Last Updated on November 13, 2025 5:23 pm by Anthony Kates | Published: November 13, 2025

Considering the lack of production the Diamondbacks received from their top two pitchers, coming in only two games below their preseason win projection could be seen as a success, in no small part thanks to the efforts of shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, who carved out an incredible 7.1 fWAR season after totaling 4.8 over his first four seasons. A handful of their players even made major contributions to lengthy playoff runs! Although, for another team entirely… By the back half of the season, the team had turned their sights to 2026 with the hope that their newly acquired assets could be of help but this feels likely to be a team stuck around .500 yet again next year – especially if there’s any regression to Perdomo’s game post-breakout.

Catcher

As a former high-ranking top prospect, Gabriel Moreno has long been heralded as the Diamondbacks’ catcher of the future and based on his per-game numbers, that trust hasn’t been misplaced as he is the owner of a career .281/.349/.404 batting line, putting him nine-percent above league average while playing reasonably strong defense along the way. Unfortunately for Arizona and fantasy managers alike, the numbers have come in far fewer games than hoped, with Moreno making it into only 316 games across four seasons – including just 83 this past year. However, there were some positive growth trends that popped up during his limited action, as Moreno was still able to set career-bests in home runs (nine), slugging (.433) and wOBA (.340) among a handful of others. Most promising though, was his the steady improvement on his batted ball metrics, which jumped noticeably from his output in 2024;

The 2026 season will represent Moreno’s age-26 year, which tends to be right around the age that catchers truly hit their stride at the plate, as they often struggle to balance the many different needs of a major league backstop, from defensive responsibilities to managing the personalities of their batterymate. Because of his time missed, he could be slightly behind the curve in reaching that point of comfort with the bat but I expect Moreno to be a slightly underrated asset when we eventually get around to draft day. I don’t expect him to suddenly burst onto the scene in a Raleigh-esque way but in both standard and OBP formats, I think if he manages to make it into 125 games or more, he’ll safely end up as a top-10 catcher – though I think the chances of cracking the top-5 are incredibly slim even if all goes right.

Since things most certainly did not go completely right in 2025 however, James McCann was able to step into the role as a very serviceable backstop, starting 42 games of his own, en route to a .260 average with five home runs. That pushed his wRC+ up to 110, placing him above league-average for the first time since he was in a White Sox uniform – which is now five years in the past. His underlying batted ball data actually suggests the performance wasn’t an out-of-nowhere fluke either, as McCann raised his hard-hit rate nearly fifteen points from the season prior, going from a paltry 37.7% all the way to 52.2%. That also coincided with a huge boost in HR/FB rate (+4.9%), while also massively cutting down on the amount of flyballs he hit overall, from 40.6% last year to 31.9% this past season. At age-35 and plenty of miles on him, it’s highly unlikely that McCann suddenly found the fountain of youth but clearly something worked better for him than expected out in the desert. Whether he gets a chance to run it back with the D’backs is still up in the air as of this writing, with the veteran currently a free agent, but considering Moreno’s injury history and DH-bodied Adrian Del Castillo being the current backup, I wouldn’t be shocked to see a reunion for the 2026 season – making McCann an interesting handcuff in super deep formats.

First Base

Josh Naylor stole 30 bases last year. Let me write that again because even I still have a hard time internalizing that number. Five-foot-ten-inch, 235 pound first baseman Josh Naylor swiped 30 bags last year, after his previous career-high came in at 10 back in 2023. And he only got caught twice! Pretty impressive for someone built, well, like a first baseman. The specific reasons for this sudden change in strategy elude me but I think it’s worth noting that, after averaging a 3.0 speed score the past four years, that number shot up to a 5.5 in 2025. Whether due to a change in conditioning, the shedding of lingering injuries, or some nebulous combination of other factors, I cannot tell you – but I do find it interesting that the improvements only manifested themselves on stolen base attempts and not other facets on the basepaths. What I mean by that is that, even though he raised his average from .243 to .295 between seasons, he hit only two more doubles than the year prior (albeit in 20 fewer plate appearances). That tells me that it came down to savvy decision making skills, rather than suddenly being enough of a burner to avoid getting caught. Whether that’s a repeatable skill is a different story entirely, especially since 19 of his 30 came after his mid-season trade to the Mariners. Currently a free agent, Naylor could bring his newfound knowledge with him wherever he lands but it seems that Seattle had the secret sauce to his SBs so keep an eye on the hot stove before banking on a repeat next year – especially since his power output fell considerably after setting a career-high with 31 long balls with the Guardians in 2024.

Pavin Smith became a bit of an under the radar helium piece late last year, on the strength of a .895 OPS across 60 games played – with his underlyings suggesting he actually could have performed even better. With the hope that he had earned a bigger role in the offense, he became a late-round dart throw and given the cost, I suppose you could say he did reasonably well but he came nowhere near replicating last year’s small-sample surge, batting .258 with a .796 OPS and one fewer home run across 17 additional games played. The culprit? A stratospheric surge in strikeout rate. Carrying a 20.5% career strikeout percentage into the start of the season, Smith saw that number climb to 31.9% with a commensurate bump in swinging-strike rate (+3.9%) and drop in overall contact-rate (-8.4%). A perplexing player, Smith is worth monitoring as a free-agent watch list type but I wouldn’t be investing heavily.

Second Base

The gold standard for batting production from the keystone over the past few years, Ketel Marte mostly lived up to draft day expectations, slashing .283/.376/.517 with 28 home runs and likely would have crested the 30-home run plateau for the third time in his career had he not missed 36 games. There are some cracks starting to show in his profile though, which is understandable for a 32-year-old, with his average exit velocity dropping from elite territory in 2024 (98th-percentile) to a 66th-percentile showing in 2025. You may think he’s simply starting to struggle with turning on velocity in the same way as he had previously, but he actually boosted his bat speed seven percentile-points so that doesn’t seem to suggest there’s a sudden cliff awaiting him in 2026. He also kept his contact and swinging strike rates level year-over-year, while improving his barrel% from an already robust 12.3% (84th-percentile) to 13.5% (83rd-percentile). If anything, I’m buying slightly low if able – but I doubt the price tag will have sank all that much.

Tim Tawa represents the stopgap solution should Marte ever need to sit for a spell and though his first foray into MLB action didn’t go well, his prior performance in the minors suggests there’s some potential upside to be mined here. First and foremost, Tawa was able to earn the trust of Diamondbacks management at multiple defensive positions, including time at first, second and third base, as well as all three outfield spots. That gives him a good chance of seeing additional playing time, where he may be able to take advantage of the power stroke that allowed him to hit 31 home runs split between Double- and Triple-A in 2024. He’s a power-only play, having been designated a 35-grade hit tool per FanGraphs, but he could find his way into being a superutility type with the potential for 20+ home runs if everything clicks.

Third Base

Eugenio Suarez is an enigma. After looking like he may be washed back in 2023, during the second year of his first stint in Seattle, Suarez rebounded back to his old form, in which he crested the 30+ home run bar each season. The strikeouts have risen and and the batting average has tumbled over time as he sells out further for power but it’s hard to argue against the process when it leads to 49 balls clearing the fence – a feat Suarez managed last year for the second time in his career – at least when examined through a fantasy-tinted lens. Returning to Seattle after the Diamondbacks dealt him there at the deadline, Suarez showed that being in the right situation or locale can make all the difference in a highly volatile profile such as his. Though he added 13 home runs to his season long tally post-trade, his strikeout rate climbed to an untenable 35.9%, causing him to bat .189 with a .693 OPS through the end of the regular season after posting a 26.8% strikeout percentage, .248 average, and .896 OPS prior to the deal. More than any free agent this period, it’s worth watching where Suarez signs in order to get a read on what to expect heading into 2026.

Speaking of volatile fantasy assets, Blaze Alexander currently represents Arizona’s future at the (aptly named) hot corner. Making his MLB debut in his age-26 season, Alexander has been on fantasy radars for quite some time but that familiarity doesn’t necessarily mean much if it’s due to his longevity instead of lights-out ability. Though he managed to come in just one point below-average when it came to wRC+, Alexander carried a 32.3% strikeout rate over his first 74 major league contests, with the swinging-strike rate (13.2%) to match, as he hit only .230 despite the benefit of a .333 BABIP. Though third base is also facing a bit of a dearth in quality hitters, similar to second base, that type of performance at the plate won’t give Alexander much of a chance of blazing his own trail as the next power goof to man the position for Arizona.

Shortstop

Geraldo Perdomo stands out as not only the Diamondbacks’ biggest surprise this past season, but perhaps as the most shocking performance amongst all major leaguers.

Already established as an excellent glove-first shortstop, Perdomo was coming off two seasons in which he managed 2+ fWAR despite tallying just nine home runs and 25 steals. In 2025, he bested both those numbers, coming in with a 20HR/27SB season that actually seems more believable than not. An elite hitter when it comes to simply putting bat to ball, Perdomo carries an 89.6% contact rate over the past two years whilst putting up a miniscule 4.0% swinging-strike rate. Those numbers have mostly stayed steady throughout his career though, so they come as less of a surprise compared to his newfound power stroke – if you can even call it that.

Despite his gains in metrics such as hard-hit rate and barrel rate, the numbers suggest Perdomo was moreso a beneficiary of doing the most possible damage on not-particularly-dangerous balls. By that, I mean he leveraged his elite contact rates to avoid giving away easy outs, while focusing on hitting his balls in play at the ideal launch angle to take advantage, shaving roughly 4% off his groundball rate from the year prior and trading that almost entirely for line drives. Though line drives don’t clear fences (unless you’re named Judge or Ohtani), they are a great way to rack up high probability hits to pad your overall line. That’s seemingly the recipe for success for a player like Perdomo, as the rest of his metrics still came in well-below league average;

If you presented me those numbers as a blind resume without the benefit of the spiel above it, I’d immediately pass on that player despite the moderate growth shown. I’d be wrong to do so – but I think it’d be an understandable position to hold since you don’t have his finishes among the upper 10-percent of hitters in chase, whiff, strikeout, and walk percentage to consider as part of the resume. Though seemingly a safer bet due to his foundational skills than someone like Eugenio Suarez, whom we just dissected as extremely volatile, betting on Perdomo to repeat his performance puts you in a precarious position as I think it’s far more likely that he comes close to repeating his stolen base totals than his home runs. My bet for next year is something along the lines of; .285/.375/.425 with 12 home runs and 25 steals. That’s not bad for a shortstop but also not guaranteed to place him in the top-5, among the upper echelon options he found himself this year.

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Jeff Clowers

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