Few teams have more aggressively added veteran rotation help over the past two years than the Diamondbacks. As shown on MLBTR's Contract Tracker, 15 free agent starting pitchers have signed for at least a $20MM average annual value since the start of the 2023-24 offseason. The D-Backs have been responsible for three of them.
If we exclude Shohei Ohtani, who was obviously signed more for his bat, Arizona is the only team to sign three such contracts over the past two winters. The Dodgers (Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Blake Snell) are the only other club that has signed more than one.
Arizona began with a four-year, $80MM contract for Eduardo Rodriguez. That was a sizable investment for their market size but not one that took too many people by surprise. They finally snapped Jordan Montgomery's extended free agent stay with a one-year, $25MM guarantee and an easily achievable vesting option that pushed their investment close to $50MM over two seasons.
The true shocker came last winter, when they emerged out of nowhere as the landing spot for Corbin Burnes, who wanted to pitch close to his Arizona home. He probably left some earnings upside on the table, but it still took a six-year commitment worth $210MM (with a net present value closer to $194MM after adjusting for deferred money).
They've added those big-name arms to an in-house starting pitching group that included Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly and Brandon Pfaadt. Maybe they didn't match the depth of some other clubs, but their top six to seven starters look exceptionally formidable. This should be one of the best rotations in MLB.
And yet, for two years running, it hasn't been particularly close to that.
Unlock Subscriber-Exclusive Articles Like This One With a Trade Rumors Front Office Subscription
- Access weekly subscriber-only articles by Tim Dierkes, Steve Adams, and Anthony Franco.
- Join exclusive weekly live chats with Anthony.
- Remove ads and support our writers.
- Access GM-caliber tools like our MLB Contract Tracker
The Redsox(and myself)were right about Eduardo Rodriguez. He’s not really the guy you open the pay vault for.
Never been impressed with him – ever. If you’re the gambling sort, he’s one to bet against with assurance on any given Sunday.
What about on Saturdays?
He couldn’t even walk in 2020. Insane to give him a 4-80 after a decent not great season
alot happened since 2020… his 2023 was really good and had always been a decent pitcher
EROD and Monty were tough breaks.
So, are we now being told that “not being cheap” and spending big on FA’s doesn’t necessarily guarantee success?
I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you!!
Next thing someone will do here is write an article here showing that teams with superior baseball philosophies, coaching staffs, and FO’s that acquire players that fit what they’re trying to do, bring success. LOL. Sure. Like intelligence and hard work pays off. Fat chance of that happening here…..or on any Internet baseball site covering MLB.
Feel free to write an article.
Samuel
Yankees enter the chat
My question is…
How do you put up with yourself? You have miserable down to a science sad man.
No, that’s the problem. With that sort of immense hubris, he thinks so highly of himself and deems himself so much higher in intelligence than the rest of us, that he goes to bed every night with a gigantic smile on his face, although alone. Reminds me of a certain president we have.
Yet half of what he says isn’t upto snuff when it can be directly fact checked.
People who constantly have to say how intelligent they are clearly are insecure and are trying to fill a void. It is like the church goers who have to project and display for all to see as if they are living clean, they always seem to be ones with something to hide.
The Dbacks can still hope the rotation will straighten itself out this summer, and they can be grateful they aren’t in the same boat as BAL with a dreadful rotation that will take a couple years to fix.
The Dbacks are about to lose Kelly and Gallen, who are both free agents this off-season. It gets worse from here. They took their shot, and more power to them for it. But it has to work out this year or it’s gonna be a while. Not a lot of pitching in their system.
The O’s will have Bradish and Grod next season and have $0 committed to starting pitchers.
The Dbacks owe Erod far too much and they’ve spent a ton on Burnes. Which looks good right now but we’ll see.
im a diehard dbacks fan and the issue is 3 things. We lost a great pitching coach and we have no pen! Torey is an awful coach but a great clubhouse coach which means very little. Our hitting is also inconsistent but the main issues is what I mentioned
Are we at the point where we can just flush Burnes’ declining strikeout rate down the drain? He has shown that he can still produce results despite the lower K numbers.
I guess in theory the thinking goes if you’re not striking batters out they are doing other things and some of those things are random and out of your control. Sooner or later those random events will accumulate against you in a bad way. It always helps if the contact you are still allowing is of the weak variety though.
D-Backs haven’t had very much luck with lefty starters who were solid before they signed them the last few years. From Mad Bum, to Jordan Montgomery, and Eduward Rodriguez.
I’m not sure why I’m subscribing to a site, paying money, for an article that has already been written by AZ Snakepit and is available for free.
The ten cents a day is going to crush your budget. MLBTR is too expensive.
Give up about a half dozen of your addictions and you’ll be feeling a lot better about your ability to spend 10 cents a day on mlbtr.
I don’t have any addictions.. Why are you presuming such things?
This is an article that doesn’t belong on a transaction site.
I was unable to read the entire article as im not a subscriber, so I apologize if this was covered. The rotation was bad last year and started out rough in ’25. That said, Burnes, Pfaadt and Kelly have pitched very well of late, and Nelson is a huge upgrade over the injured ERod. Nelson was quietly a top 15ish SP in MLB over the second half of ’24. Gallen has been inconsistent dating back to last year and remains so to date. Imo, he nibbles too much, running his pitch count up rather than trusting his stuff and attacking hitters. The Dbacks problem the past 4-5 weeks has been their BP. With co-closers Puk and Martinez out, the remaining RP are pitching in higher leverage situations, resulting in a surprisingly large number of late game collapses/gut punches.