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Nationals Claim Gus Varland

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The Nationals have claimed right-hander Gus Varland off waivers from the Diamondbacks, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com. Arizona designated him for assignment last week after signing righty Taylor Clarke to a one-year deal.

Varland, 29, is the older brother of Blue Jays setup man Louis Varland. He missed most of the 2024-25 seasons due to injury, most notably a significant lat strain. He didn’t pitch in the majors this past season but logged 26 1/3 frames between the Dodgers and White Sox in 2024, turning in a 3.42 ERA, 23.5% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate. Varland sits 95-96 mph with his four-seamer and complements the pitch with an 88-89 mph slider and a rarely used show-me changeup that he’s tossed at only a 5% clip in the big leagues.

Varland has generally been hit hard in the upper minors but still throws relatively hard and shows a penchant for missing bats and limiting walks at a passable clip. Home runs have been a modest issue, but he’s also been plagued by lofty BABIP numbers and low strand rates. Assuming he’s healthy now, there’s little harm in a rebuilding club like the Nats taking a speculative look in hopes that he can hold down a bullpen spot. Varland still has a minor league option remaining, so even if he doesn’t break camp with the Nationals, they can send him to Triple-A Rochester without first needing to pass him through outright waivers.

MLBTR Podcast: What The Tucker And Bichette Contracts Mean For Baseball – Also, Nolan Arenado And Ranger Suarez

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The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Steve Adams and Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

  • The overlapping stories at the top of the market and what they might mean: The Dodgers agreed to a deal with Kyle Tucker. The Mets gave Tucker a similar offer but then pivoted to signing Bo Bichette. Tucker had a long-term offer from the Blue Jays and Bichette from the Phillies but both went for the short-term deals. Is this some kind of paradigm shift or just unique circumstances? (1:50)
  • Could we ever predict this type of pivot in our Top 50 post in future years? (17:25)
  • How these deals impact parity, the upcoming expected lockout, collective bargaining agreement, etc. (34:35)
  • Bichette’s fit in the Mets’ position player mix (recorded prior to the Luis Robert Jr. trade) (1:04:25)
  • The Cardinals trading Nolan Arenado to the Diamondbacks (1:15:25)
  • The Red Sox signing Ranger Suárez (1:26:55)

Check out our past episodes!

  • The Cubs Land Cabrera And Bregman, Remaining Free Agents, And Skubal’s Arbitration Filing – listen here
  • Contracts For Imai And Okamoto, And Thoughts On The Pirates And Giants – listen here
  • Three-Way Trade, Murakami’s Short-Term Deal, And Willson Contreras To Boston – listen here

The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff.  Check out their Facebook page here!

Photo courtesy of David Banks, Imagn Images

A’s Had Deal In Place For Nolan Arenado Prior To D-Backs Trade

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The Nolan Arenado trade saga in St. Louis came to a close last week, when he was dealt to Arizona in exchange for salary relief and minor league righty Jack Martinez. According to a report from Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, however, the Diamondbacks weren’t the only team to reach a deal with the Cardinals. Rosenthal reports that the Athletics not only pursued Arenado in trade with St. Louis, but that the sides actually had a deal in place that would’ve sent Arenado to the west coast. The deal would’ve seen the A’s take on more money than Arizona was willing to, Rosenthal notes, but was scuttled by the fact that Arenado indicated he preferred to go to the Diamondbacks or Padres and may not have approved a deal with the A’s.

The news represents the latest indication of the Athletics’ desire to return to contention in advance of their move to Las Vegas, which is expected to be in time for the 2028 season. Arenado, 35 in April, is under contract for just two more seasons and would likely not have been on the club by the time the team arrived in Nevada. Even so, his addition would’ve been a way for the team to address third base in the short term. The A’s brought in Jeff McNeil to take over second base earlier this winter, and already have impressive players at first base (Nick Kurtz), shortstop (Jacob Wilson), DH (Brent Rooker), catcher (Shea Langeliers) and the outfield corners (Lawrence Butler and Tyler Soderstrom). That leaves third base as one of the most obvious places the team could upgrade, and even an aging Arenado would likely provide a higher floor than 23-year-old Max Muncy at the position.

That makes it fairly easy to see why the A’s would have interest in Arenado’s services and, if the team was willing to take on a larger portion of Arenado’s salary in order to facilitate the deal than Arizona wound up agreeing to take, it’s easy to see why the Cardinals would have seen the Athletics as an attractive trade partner. Unfortunately for both clubs, however, Arenado wasn’t quite so enthused. The veteran and likely future Hall of Famer seemed to prioritize playing for a club with more credible playoff aspirations as he wielded his no-trade clause over the past two offseasons, and the A’s are not exactly a proven playoff squad. Even after last year’s steps forward, the team finished with a middling 76-86 record that left them fourth place in the AL West. While that was a modest improvement over the year prior, it still left them far out from a playoff spot. The fact that the A’s are currently playing in a minor league park presumably didn’t help.

Perhaps a full season of Kurtz and development for the team’s other young players can help them take another step forward, but teams like the Mariners, Astros, and even Rangers don’t seem likely to be going anywhere this year. That leaves the A’s in a precarious position as far as making the playoffs go, and Arenado clearly wasn’t enthused about rolling the dice on the team. While the Diamondbacks are exceedingly unlikely to win the NL West this year thanks to the mighty Dodgers, they should be in the mix for a Wild Card spot alongside teams like the Padres, Giants, Mets, Braves, and Reds. That’s a much thinner field than the Wild Card race in the AL, which arguably includes all five teams in the AL East alone.

If the A’s want to consider other possible upgrades to the third base position, there are at least a handful of other trade options out there. Cardinals utility man Brendan Donovan and Cubs youngster Matt Shaw both have the ability to handle the hot corner, but could be too expensive in terms of the return cost for the A’s to swing a deal. Perhaps the Phillies would be willing to move Alec Bohm, but they seem less likely to do so than they were when they were pursuing Bo Bichette. The Astros could look to move Isaac Paredes, but it would be a shock to see them trade within the division. Lower level free agents like Yoan Moncada and Ramon Urias could serve as an alternative route to upgrade the roster, though the A’s have at times had trouble luring players to West Sacramento.

Hazen: D’Backs Aren’t Revisiting Ketel Marte Trade Talks

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Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen said at the end of December that the club was “shortly” going to cease all trade talks involving second baseman Ketel Marte, and the unofficial deadline apparently came on January 9, once reports emerged that Marte would be staying put.  Probably unsurprisingly, this didn’t end the trade speculation entirely, but even as the offseason player market has continued to evolve just over the last eight days, Hazen has maintained his stance that discussions are over.

“We’ve already engaged in that process.  I said at the time that I set the deadline for a reason, to avoid this,” Hazen told MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert and other reporters.  Hazen also noted that by telling both Marte and rival executives that trade talks have ended, he’d be risking his credibility (both with D’Backs players and in future negotiations) by going back on his word now.

It is worth noting that there have been several instances in the past of players being traded after a front office exec has seemingly shut down trade discussions — perhaps the most famous in recent years was Nationals GM Mike Rizzo declaring “we are not trading Juan Soto” two months before Soto was indeed dealt to the Padres at the 2022 trade deadline.  It is also fair to assume that Hazen would have a hard time saying no if another team emerged in the coming days with a Marte trade offer that was absurdly tilted in Arizona’s favor.

That said, there is no reason to doubt Hazen’s resolve in this case.  While some reports emerged last summer about clubhouse discontent directed towards Marte, it never seemed too likely that the Diamondbacks would trade a star player they signed to another long-term extension just last April.  This new extension (covering the 2025-31 seasons) overwrote Marte’s previous deal that ran through the 2027 campaign, and added $64MM in new money.

$102.5MM remains on the final six years of the contract, and if Marte was a free agent this winter, he would’ve topped that number even as his enters his age-32 season.  This relative discount price made Marte an attractive alternative for teams who may not have been wowed by free agent options, or weren’t willing to meet the asking prices of players on the market.  Such teams as the Red Sox, Tigers, Blue Jays, Mariners, Rays, Phillies, Pirates, and Giants were publicly linked to Marte’s trade market, though Pittsburgh and San Francisco are two of the five teams on Marte’s no-trade list.

The Pirates may have been out on Marte anyway after acquiring Brandon Lowe to address their second base needs.  The same could be true of the Rays (after acquiring Gavin Lux) and the Jays (after adding Kazuma Okamoto to the infield mix), but the other rumored suitors could conceivably be in play if the Diamondbacks still had any appetite for a Marte deal.

Most notably, the Red Sox and Phillies fell short in their respective pursuits of Alex Bregman and Bo Bichette, leaving those two teams perhaps most keen on another big-ticket infield upgrade.  For the Sox in particular, Gilbert noted that Boston’s signing of Ranger Suarez signing led to a lot of D’Backs fans immediately wondering if the Red Sox would now be more comfortable in sending controllable pitching to Arizona for Marte.

On the flip side, of course, any increased desperation on the part of other teams might cause Hazen to increase what was already known to be a very high asking price for Marte’s services.  But, the time for haggling now seems to be over on Hazen’s part, and (barring any unexpected developments) it seems like Marte will simply return to the heart of the Diamondbacks’ lineup in 2026.

D-Backs Notes: Arenado, Donovan, Bullpen, Puk

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The months of Nolan Arenado trade rumors came to a close on Tuesday when the Cardinals dealt the 10-time Gold Glove winner to the Diamondbacks. St. Louis paid his contract down to two years and $11MM, while Arizona parted with last year’s eighth round draft pick (Jack Martinez). The Cardinals had made no secret of their desire to shed a portion of Arenado’s salary and open space at third base for younger players, with Nolan Gorman likely to get the first run.

Arenado’s full no-trade clause gave him say over his destination. He had a limited number of teams to which he would have accepted a deal last offseason. He expanded that list this winter and discussed the decision on an introductory Zoom call with reporters. “Seeing where (the Cardinals) were headed the past few years, it was very evident that there’s a step they need to take,” Arenado said (link via Sam Blum of The Athletic). “Letting these young guys go and finding out who they are, and who their identity is. I think I’m just kind of in the way of that, in a sense. I kind of always felt like that last year.”

Asked about the appeal of the Diamondbacks specifically, Arenado pointed to their position player core built around Corbin Carroll, Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte (video provided by Steve Gilbert of MLB.com). He noted the geographic proximity to his native Southern California and expressed excitement about the team’s playing style. He’ll take over as the everyday third baseman and should at least provide a strong glove, though it remains to be seen how much he has left in the tank offensively. He’s going into his age-35 season on the heels of a .237/.289/.377 showing over 107 games.

Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom told Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that conversations with the Diamondbacks developed quickly. Arizona had been involved in the market for free agent third baseman Alex Bregman, who agreed to a five-year deal with the Cubs on Saturday. It wasn’t until last Friday that reports emerged that they had firmly pulled Marte off the trade market. While the Cardinals and D-Backs had discussed Arenado throughout the winter, it seems talks accelerated in the wake of the Bregman/Marte developments.

Goold writes that the Snakes had also been among the teams to reach out to the Cards about Brendan Donovan. Their interest in the left-handed hitting utilityman had not previously been reported. That’s unlikely to mean much at this point. St. Louis is widely expected to trade Donovan, but teams like the Mariners and Giants appear more engaged. Arizona has Marte, Perdomo and Arenado in the three infield spots to the left of first base. Donovan would be an upgrade in left field, but a team with a second base need will probably be more motivated to part with high-end prospect talent.

Arizona’s focuses now seem to be a right-handed hitting first baseman and the bullpen. Franchise icon Paul Goldschmidt has made sense as a target in the former role all offseason, and the acquisition of his longtime St. Louis teammate only strengthens that fit. They may need to take more of a patchwork approach to the bullpen. This week’s one-year, $1.55MM deal to bring back Taylor Clarke is their only big league bullpen pickup to date.

Clarke projects as more of a middle or long reliever than a leverage arm. That’s true of essentially everyone in the Arizona ’pen until A.J. Puk and Justin Martinez return from last year’s elbow surgeries. General manager Mike Hazen acknowledged that while the front office would love to add an established late-game arm, that’ll be challenging at this stage.

“Would I like to have somebody that has a clear pedigree of pitching in the eighth and ninth inning? That’s an easier answer. I’m not sure what we’ll have access to in that way,” Hazen told Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic. He acknowledged they need to continue adding to the bullpen this offseason but suggested the biggest impact would probably come from internal improvements and hopefully getting Martinez and Puk healthy. Arizona prioritized upper minors pitching in last summer’s deadline activity. Brandyn Garcia, Juan Burgos and Andrew Hoffmann all came over as inexperienced but essentially MLB-ready bullpen pieces.

Of the injury returnees, it seems Puk is further along. Piecoro writes that the D-Backs hope to get the southpaw back within the first few months of the season, while Martinez is targeting a second half return. Puk underwent internal brace surgery in late June. Martinez required a full Tommy John reconstruction, which comes with a longer recovery timeline. It was the second elbow ligament procedure of each pitcher’s career, as they’d both had Tommy John surgeries during their prospect days.

Diamondbacks Sign Taylor Clarke

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The Diamondbacks announced they’ve signed reliever Taylor Clarke to a one-year contract. They designated right-hander Gus Varland for assignment to open a spot on the 40-man roster. It’s a $1.55MM guarantee, reports Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic. The deal includes incentives that could push the Ballengee Group client’s earnings above $2MM.

Clarke, 33 in May, should be a familiar name to Arizona fans. The Snakes selected him out of the College of Charleston as a third-round pick in 2015. He debuted in a swing role four years later and spent parts of three seasons with the MLB club. Clarke moved almost permanently to the bullpen by the shortened season and has been a full-time reliever for most of the last half-decade. He got some work as a starter with Milwaukee’s Triple-A team in 2024 but has worked from the bullpen as a big leaguer.

Arizona non-tendered Clarke after he posted a near-5.00 earned run average during the 2021 season. He landed a big league deal with the Royals a couple weeks later and spent the next two seasons in the Kansas City bullpen. Clarke posted decent strikeout and walk numbers but was plagued by an elevated average on balls in play, leading to a combined 5.08 ERA over those two seasons. The Royals traded him to Milwaukee, who ran him through waivers and kept him in Triple-A.

The Royals liked Clarke enough to bring him back on a minor league deal last offseason. They called him up by the beginning of May and were rewarded with the best season of his career. The 6’4″ righty tossed 55 1/3 innings of 3.25 ERA ball. His 21.4% strikeout rate and 10.1% swinging strike percentage were each a little worse than average. Clarke was the beneficiary of an unsustainably low .208 BABIP against him, but he limited his walks to an excellent 4.4% clip and pitched particularly well in the second half.

It came as a surprise that Kansas City nevertheless opted not to tender him an arbitration contract that would likely have landed in the $2MM range. That set the stage for a reversal of the sequence from the 2021-22 offseason. Clarke follows up a non-tender from K.C. by signing a major league deal with Arizona.

Clarke has over five years of service time, meaning he cannot be sent to the minors without his consent. He’s locked into the Opening Day bullpen alongside Ryan Thompson and Kevin Ginkel. The Diamondbacks don’t have any elite back-end arms to cover leverage situations while A.J. Puk and Justin Martinez are injured. Clarke raises the floor in the middle innings but doesn’t have much high-leverage experience. The back of the bullpen remains arguably the biggest weakness as Arizona tries to compete for a playoff spot.

Varland, the older brother of Toronto righty Louis Varland, was a waiver claim from the White Sox in August. The 29-year-old righty was on the minor league injured list at the time due to a season-ending lat strain. He held a spot on Arizona’s 40-man roster for a few months but hasn’t thrown a pitch for the organization. The former 14th-round pick has a 4.82 ERA in 42 big league appearances between 2023-24. Varland divided that time between Milwaukee, the Dodgers, and the White Sox.

Arizona has five days to trade Varland or put him on waivers. He has never been outrighted and doesn’t have three years of big league service, so he’d remain in the organization if they get him through waivers unclaimed.

Image courtesy of Denny Medley, Imagn Images.

Cardinals Trade Nolan Arenado To Diamondbacks

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After more than a yearlong residency on the rumor mill, Nolan Arenado’s time in St. Louis is over. The Cardinals announced Tuesday that they’ve traded Arenado and cash to the D-backs in exchange for minor league right-hander Jack Martinez (Arizona’s eighth-round pick in the 2025 draft). The Diamondbacks are reportedly on the hook for a total of $11MM of the remaining $42MM owed to Arenado over the next two seasons. The Cardinals owe the remaining $31MM. Arizona’s 40-man roster had a vacancy but is now at capacity with the addition of Arenado.

With the Cardinals entering a rebuild under new president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, trading the 34-year-old Arenado (35 in April) has been a primary goal this offseason. St. Louis has finally achieved that goal but paid a hefty price to do so. Arizona will be on the hook for just $5MM this season and $6MM next year.

Three years ago, a salary dump of Arenado would’ve been hard to imagine. He was a National League MVP finalist after hitting .293/.358/.533 with 30 home runs and his typical brand of elite defense during that 2022 season. His offense slipped considerably in 2023 (.266/.315/.459) but was still north of league average. It dipped to about average in 2024, however, and plummeted well below par this past season.

In 436 plate appearances with the Cardinals in 2025, Arenado turned in an anemic .237/.289/.377 batting line. By measure of wRC+, he was 16% worse than an average hitter at the plate. Arenado’s 12 home runs were his lowest in a full season since his rookie year back in 2013. This year’s 6.4% walk rate was his lowest since 2015. When considering that his 34.1% chase rate on pitches off the plate was also his worst since 2015, that’s not particularly surprising. Arenado’s 11.2% strikeout rate was one of the lowest in MLB and one of the best in his career, but he also posted his highest-ever infield fly rate — 16.5% of his fly-balls were harmless pop-ups — and recorded some of the worst exit velocity and hard-hit numbers of his career.

Suffice it to say, Arenado’s decline at the plate has been steep. He still possesses plus contact skills but will need to scale back his chase rate and cut out some of those weak pop-ups if he’s to improve in a meaningful way. Fortunately for Arenado, he’s going to a more favorable offensive environment than the one he’s been calling home in St. Louis. While Phoenix’s Chase Field isn’t the hitters’ haven it once was, it plays largely neutral to right-handed power now — a stark gain for Arenado relative to St. Louis’ Busch Stadium, which is the fifth-worst park for right-handed home run power over the past three years, per Statcast’s Park Factors.

Prior to adding Arenado, the Diamondbacks had been involved in the market for Alex Bregman. A match there always seemed like something of a long shot, given Arizona’s intent to reduce payroll in 2026, but the interest was legitimate. The Snakes quickly pivoted and brought in a much more affordable option to hold down the hot corner for the next two seasons. Arenado’s glove has also taken some steps back in recent years, but he’s still an above-average defender. He’ll give manager Torey Lovullo a quality pair of defenders on the left side of the infield, joining breakout shortstop Geraldo Perdomo in that regard.

Acquiring Arenado leaves the Diamondbacks with little opportunity for former No. 6 overall pick and top prospect Jordan Lawlar. Perdomo’s breakout appeared to push Lawlar down the defensive spectrum to third base, but he looked overmatched both with the glove and in the batter’s box during his first few tests against MLB pitching. The D-backs were considering giving him some time in the outfield, and perhaps with Jake McCarthy now in Colorado following this weekend’s trade, there’ll be a clearer path to that experiment. If not, Lawlar has a minor league option remaining and can be sent back to Triple-A (where he’s routinely thrashed opposing pitchers) — or even included in a potential trade package to address needs elsewhere on the roster.

Even with the Snakes looking to cut payroll, the addition of that fraction of Arenado’s contract amounts to little more than a footnote. He’s effectively replacing a league-minimum player, so this trade adds a net $4.2MM to the team’s books. Per RosterResource’s estimates, that brings Arizona’s payroll just north of $170MM. That’s more than $17MM shy of last year’s Opening Day payroll. An exact target isn’t clear, but there should be room to add a reliever or two, at the very least, and further trades could always change the payroll outlook one way or another.

If the money changing hands (and the frequent reporting in the year-plus leading up to today’s trade) wasn’t indicative enough that this amounts to a salary dump for St. Louis, the return should be. Martinez hasn’t pitched an inning in professional ball yet. The Diamondbacks selected him with their eighth-round pick last year out of Arizona State University. His $167K signing bonus checked in south of his No. 243 overall selection’s $223K slot value.

A 6’4″, 215-pound righty, Martinez started his college career playing Division-III ball before transferring twice and ending up in the Sun Devils’ rotation as a senior. He was tagged for a 5.47 ERA through 15 starts during his senior year. It’s not an encouraging number, but Martinez punched out 32.3% of his opponents and can run his fastball up to 97 mph, per MLB.com’s scouting report. He has a four-pitch mix with a changeup serving as his best secondary offering, but Martinez is a pure lottery ticket for the Cardinals’ reshaped player development department.

A year ago, the Cardinals thought they had worked out a trade to send Arenado the Astros. Arenado, however, invoked his no-trade protection to nix that arrangement, reportedly due to reservations about the Astros’ commitment to contending; Houston had just traded Kyle Tucker to the Cubs days prior to the nixed Arenado deal. Heading into the current offseason, Arenado was forthcoming about the fact that he’d be more open-minded to offseason trade scenarios than he was last winter.

That clearly seems to be the case, but the D-backs might’ve been a viable landing spot for him even if he were continuing to remain selective. Arizona may be scaling back payroll, but their signings of Merrill Kelly and Michael Soroka — plus their reported interest in the aforementioned Bregman — all signal a commitment to try to field a contender in 2026. Beyond that, Arenado is a Southern California native with a home in Arizona. There are geographic benefits that surely played into his decision to waive that no-trade clause for a move to the desert.

For the Cardinals, moving Arenado now clears a relatively nominal sum from the long-term books and furthers their goal of creating opportunities for younger players. It remains to be seen whether Arenado’s third base reps will go to Nolan Gorman, top prospect JJ Wetherholt or even former top prospect/third baseman-turned-outfielder Jordan Walker. Whoever takes up regular work at the hot corner will be a more viable long-term option at the position than Arenado is as he enters his mid-30s.

The trade of Arenado is the third of a big-name veteran on a large contract for the Cardinals this offseason. They’ve already traded Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras to the Red Sox. Those players were shipped out in separate deals, with St. Louis eating notable portions of money in those trades, too. Between Gray, Contreras and now Arenado, the Cardinals will be shelling out $59MM over the next two seasons to three players who are no longer on their books.

Eating that amount of money to facilitate the trades of three former All-Stars is unprecedented, but the Cardinals have been clear about their intent to rebuild the organization from the ground up, modernizing the player development department, analytics staff and various other components of the team’s baseball operations setup — all while affording younger and more controllable players the opportunity to establish themselves in the majors. With three pricey veterans gone, much of the heavy lifting has been taken care of, but the Cardinals are still widely expected to trade second baseman Brendan Donovan and left-handed reliever JoJo Romero before the season begins.

Katie Woo of The Athletic first reported that the two sides were in serious discussions. John Gambadoro of 98.7 FM Arizona Sports broke the news that an agreement was in place and added that Martinez was going back to St. Louis. Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic first reported details on the cash changing hands.

Diamondbacks To Sign Jonathan Loáisiga To Minor League Deal

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The Diamondbacks and right-hander Jonathan Loáisiga have agreed to a minor league deal, reports Jorge Castillo of ESPN. The Ballengee Group client will be in big league camp with the Snakes in spring training.

Loáisiga, 31, has shown big potential in his career but has often struggled to stay healthy. His best season was in 2021, when he gave the Yankees 70 2/3 innings with a 2.17 earned run average. He averaged around 98 miles per hour with his four-seamer and sinker while also throwing a cutter, curveball, slider and changeup. He struck out 24.4% of batters faced, limited walks to a 5.7% clip and induced grounders on 60.9% of balls in play. He racked up five saves and ten holds for the Yanks that year.

The following season, he missed about six weeks due to inflammation in his throwing shoulder. He finished the year with a 4.13 ERA in 48 innings. His ground ball rate held fairly steady but he only punched out 18.2% of opponents and his walked rate climbed to 9.4%. Various elbow issues limited him to just 17 2/3 innings in 2023. He eventually underwent surgery on his ulnar collateral ligament in April of 2024. He began 2025 on the injured list while still recovering from that surgery but was activated in the middle of May.

He tossed 29 2/3 innings last year with a 4.25 ERA, 18.5% strikeout rate, 7.4% walk rate and 50.5% ground ball rate. His average fastball velo was down below 97 mph. He hit the IL in August due to back tightness. He was rehabbing from that minor issue when he suffered a lat strain, preventing him from returning late in the year. The Yanks turned down a $5MM club option on Loaisiga’s services for 2026.

Both the Diamondbacks and Loáisiga will be hoping for better health and a bounceback in 2026. Arizona definitely needs bullpen help. Their 2025 relief corps was supposed to be headlined by A.J. Puk and Justin Martínez but both of those two required UCL surgeries in the first half. The Snakes finished the year with a collective bullpen ERA of 4.82, better than just three other big league teams.

Upgrading for 2026 is going to be a challenge as the club is likely going to be operating with a lower payroll, especially when adding to the rotation and outfield could still be priorities for the remainder of the offseason. John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports reports that the club will likely be making more bullpen additions in the coming days. For now, Loáisiga adds a bit of upside without taking up a roster spot. If he does get added to the roster later, it’s unclear what his salary will be but it’s presumably not too onerous.

Photo courtesy of Jason Parkhurst, Imagn Images

Diamondbacks, Shawn Dubin Agree To Minor League Deal

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The D-backs and free agent righty Shawn Dubin agreed to a minor league deal, per Baseball America’s Matt Eddy. The agreement was actually reached last month, based on Dubin’s transaction log at MLB.com, but apparently didn’t become finalized until more recently. He’s represented by Excel Sports Management.

Dubin, 30, has spent nearly his entire career in the Astros organization. Houston selected him in the 13th round of the 2018 draft, and he’s pitched in parts of each of the past three seasons with them. Dubin has posted decent results and strong strikeout rates in the upper minors, and he showed some promise with the ’24 Astros when he logged 45 1/3 innings with a 4.17 ERA and a 23.7% strikeout rate. Command has long been an issue for the righty, however, and that was the case in ’24 as well, when he issued a walk to 12.6% of his opponents.

In 2025, Dubin turned in strong Triple-A results in a small sample (one run, four hits, one walk, 14 strikeouts in 8 2/3 innings) before being summoned to the majors. He was tagged for a 5.61 ERA with a surprisingly sharp 7.2% walk rate but also a diminished 18.9% strikeout rate in 25 2/3 innings. Houston designated him for assignment in late August.

The Orioles claimed Dubin, and he pitched eight innings for them in the final few weeks of the season. He allowed only three runs in that time, but he missed time with an elbow injury. Dubin has typically sat 94-96 mph with his fastball, but his average velocity with the Orioles checked in at 93.6 mph, which stood as a clear red flag. Imaging on did not reveal any major damage, however, and Dubin told the Orioles beat in September that he expected to avoid surgery and have a normal offseason after a few weeks of downtime (via the Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka). Baltimore outrighted him off the roster following the season. He elected to become a minor league free agent.

Dubin has extensive experience working as both a starter and a reliever. Assuming he’s healthy and invited to major league camp this spring, he can compete for a swingman role on a D-backs staff that is generally short on innings. Re-signing Merrill Kelly gave the Snakes a veteran anchor, and he’ll join Ryne Nelson, Brandon Pfaadt, Eduardo Rodriguez and Michael Soroka in the rotation as things currently stand. Rodriguez and especially Soroka have both missed time with injuries in recent seasons, however, and the depth options beyond that top quintet are mostly lacking in major league experience.

GM Mike Hazen Discusses Diamondbacks’ Remaining Offseason Goals

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Ketel Marte is officially off the market, but even if the Diamondbacks aren’t swinging a big trade this winter they still have plenty of work to do. The team’s biggest move of the offseason has been reuniting with Merrill Kelly in free agency. They’ve also signed right-hander Michael Soroka and catcher James McCann to one-year deals while shipping lefty Kyle Backhus and outfielder Jake McCarthy out in trades.

Those relatively small moves aren’t the end of the team’s offseason maneuvers, as general manager Mike Hazen told reporters (including Alex Weiner of Arizona Sports) that he would like to bolster the pitching staff and also add “a couple of bats” to the offense. More specifically, Hazen said that he is “still in the process of trying to add to our pitching staff. Bullpen, starting, whether it’s depth, whether it’s jumping into the rotation is still the main area of focus.” Those comments are obviously broad, and leave open plenty of avenues for improving the roster.

Arizona’s 2025 rotation was below-average overall amid injury woes and nearly across-the-board underperformance. Despite pitching the third-most innings of any rotation, the group’s 9.0 fWAR ranked 21st in the league. Staff ace Corbin Burnes had a 2.66 ERA in 64 1/3 innings before undergoing Tommy John surgery in June. He’ll miss most, if not all, of the 2026 season but remains under contract through 2030. Losing Burnes wouldn’t have been quite so disastrous had righty Zac Gallen remained a top-of-the-rotation caliber arm after being demoted to the #2 spot behind Burnes, but that didn’t come to pass. Gallen was healthy all season but posted a 4.83 ERA and allowed the third-most home runs of any starter in the league with 31. He’s now a free agent, and a reunion between the sides seems unlikely.

Brandon Pfaadt and Eduardo Rodriguez, meanwhile, both remain under club control but had similar struggles with run prevention and long balls, as both finished the year with ERAs north of 5.00. Rodriguez is guaranteed $46MM over the next two seasons (including a $6MM buyout on a 2027 mutual option), while Pfaadt is entering the first year of his five-year, $45MM extension with the team. Ryne Nelson looked good after moving into the rotation in May and is controlled via arbitration through 2028. Kelly actually led the rotation with 2.3 fWAR, despite spending the back half of the season with the Rangers after a deadline trade. Even with him re-installed on a two-year deal, the downgrade from Gallen to Soroka and Burnes’s uncertain status combine to leave the rotation looking much thinner than it did a year ago.

Vague as Hazen was about his specific plans for the pitching staff, adding another starter seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Kelly and Nelson currently project as the rotation’s top two starters, but on most contending teams would surely fit in closer to the middle of the rotation. Pfaadt and Rodriguez are both coming off the sort of brutal season from a results perspective that makes it hard to count on them for more than back-of-the-rotation innings eating, while Soroka was signed to be a starter but has long performed better when used out of the bullpen and last pitched more than 100 innings in 2019.

The main hurdle to another rotation signing is the payroll. RosterResource has the Diamondbacks at $166MM in payroll right now. That’s down from $188MM in 2025, but principal owner Ken Kendrick has indicated a desire to spend less on payroll this year. It’s unclear what the team’s exact payroll limitations are, but it’s hard to imagine the team finding room in the budget for an impact free agent starter like Ranger Suarez (or even a reunion with Gallen) without extending themselves. Perhaps the trade market, where players like Freddy Peralta and Kodai Senga could be available, would make for a better path towards bringing in pitching help if the team wants to pursue a starter.

If the team is going to focus on free agency, however, adding to the bullpen might make more sense. As much as the rotation struggled throughout parts of 2025, things were even worse in the relief corps. The club’s 4.82 bullpen ERA was the fourth-worst figure in all of baseball last year. Much of those struggles can be attributed to losing top relievers Justin Martinez and A.J. Puk for most of the season, but both underwent Tommy John surgery in June and will join Burnes in missing at least the first half of the season and potentially all of it. That leaves the team without much continuity or reliability in the bullpen headed into 2026. Ryan Thompson and Kevin Ginkel will return, with the former coming off a decent season while the latter struggled badly but has the track record to bounce back. The top returning reliever is lefty Andrew Saalfrank, who put up a dazzling 1.24 ERA in 29 innings last year but is unlikely to repeat that performance considering his meager 16.8% strikeout rate.

There’s a number of interesting young arms on the team’s 40-man roster, but the Diamondbacks bullpen could clearly use an established late-inning arm to help stabilize things while Martinez and Puk are on the shelf. Hazen didn’t name specific targets in his recent comments, but it seems Arizona is interested in just that sort of player given the club’s interest in Pete Fairbanks before he landed in Miami last month. Seranthony Dominguez is the top relief arm still available in free agency and would make plenty of sense in the desert. If his contract ends up being too rich for their tastes, other options like Pierce Johnson, Michael Kopech, and Danny Coulombe also remain available in a relief market that’s seen most of the high-leverage options picked over in the early months of the winter.

Turning to the offense, Weiner suggests that the Diamondbacks’ pursuit of help on offense could be focused more on adding platoon players rather than everyday regulars. Between the team’s limited financial flexibility and the players already available on the roster, that’s an understandable course to take. Pavin Smith has spent most of his career as a platoon bat, and getting a right-handed complement at first base seems like an obvious addition. Diamondbacks legend and likely future Hall of Famer Paul Goldschmidt is on the market and would fit that bill, as would Rhys Hoskins. Lower level options for that role in free agency include Connor Joe and Ty France. A right-handed hitting outfielder to platoon with Alek Thomas and take occasional reps at DH could also be valuable. Someone like Miguel Andujar, Chas McCormick, or perhaps even old friend Randal Grichuk could make some sense in that role. One other intriguing option would be switch-hitting super utility man Willi Castro, who could serve as a reserve outfield option while also backing up youngster Jordan Lawlar at third base.

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