whitefish Bay High School in Wisconsin and gave him $2,150,000, which was just under slot, to skip his commitment to Wake Forest. Dix is a switch-hitter and features a more imposing swing from the left side, where he rotates more explosively, has better rhythm, and generates serious loft. His medium frame isn’t teeming with projection, but he is already quite strong and should add another half grade of power via physical maturity. Dix is a quick twitch athlete who has reliable hands on the dirt and the instincts to stay up the middle. He had multiple shoulder injuries in high school culminating in labrum surgery the fall before his senior year; whether he fully regains his solid arm strength long-term will be critical to whether he’s capable of handling short. He has a shot to be a power-hitting shortstop if he does.

The lowest levels of the Diamondbacks’ system have been flush with big-framed, projectable athletes recently, and De La Cruz is arguably the most well-made of the bunch. He is built like Michael Irvin and has an enormous power ceiling if he fills out the way we think he will. In 2024, when he moved from the infield to the outfield, De La Cruz slashed .301/.399/.435 with 32 walks (14.3%) and 46 strikeouts (20.5%) over 224 complex-level plate appearances, but he didn’t hit a single homer. Despite his lever length, De La Cruz is fairly adept at staying short to the inner third of the zone and making contact in there, though he often strides toward the third base line in order to do this and might be vulnerable to well-located sliders as he climbs. His swing generates all-fields spray, including a lot of inside-outed contact to right field. For such a lanky hitter, this sort of performance is atypical. De La Cruz’s power needs to start showing up in games because he’s likely ticketed for a corner outfield spot. There are too many good center fielders in the org for him to get regular reps there, and he’s new to the outfield and predictably raw. A long-term prospect because of his long-term power projection, De La Cruz has the look and feel of a toolsy junior college prospect who gets drafted in the third or fourth round.

Various injuries (a post-draft labrum tear, and quad and hamstring issues the following year) prevented Jones from being healthy enough to play consistently until 2024, when he hit .275/.409/.405 to go with a 28% strikeout rate and 18% walk rate in 109 Cal League games. It’s good that Jones was actually able to play, stayed off the IL all year, and had a productive surface-level performance, which was good for a 125 wRC+. But Jones still has some pretty serious issues hitting. He remains wholly unable to pull the baseball due to the length of his swing. When Jones was in high school, this seemed like a quirk that could be ironed out in pro ball; instead, it has turned into a concerning issue. Jones is often overwhelmed by fastballs because he’s too late to the contact point, and even when he’s not, he often drives the ball into the ground. Jones posted a 57.2% groundball rate in 2024, which would have tied for the eighth-highest GB% among big league hitters with 100 PA.

Before he was drafted, it was reasonably assumed that Jones would be able to shorten up his swing as he filled out and got stronger, but that hasn’t happened. Though he had a softer, less sinewy build than most elite high school-aged prospects, he was a big-framed guy who was already hitting the ball really hard for his age. It seemed like he might suddenly have enormous power and a more functional swing on a pro strength program, but he has been treading water in these areas. Of course, even though Jones had a healthy 2024, he’s still missed the majority of his potential pro at-bats due to injury, which might explain why all of this stuff is so far behind. We can all cross our fingers that this is true, but it doesn’t change the reality of Jones’ scouting report right now; he has a huge hole in his swing at the top of the zone.

He remains a good defensive center fielder, especially at the catch point. Jones does some ridiculous stuff adjusting and contorting his body to make spectacular plays, though his range and route quality are more average, and are sometimes why he’s forced to do Spiderman stuff. All is not lost here, but at age 21, there are so many aspects of Jones’ game that need to develop that it’d be unreasonable to expect that all of them will. A hopeful but level-headed projection for him at this point is a career like Michael A. Taylor’s, where Jones gets to enough power and plays great enough defense to have a long career as a fourth outfielder with a season or two peaking above that.

Elbis is a wispy Venezuelan righty who has been on the radar as a backend starter for a while. His strike-throwing regressed in 2023, then rebounded in 2024. He features a low-90s fastball/two-plane slider mix most of the time. The arm-side movement of his curveball gives him a weapon against lefties, and an improving changeup might give him a second. Elbis worked 135.1 innings in 2024 and pitched at Double-A for the last six weeks of the year. He is an up/down starter type with the physical characteristics for continued growth that might allow him to fill a stable fifth starter role down the road. He’ll likely be in the mix for 2025 spot starts.

Lin had an eventful and ultimately triumphant 2024. He suffered a broken jaw and concussion when he was hit by a foul ball at the end of April, which kept him out until June, but he still managed to make 21 starts, work just over 100 innings, and reach Triple-A Reno by the very end of the season. Lin then went to the Arizona Fall League to stay hot as he prepared to be one of Taiwan’s starters in the Premier12 tournament. Taiwan made a surprise run to the event’s championship game and Lin was handed the ball to face Samurai Japan, which hadn’t lost in international competition since 2019. Lin worked four innings of one-hit ball as he and three other Taiwanese pitchers combined for a four-hit shutout and defeat of Japan. It was perhaps the biggest baseball game in Taiwanese history.

Lin’s moxy, confidence (this guy was staring down and jawing with NPB stars during that Premier12 title game) and athleticism are all quite special, but his stuff and command are not. While his delivery has an electricity to it, his arm action is quite long and tough for him to repeat. Very successful starters who sit 88-92 like Lin does tend to have razor sharp command, and while Lin isn’t at risk of moving to the bullpen because of strike-throwing issues or anything like that, he isn’t exactly a surgeon. Lin’s best secondary pitch is his big-breaking 76-79 mph slurve, which is a great strike-stealing pitch for him but not something he can locate for chase. An uphill 85-88 mph cutter and low-80s changeup both tend to sail on Lin, though his four-pitch mix gives him several distinct shapes and speeds with which to attack hitters. More fun than functional at the moment, Lin is still two seasons away from Rule 5 Draft exposure, so he’ll operate as upper-level depth without occupying a 40-man roster spot for a while. He should eventually be a consistently rostered fifth starter.

Soler is a bat control wizard who hasn’t met a pitch he didn’t think he could hit, and a lot of the time he’s right. He posted nutty 2023 TrackMan data in the DSL (92% in-zone, 5% swinging strike), and while those numbers came back to Earth in 2024 (86% and 10%, respectively) when Soler came to the U.S. for complex ball, he was still arguably the most dangerous hitter on that roster. In his 239 plate appearances on the complex in 2024, Soler posted an .824 OPS while striking out 17.2% of the time. He walked just under 7% of the time. His overall chase rate on the season came in at just under 30%, but his two-strike chase rate was a scary 49%, and he’s especially prone to expanding against spin.

Soler attacks pitches all over the zone (and outside of it) and sprays hard contact everywhere. His swing is very handsy — there isn’t a lot of athletic stuff happening with the rest of his body — and at times has a downward path, but his hands are so quick and his bat speed is so dynamic that, so far, it’s working for Soler. We also thought Soler made progress as an athlete and defender in 2024. He’s leaner and stronger now than he was during his pro debut and this has improved his mobility on defense, though he’s still at risk of moving off of third base eventually.

There are a lot of similarities to Miguel Andujar and Ty France in Soler’s game. He’s an exciting young hitter with flaws that tend to undermine the profile of below-average corner defenders like him, especially if they have to move to 1B/LF the way Andujar and France did. There are scouts who think that Soler will hit enough for none of this to matter and that he’ll have the hit/power combination of an everyday corner infielder regardless of his position. We’re a bit more apprehensive.

Ray only threw 31.1 innings (all in relief) in college because of a Tommy John surgery, and entered the D-backs system as a tip-of-the-iceberg sort set to be developed as a starter. He reached Double-A in 2023, his first full pro season, and ended up working 113.1 innings, which was more than double his 2022 output across Alabama, the Cape, and pro ball combined. Then Ray began 2024 on the 60-day IL with forearm tightness and was out until early June. He returned in time to make 17 regular season starts, with five more in the Fall League.

The inconsistency of Ray’s secondary stuff, both in quality and execution, was an issue for him in 2024, but he has four viable pitches, which is remarkable considering he had barely pitched in actual games until 2023. Ray’s low-90s fastball has enough rise/run action to miss bats when it’s located to the top corners of the zone. His mid-80s slider has late two-plane bite, his mid-70s curveball has plus depth at its best, and Ray’s changeup shows enough action to miss bats. Ray is pretty loose in the strike zone with all of these offerings, which are all roughly average and not nasty enough to be effective if they’re located poorly. Here, we’re still bullish that Ray will improve as a strike thrower via reps, enough to be a solid backend starter. If he can stay healthy in 2025, he’ll be tracking for a 2026 debut.

Giesting (rhymes with bee sting) was a young-for-the-class over-slot 11th rounder from UNC Charlotte who had some dominant outings late in the 2022 college season. The Diamondbacks have toned down his max-effort, head-banging delivery, and Giesting took a leap as a strike-thrower in 2024 (despite a big workload increase up to 141.1 IP), reaching Double-A midway through the season.

Giesting’s best pitch continues to be his plus, low-80s slider, which has nasty two-plane movement and which limited lefties to a .403 OPS in 2024. His drop-and-drive style delivery creates uphill angle on his low-90s fastball, enabling it to punch above its weight. This two-pitch combination should at least allow Giesting to be a good lefty reliever, but he still has to flesh out his repertoire to comfortably project as a starter. He can subtract velocity from his slider to present more of a curveball look, but the most promising of Giesting’s tertiary offerings is an upper-80s cutter, new in 2024. Giesting can throw it for strikes but needs to polish his location closer to the hands of righties. Either this pitch or Giesting’s changeup (which he lacks great feel for) needs to progress for him to fit in a rotation long-term. He remains in swingman limbo but is very likely to be a low-leverage contributor of some kind.

The 5-foot-6 Barrosa became the shortest player in the majors when he debuted early in 2024 due to an Alek Thomas injury; he was previously over-listed at 5-foot-9, until the ABS implementation in the minors forced a correction. Skilled and entertaining as hell, Barrosa is a plus contact hitter and capable center field defender with highlight reel ball skills, but perhaps dwindling range. His general athleticism took a bit of a step back in 2024, which was most noticeable on defense, where Barrosa wasn’t covering quite as much ground. His creativity at the catch point is still special, but overall he looked more average than plus on defense in 2024, which is the chief reason his grade slides a bit here compared to our last update.

Barrosa’s swing has a lot of big movement and noise in his hands, which he gets away with because he’s so small — it’s basically impossible for a guy his height to have a long swing. He’s been a plus contact hitter for his entire minor league career and is really cooking when he’s spraying doubles from line-to-line. Barrosa is chase-prone, which puts a dent in his overall output and projection as a team’s fifth outfielder. His ability to pinch run, put the ball in play when you need it, and act as a defensive replacement in the corners should give him enough utility to be rostered consistently.

A multi-sport prospect in high school, Tawa was a high-profile Stanford commit who had a great freshman year and then struggled as a sophomore and during his COVID-shortened junior year. He returned for his senior season, set several career highs, and became Arizona’s first Day Three pick in 2021. Tawa has hit for a ton of power in the upper levels of the minors (including 31 homers in 2024) with the help of the hitting environments at Double-A Amarillo (a wind tunnel) and Triple-A Reno (the surface of the moon). He is on time to pull mistakes with power, and he’s gotten enough of those to club 53 homers combined in 2023 and 2024. As the Diamondbacks searched for a viable position for Tawa, he inadvertently backed into meaningful defensive versatility. He is best at first base, while being below average at the other infield positions (Tawa basically stopped playing second base in the middle of 2024) and in the outfield corners. His versatility makes him a great fit for up/down duty in the event of injuries at the big league level.

Catuy’s precocious center field defense and ideal physical projection make him a potential long-term power/glove dynamo. He slashed .288/.361/.441 in the 2023 DSL, stole 18 bases in 20 attempts, and only struck out 17.2% of the time. He didn’t get into an affiliated game this season after suffering a left LCL injury on a slide into home during extended spring training that required surgery. In his early 2024 backfield evaluation, Catuy, the youngest hitter on Arizona’s extended spring roster, had a defense-first look. His reads and routes are easy and comfortable, as Catuy glides into the gaps and catches the baseball with uncommon ease. His speed was also evident on the bases. Catuy has nearly average bat speed, which is good for an 18-year-old with as much room for muscle as he has. His swing is pretty simple and not especially dynamic; he typically cuts through the middle of the zone with gentle loft and just looks like he’s trying to be on time. His swing could get more athletic and incorporate more movement as he gets comfortable facing pro stuff. Catuy has an exciting tools/projection package and could break out in 2025 or 2026 once he’s healthy and playing regularly enough to develop some as a hitter.

Grice was an effective two-way player at Clemson and hit .288/.398/.560 during his career there, but when the Diamondbacks drafted him, he was announced exclusively as a pitcher. He struck out 101 hitters in 78 innings as a junior, mostly because of his secondary pitch quality. Grice had a great first month at Visalia in 2024, but then became walk-prone in May and June, and he was shut down with injury and had a Tommy John surgery. The timing of the surgery means that Grice will, at the earliest, return for late- and post-season activity in 2025.

Healthy Grice uses both his upper-70s slider and mid-80s changeup to miss bats. His slider is especially nasty, bending in with tight two-plane movement. At times, he shows obvious arm deceleration on his changeup, which might impact its performance against more experienced hitters who can spot it on release. Grice has a big, prototypical pitcher’s frame at a broad-shouldered 6-foot-6, his delivery is easy looking and consistent, and we like to round up on two-way guys like this who have barely had time to focus solely on their current position. Even with a 90-91 mph fastball, Grice was tracking like a high-probability backend starter. His grade stays the same here, but his ranking has been adjusted to account for the multi-season pause caused by the timing of the TJ.

Steinmetz took a big step forward in 2024. He worked over 100 innings for the first time in his career, his walk rate improved by a huge margin, and his delivery looks more effortless and graceful than ever before. Steinmetz uses a curveball/slider combo right now, but some of his sliders are 87-89 and he might have a sweeper/cutter combination eventually. His curveball has always had good natural depth, but it can be easy to identify out of the hand. Steinmetz has an innings-eater’s build and, increasingly, an innings-eater’s delivery and control. His stuff isn’t monstrous, but it’s good enough for him to work at the back of a rotation if he takes another step forward in terms of workload and strike-throwing.

Cerda came over from Tampa Bay in the 2022 David Peralta trade and reached Double-A for the first time at the end of 2024. He’s a fiery on-field leader who has improved on defense during the last several seasons. When the Diamondbacks first got Cerda, he was a pretty awful receiver and ball-blocker, but he’s gotten much better at both over the last couple of years. He has great lateral agility whether he’s catching on one knee or from a traditional crouch; Cerda uses the latter with runners on base. Cerda has above-average arm strength and below-average arm accuracy right now. He’s on track to have a glove-first backup profile because his best offensive skill is his plate discipline. Though his torso rotates like the head of an owl in the batter’s box, Cerda hasn’t produced much game power. He hasn’t been striking out very much, but he lacks deft barrel accuracy and misses a fair bit in the zone. He might strike out more as he accrues upper level reps and opposing arms realize they don’t have to nibble to get Cerda out. Young enough to add a little more strength and power, Cerda is tracking like a solid backup.

Crisantes was the star infielder at Nogales High School, a powerhouse program in Arizona that went to the state finals twice during Crisantes’ tenure. Since entering pro ball, he has been a superlative statistical performer at the lowest domestic levels. Crisantes hit his way off the complex in 2024 and slashed .333/.429/.478 across 63 games at Low-A Visalia. He also had 23 extra-base hits, a strong strikeout-to-walk ratio, and was 20-for-22 on stolen base attempts.

Crisantes does a lot of little things really well, but he isn’t especially toolsy or projectable. He’s a fantastic defensive second baseman who plays with a low center of gravity, and he has plus hands and actions. He’s also seen time at both corner infield spots, but he has less arm strength than is ideal for third base. Visual evaluation of Crisantes’ hit tool comes in south of his data, which is plus. He can move the barrel around, but his bat path simply doesn’t look like it will be on time against upper-level velocity. He’s also a relatively small prospect with a boxy build that’s light on physical projection. Crisantes’ best shot at outpacing this projection and landing a true everyday second baseman role is to keep making in-zone contact at the 90% clip he has so far, since impact power probably won’t be part of his game. He’s more likely to be a part-time player on the right side of the infield.

Torin is a bat control savant with limited power and defensive ability. He’s posted in-zone contact rates in the 88-91% range so far as a pro, but the quality of his contact is often light, and he slashed .255/.381/.344 at Low-A Visalia in 2024. Torin uses very simple, conservative footwork and lets his hand-eye coordination and bat control do the work for his offense. He hits a lot of choppers and grounders and makes a ton of soft contact, posting one of the three lowest hard-hit rates among D-backs full-season hitters the last two years. He gives you glimpses of exciting rotational ability, especially when Torin has to tuck his hands in and barrel stuff in around his naval. But in general, this is a singles hitter and a smaller guy without the overt physical projection that would indicate he’ll eventually have real power.

Torin has also plateaued as a defender. He has a quick exchange and a lovely arm stroke, but his agility, range and hands are all below average for a shortstop. He’s playing a mix of both middle infield spots right now, but projects to second base for us.

The bat-to-ball skill here is pretty special and Torin is very young. We want to leave room for improvement and we value his profile, but barring an unexpected leap in his explosiveness, Torin is likely to produce akin to Luis Urías. He needs to develop either defensive versatility or power to play a more meaningful big league role.

The diminutive Barriga stomped onto the prospect radar during a nutty 2022 Complex League playoff run, but he was limited to just 10 regular season games in 2023 because of a gruesome compound fracture to his femur, which he suffered while simply rounding first base. People in attendance at that game describe the injury as sounding like a bat breaking, and there was worry it might be career-altering. Back with a vengeance in 2024, Barriga was one of the buzzier names on the backfields during extended spring training, as he was again white hot with the bat. It looked like Barriga was going to do everything except hit for power, due to his lack of size. He was snatching pitches at the top of the strike zone, spraying doubles contact all over the place, posting plus run times and pop times to second base, and generally looked twitchier, more athletic, and more advanced than all but a few of his very talented peers.

Then Barriga’s regular season was more solid than spectacular. He slashed .276/.362/.432, which is a pretty average 102 wRC+ in the ACL, then looked overmatched during a brief A-ball trial at the end of the season. His contact metrics (76% contact rate, 86% in the zone) were good but not elite, and his chase rates are a little scary (especially with two strikes) and indicate his contact rates might fall off a bit as he climbs he minors. Because Barriga, who is listed at 5-foot-9 and might be smaller than that, is atypically tiny, we simply won’t know whether his little body will be able to withstand the grind of catching across a full season until he actually does it. He only caught 40 games in 2024, so we still don’t really know, but he absolutely has the skills to stay back there if his body allows. It’s rare for athletes this size to be primary catchers, though, and it’s more likely Barriga becomes an Austin Barnes or Garrett Stubbs type of backup.

Acquired from Pittsburgh in 2022 trade for Josh VanMeter, Sosa is a big-framed 23-year-old Dominican righty who in 2024 struck out a batter per inning in a relief role at High-A Hillsboro and was promoted to Double-A toward the end of the year. Sosa generates nearly seven feet of extension from a low three-quarters slot and bullies hitters with mid-90s heat. His fastball velocity climbed throughout 2024 and by the end of the season, he was sitting 94-97 mph and touched 99 at Amarillo. When Sosa locates his slider, it’s his best offering, but his release isn’t consistent enough for it to play like a plus pitch yet. Sosa should debut in an up/down role and has a shot to entrench himself on a staff if his command improves into his mid-to-late-20s.

Blanco is a lefty power projection bat who slugged .446 in 2024, his first pro season. Blanco has precocious power and bat speed, and doesn’t turn 18 until April. A lot of his swings are out of control, but if Blanco can reign that in as he continues to grow, he might end up with both really big power and enough of a hit tool to weaponize it. He was also among the more projectable DSL D-backs hitters, at a well-built 6-foot-1 or so. Blanco played a mix of left field and first base in 2024, but if he gets as big and strong as we hope he’ll be, he’ll likely end up at first. Of the fun teenage hitters in this FV tier of Arizona’s system, Blanco is the one we think has the best chance to have an impact hitter.

Among the most physically projectable athletes in the 2023 IFA class, Zapata is a typical Diamondbacks international prospect, with a frame you can dream on and a lot of hit tool risk. Zapata signed for just shy of $1 million and hit .254/.364/.522 in his 2023 DSL debut, but because his underlying contact rates were rather concerning (in the 61-64% range the last two season), he remained in the D.R. for the start of 2024 as well. Zapata was producing there again in 2024 and was promoted to the ACL, where he was clearly overmatched for the final few weeks of the season. Zapata is still not very strong with the bat. He takes a lot of long, awkward swings and looks stiff in the lower body, but he’s huge and lanky and has a chance to grow into enormous power and shorten up his swing in the process. He’s a high-variance prospect who is still five years or so away, and his contact rates are concerning enough to put Zapata in more of a sleeper/flier FV bucket.

Walston threw 149.1 innings at Reno in 2023 and made his big league debut early in 2024 in a spot starter role. After an IL stint (left elbow inflammation), Walston was called up again in September and was asked to work in long relief. His repertoire depth and remaining option years make it likely he will be deployed in a similar role for at least the next couple of seasons. Walston has never thrown quite as hard as when he was a high school senior and young pro. His heater has averaged about 91 mph each of the last several seasons, and Walston mixes in a panoply of other offerings to get by. He has a four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter, slider, curveball, and changeup, all of which are average or below. Walston lacks precise command, but his delivery is simple and effortless, which should allow him to throw enough strikes to start or provide efficient, low-leverage length out of the bullpen.

For a little while in the low minors, it looked like Corniel might develop enough of a bat to be a high-end utilityman, but he hasn’t once had an above-average offensive season and is a glove-only prospect at this point. But oh boy, can he play defense. Corniel was quickly promoted to Triple-A when injuries wreaked havoc on Arizona’s big league shortstop situation in 2024, because if the injuries had cut any deeper, he’d have easily been the most capable shortstop defender in the entire org. He has premium range and athleticism, plus hands, and a plus-plus arm. Corniel can make all the plays at short and he has experience at second and third base, though he played less at those spots in 2024. His defensive ability is going to enable Corniel to play in the big leagues as a team’s fifth or sixth infielder.

The D-backs signed Alpuria for $100,000 out of Venezuela, and he was among the more exciting Snakes prospects to come to the U.S. from the D.R. at the end of 2023. Alpuria spent 2024 on the complex, where he struck out in 25.5% of his 165 plate appearances while showcasing his plus-plus speed by swiping 16 bags in 18 attempts. He’s an athletic dev project with plus bat speed that comes at the expense of body control due to the high-effort nature of his hacks. Many of Alpuria’s best swings come with two strikes, when he quiets everything down, rather than earlier in counts, when his tends to get overly aggressive with his passes. Alpuria’s willingness to chase out of the zone has also contributed to his lack of contact and his groundball tendency. His peak exit velocities are very impressive, but he only had five extra base hits last season. Defensively, Alpuria continues to get time at all three outfield spots. His speed is conducive to being able to handle all three positions, but his routes aren’t always efficient. He has made some plus plays in the corners and we’re projecting him in center field, where he projects as a toolsy part-timer.

Cissell was a skinny-as-a-rail, switch-hitting infield prospect who added something like 20 pounds of muscle between his junior and senior years of high school. He broke out at 2024’s Super 60 preseason indoor event, which often features Midwest and cold weather prospects. He was scouted more heavily during the spring, and then had a great 2024 Draft Combine performance. He has capable pro swings from both sides of the plate, with the right-handed one producing more raw power but inferior contact rates to Cissell’s classic, low-ball lefty stroke. He’s an above-average athlete and runner (he ran a 3.65 30-yard dash at the Combine) who came to the infield relatively late, and played a lot of second base and center field for the Royals’ high school scout team. He’s a dev project on defense who might end up backing into rare versatility at multiple up-the-middle positions. This is a seemingly late-blooming sleeper who got $800,000 to eschew a commitment to Missouri.

Luciano, a Puerto Rican catcher who was committed to Miami of Ohio, signed for just shy of $1 million as the final of Arizona’s four picks in the first two rounds of the 2024 draft. He was a young-for-the-class catcher with a great looking swing. Luciano’s whole body is well-connected throughout his swing, and his hands work with natural loft and impressive thump for a hitter his age. He’s shown feel for tucking his hands in to handle pitches on the inner half of the plate, though Luciano wasn’t a showcase fixture and until postseason developmental activity in Arizona, he just hadn’t seen very much pro-quality pitching. As you can imagine, this extends to Luciano’s defense, which is sushi raw. He has above-average arm strength but needs to improve his accuracy. The rest of Luciano’s defense is in its infancy, but he only turned 18 a few days before Thanksgiving 2024, so that’s totally fine. He’s a slow-developing catcher prospect with uncommon offensive upside.

Arizona had three or four interesting DSL arms in 2024, but Ciprian is generally seen as the best of them, and he has the best present fastball by a lot. His four-seamer averaged 95 mph in 2024, featured about 20 inches of vertical break on average, and induced whiffs at a nearly elite rate. At a long-limbed 6-foot-3, there’s a chance Ciprian is going to throw harder as he matures. Deployed in outings that tended to last just two or three innings, we still need to see whether Ciprian can retain this kind of fastball effectiveness across a starter’s load of innings. Until then, he’s a projectable young sleeper more than a true impact prospect.

Amendt is a late-blooming illusionist righty with a cut/rise fastball and a deceptive delivery. It allows his fastball to rush past hitters despite 20-grade velocity. Amendt spent two seasons at Southeastern Community College in Iowa, was a medical redshirt for his first year at Dallas Baptist, and then only worked 9.1 innings the following season. In his draft year, he struck out two batters per inning in 25.2 frames of relief work and went in the ninth round. Then Amendt raced all the way from High- to Triple-A in 2024, his first full pro season. He was utterly dominant at High- and Double-A before the wheels came off his strike-throwing at Reno.

Amendt generated a 15% swinging strike rate in 2024, among the best in the org, even though his fastball sits just 88-92 mph. D-backs fans familiar with Josh Collmenter will have some idea as to how Amendt’s fastball works. It often has between 17-22 inches of vertical break and a little bit of natural cut. His over-the-top trebuchet arm action hides the ball forever, and the long-levered Amendt generates nearly seven feet of extension. His fastball has been playing like a plus-plus pitch. Amendt tries to dump his curveball in the zone and then get chase above it with his fastball. He mixes in a mid-80s slider/cutter with short lateral action and very little depth. It’s the pitch Amendt commands best. His command was pretty rough during his five-outing Fall League stint and keeps him down here in an up/down relief bucket even though we buy that his combo of stuff and deception is of big league quality.

Isea is an erratic relief prospect with some of the best arm strength in Arizona’s entire system. He’s now sitting 95-98 and regularly reaches triple digits, but Isea’s control woes have persisted since he entered pro ball in 2019, and he walked almost 20% of the batters he faced while hitting six more over his 34.1 frames in Visalia. Isea’s best sliders will feature a two-plane shape with significant depth and plus bite, but his ability to maintain that shape and locate around the zone is still very spotty. He also has a splitter in his mix that ranges between 85-89 and features modest tumbling action. The fastball/slider combo is high-end stuff, and whether Isea is able to get his walks down to a tenable rate will determine if he becomes a high-leverage guy or a volatile middle reliever. He’s not an especially projectable athlete, and so here we’re expecting the latter.

Knowlton spent two years at Pensacola State Junior College before he headed to South Alabama for three more. He only threw a few innings in 2021 and then missed 2022 due to a stress fracture and UCL tear in his right elbow. His fastball was in the 97-101 mph range when he returned in 2023 and has been in that area in pro ball. Knowlton has poor control and walked nearly a batter per inning in his 2024 pro debut, but he’s enormous, relatively undeveloped, his slider has promising depth, and Knowlton has elite arm strength. That’s enough for him to have some prospect value even though he needs to improve his strike-throwing a ton just to sniff the big leagues.

D’Orazio was one of the two Players to Be Named Later who came back from Toronto in the 2021 Joakim Soria trade. He reached Double-A in 2023 but has really struggled to get going on offense since arriving, with a .221/.272/.317 line there in 110 games. D’Orazio still has prospect value because he’s a very athletic, well-built player with an incredible arm. He’s so fast out of his crouch and his arm action is so short and crisp that he sometimes pops sub-1.8. His accuracy is mixed and a lot of his throws are way above the bag, which is the only thing stopping his arm from being an elite attribute. Though he still has some ball-blocking issues that need to improve, the non-throwing aspects of D’Orazio’s defense have taken a step forward and put him on pace to be average back there. A very upright swinger with opposite field tendencies, D’Orazio’s offense perhaps has some long-term ceiling because he’s such a well-built, athletic guy, but he has yet to perform against upper level pitching and it’s going to be very hard for him to be on time against fastballs with his current swing. Were he an ace defender or hitting more, he’d have more of a backup catcher’s profile, but as things are currently constituted, he’s a third catcher on the 40-man.

Hurley’s center field defense kept him afloat on this update in spite of his hit tool’s putrescence. Hurley slashed .245/.305/.404 at Hillsboro and K’d at a 26.9% clip. His underlying contact rates are a red flag, especially his sub-80s% in-zone rate. Hurley cuts right through a ton of pitches in the middle of the zone and lacks barrel feel, but he can swing pretty hard and gets to most of his roughly average power. More importantly, after the trade of Andrew Pintar, Hurley was able to play center field more regularly and looked pretty good. Hurley sometimes goes out of his way to show off his arm and can risk overthrowing the cutoff man or base, but you would too if you could uncork it like he can. Barring a huge rebound to Hurley’s contact ability, his ceiling is limited to that of a reserve outfielder.

Fernandez is similar to former Cleveland and Pittsburgh prospect, and current Dominican Winter League stalwart, Erik González. Fernandez is a great shortstop and third base defender with a huge arm despite an odd looking throwing stroke. He has never produced an above-average offensive statline at any minor league level, but Fernandez is a very well put together 21-year-old who should remain athletic enough to play good defense at a couple different infield positions for a very long time. There’s a chance he adds enough power during his 20s to have some offensive relevance, but this forecast is for Fernandez to be a bottom-of-the-40-man player.

Castillo is a big-framed, defense-oriented catching prospect with middling bat speed. He’s a skilled and dynamic receiver who’ll go to one knee while he receives the pitch rather than start on one knee and remain static. His size and comfort back there are both very promising, while Castillo’s arm strength and accuracy are more average. He needs to improve as a ball-blocker, but he’s only 20 and has the frame to absorb errant pitches. On offense, Castillo has a swing driven by his bottom hand and doesn’t do a ton of damage. At his age and size, he has a chance to develop more power, but realistically he’s a good reserve catching prospect.

Angelo spent three years at Cal State Bakersfield before transferring to Fresno State for his fourth and fifth collegiate seasons. In his first full pro season, Angelo was promoted to High-A Hillsboro after a dominant month at Low-A. Across the entire season, he struck out 151 batters and walked just 50 in 121.1 innings, posting a 3.49 ERA and 1.20 WHIP. Angelo has enjoyed a three-tick velocity boost across his entire repertoire and now looks like a potential sinker/slider long reliever or swingman. His delivery isn’t especially graceful, but Angelo is a big, physical guy who should be developed as a starter for a while to see if he can polish his strike-throwing.

Durke began his college career at Louisiana-Lafayette, then transferred to Rice, where he did not pitch due to a PED suspension. His fastball averaged 95-96 on the Cape in 2023 and the D-backs gave him an over-slot $350,000 in the 13th round. Durke struggled with walks (he did in college, too), but otherwise had a successful first full pro season. His fastball sat 93-98 throughout the year, and he has two distinct breaking balls that both flash plus depth. His slider is hard, in the 85-89 mph range, and his curveball has traditional 12-to-6 shape. Without improved command, he’s likely an up/down type, but Durke hasn’t pitched a ton and might improve in this area.

A draft-eligible sophomore in 2024, Foley was at his best in late March and early April, but struggled late in the season. Though he surrendered eight runs in his final start of the year for Indiana, Foley’s fastball was sitting 94-96 and touched 99 in that game. He signed for an over-slot $1 million in the fifth round and was shut down after the draft. Foley needs to develop as a strike-thrower. His style of pitching (fastballs above the zone, changeups and sliders that tend to land in the upper half of it) is inefficient, and there’s a good chance Foley will just be a reliever. But with just two years of college ball under his belt, it’s possible he’ll improve. Foley’s changeup has 15-plus mph separation from his fastball and generated a miss rate north of 50% in 2024. His 82-85 mph slider is more of a strike-getter than a finisher. At 6-foot-5 and 235 or so pounds, Foley has the build to start, but he needs to polish his control and show that he can sustain this kind of velocity throughout 20-plus starts to alter his current bullpen projection.

Eagen is a well-built 6-foot-4 righty with a mid-90s fastball and two breaking balls. He pitched sparingly as an underclassman due to injuries and wasn’t great when he did, but then Eagen enjoyed a big velo boost in his draft year, sitting 93-95, and struck out 121 batters in 77.2 innings. His higher release point causes downhill dilution on his fastball, but adds depth to a low-80s curveball, Eagen’s best pitch. This is a small school dev project with big league-quality arm strength and breaking stuff. He got better in 2024 and, under pro tutelage, might continue to do so.

Saalfrank played a meaningful bullpen role for the Diamondbacks toward the end 2023, including during the postseason, a stretch that saw him throwing strikes. He has a pretty standard low-leverage lefty relief fastball/curveball combination when he’s going good. Deception and extension helped his 2023 fastball play better than its 91-93 mph velocity, but his heater was down two ticks at the start of 2024 and was missing bats at one-third of the rate it did the season before. His low-80s curveball was still getting results, but in June, Saalfrank was suspended for a year for betting on baseball. According to MLB’s investigation, the bets were placed in 2021 and 2022, totaled less than $500, and did not involve games Saalfrank pitched in or the team he was assigned to. He should be back to playing an up/down role in Arizona’s bullpen by the middle of 2025.

Hitt had Tommy John surgery in April of 2023, a couple of months prior to being drafted. He returned at the very end of June 2024 and pitched in six complex-level games and then instructs. Hitt had walk issues all three years of college, and his feel for release is not especially sharp or fluid. He walked 11 batters in his six ACL innings upon his return from surgery. Hitt didn’t have a ton of college reps as a starter; he was in the bullpen as a freshman and only made eight starts as a junior before his elbow blew out. Sometimes guys come out of TJ rehab having taken a leap of some kind, be it more velocity or remodeled pitches. That doesn’t look to have happened here. Hitt’s post surgery velo is right in line with his college look, in the 90-94 mph range with a little bit of natural cut at times. It was tough to evaluate Hitt at the end of 2024 because he was too wild to get into favorable counts and use any of the three different breaking balls he worked with in college. When he was drafted, it felt like he was a higher-ceiling’d college arm who only fell because of injury. Hitt didn’t come out of the gates strong at the end of last season, and the control piece of his profile needs to improve in 2025 for him to stay on the list.

Yan got off to a rough start in 2024 and then was shut down with a rotator cuff strain in early June; it cost him the rest of the season. Healthy Yan is an extremely projectable low-slot righty with a sinking and tailing fastball and two secondary pitches that flash plus. Even when he was healthy and productive in 2023, he was only sitting in the upper 80s and low 90s, but Yan is so lanky and loose that it was reasonable to hope he might soon throw harder. The divergent lateral action of his fastball and slider is similar to Tanner Houck, though Yan doesn’t have that kind of arm speed. Guess wrong and you’re either whiffing at the slider, which at times has huge two-plane wipe, or the fastball is going to run into your knuckles mid-swing. Yan needs to both show he’s healthy and then have a progression in arm strength to have big league viability, so for now, he’s a bounce-back candidate.