The defending National League champion Arizona Diamondbacks are fighting for their playoff lives, and this week against the Atlanta Braves, they’ll rely on a top prospect to help get them there.
23-year-old right-hander Yilber Diaz will make his Major League debut on Monday night, starting for Arizona in the series opener in Atlanta. The No. 16 prospect in the Diamondbacks’ organization, Diaz has pitched to a 3.23 ERA in four starts at Triple-A Reno. Before that, he started 11 games at Double-A Amarillo, where he struck out 77 batters in just 54 innings.
Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen spoke with Steve Gilbert of MLB.com, giving fans an idea of what to expect from the rookie.
“He’s got good stuff,” Hazen said. “Obviously, the fastball is pretty electric. He’s got a good slider, good curveball, so you know he’s made some steady progress from Double-A to Triple-A.”
Diaz originally signed with the Diamondbacks as an international free agent in 2021. Since then, he has climbed steadily through Arizona’s minor league system, culminating in a Pacific Coast League Pitcher of the Week award last week and a promotion to the Majors on Monday.
“It’s a lot of fastball, it’s the ability to spin a breaking ball — slider and a curveball — and the command has been improving rapidly,” Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said, per Arizona Sports. “His last outing in Triple-A was a very successful one. We want that to be the case here. We’ve tried to tell all of our youngsters, it’s the exact same game, exact same plate size. He’s got to be able to throw pitches where you want and follow a game plan.”
Diaz follows Cristian Mena in Diamondbacks pitching prospect movement
Diaz’s debut comes five days after another top-20 Diamondbacks prospect, Cristian Mena, took the mound for his MLB debut.
The numbers weren’t great — he pitched three innings, giving up four runs on four hits and walking three. But a lot of that damage came in the first inning, in which he gave up all four of his runs on consecutive homers from Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez.
Arizona sent Mena back to Reno after the game as the team continues to tinker with that rotation spot while Jordan Montgomery is out with right knee inflammation. Arizona does not expect him back until after the All-Star break.
“I thought he did a really good job of recovering after the first inning,” Hazen said of Mena. “It wasn’t a one-and-done, but we’ll play with the spot [in the rotation] a little bit. We’ll see how it goes. You know, Monty’s [return], I’m very hopeful is not going to be too long after the All-Star break. So if that’s the case, then the spot has two more turns through, and then we’ll see where we go from there.”
The Diamondbacks rank 28th in baseball in starting pitcher ERA ahead of the trade deadline, so without many better options, calling up prospects is a relatively low-risk move. As the July 30 deadline approaches, Hazen intends to for his team to be buyers.
“We need to be within distance… My intention here is to buy, I want to buy, I want to push further in… I want to watch July, August and September happen with really good baseball,” Hazen said in an appearance on Arizona Sports 98.7’s Wolf and Luke Show last week. “But we need to play a little bit better than we have been playing, a little more consistently than we have been playing.”
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