Arizona
Arizona Diamondbacks 2024 Player Review: Pavin Smith
This article is part of a series chronicling the individual seasons of players who appeared for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2024.
Reviews for players who still have rookie eligibility for 2025 will appear in our prospect season reviews. Players are presented in the reverse order of their aWAR, an average of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs WAR.
2024 Contract Status: Pre-Arb, $509K Prorated from $740K League Minimum
Pavin Smith has come a long way since his original drafting by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 1st round of the 2017 draft. He was picked 7th overall, and along with that came monumental expectations.
Smith hasn’t lived up to that bar by any means to this point in his career, but he’s certainly has an interesting path to get to where he was entering 2024. Then things seemed to take a turn, and where things stand today, he may have finally taken a step into the spotlight.
His status as a heavily bat oriented player, who finds himself playing corner outfield and first base exclusively, kept Smith in the minor leagues to start the season. His season debut came on April 19th in San Fransisco.
Going into the year the lefty batter had a career OPS+ of 91, clocking in at 9% below league average. Between that April 19th debut, however, until he was optioned down to Reno once more, Pavin Smith totaled a .268 batting average, with a solid .829 OPS.
These numbers were solid, but were not enough to force his way onto the roster. With a logjam in the outfield, and Christian Walker holding the fort at first base, Smith would primarily patrol the field in Reno until his ascent back to the big leagues on August 19th.
This callup seemed to change things in a big way for Smith. His approach at the plate always found him at bats, and this would be his key going forward.
“I’m where I’m supposed to be”
– Pavin Smith
Smith took off after his callup, seemingly making an impact every time he stepped into the batters box. His stats backed this tremendously.
In a 31 game sample size his On Base Percentage soared to .378, helped in large part to a fantastic 15.6% walk rate in that span. Smith’s slugging percentage also reached .595, with 12 of his 20 hits going for extra bases, and 6 of those leaving the yard.
Things were truly clicking in Pavin Smith’s bat and it was not a fluke. In 2024 He had a babip of .280, only .010 points higher than his .270 battings average leaving little projection of regression.
Smith’s season peaked with a magical three homer game in Houston, including a grand slam, announcing himself on the national stage, and proving himself deserving of his roster spot. His season finished with a 145 OPS+, up 55 points above his career mark to that point.
Pavin Smith’s future role with the Diamondbacks has become much more critical moving into the 2025 season. Christian Walker, and Josh Bell are Free Agents, with the former demanding a large price tag connected with a potential return.
Smith is eligible for salary arbitration for the first time. He is estimated to earn approximately $1.6 million in 2025 according our Diamondbacks payroll projections.
Smith can play first base, and its almost certain that he will see regular reps at the big league level next season. He has played himself into a job, and his performance in 2024 will have an impact in the teams dealings this off-season.
Smith is rated as a below average defender in total, but most of those negative numbers have come while playing the outfield. Playing first base, however, he is rated as exactly zero runs above average for his career (613 innings) by both Baseball Reference’s DRS and Statcast’s OAA.
Those defensive numbers don’t compare to Christian Walker’s incredible 10 Fielding Run Value and National League Leading 13 Outs Above Average.
Pavin Smith had an incredible 2024 season which proved that he has the talent at a major league level that the Diamondbacks dreamed upon 7 years ago when they drafted him. Now he will get a chance to back his breakout season up in a full years campaign in 2025.
Arizona
A lottery ticket worth $722K was sold at this Arizona store
Powerball jackpot climbs to $1.6 billion, among largest in US history
The U.S. Powerball jackpot has climbed to an estimated $1.6 billion, cementing its place among the largest lottery prizes in American history.
One lucky Arizona resident just got the ultimate surprise this weekend.
According to Arizona Lottery officials, a jackpot-winning Triple Twist ticket was sold in Prescott ahead of the Saturday, Feb. 7, drawing. The winner will take home $722,755.
Triple Twist is a daily game where players choose six numbers from 1-42 and get multiple rows of numbers for one ticket, meaning there are lots of ways to cash in beyond just the top prize. Arizona Lottery officials encourage all players to double-check their tickets.
According to Arizona Lottery officials, the winning ticket was sold at Shell 61, 333 Grove Ave, Prescott, AZ.
Here is when the next drawing will be.
Who won the lottery in Arizona?
One lucky Arizonan won the Triple Twist Jackpot on Saturday, Feb. 7, for $722,755.
Where was the winning Triple Twist ticket sold in Arizona?
According to Arizona Lottery officials, the winning ticket was sold at Shell 61, 333 Grove Ave., Prescott.
How many numbers do you need to win Arizona Triple Twist?
According to the Arizona Lottery, players have to match three or more of their numbers in a single row, either their pick or quick-picked, to the winning drawn numbers. Match all six numbers in a single row to win the jackpot.
Saturday’s winning jackpot numbers were 1, 18, 25, 36 and 41. The next drawing is Monday, Feb. 9, with an estimated jackpot of $205,000.
(Updated with new information.)
Got a story you want to share? Reach out at Tiffany.Acosta@gannett.com. Follow @tiffsario on Instagram.
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Arizona
2026 Arizona Diamondbacks Roster Dark Horse: Mitch Bratt
We already discussed one part of the return for Merrill Kelly in this series, when we covered Kohl Drake. Bratt was also received from Texas for their short-term loan of Kelly. While he is three years younger than Drake, having turned 22 in July, and is less likely to reach the majors this year, Mitch is still seen as among our better pitching prospects. Fangraphs had him in their top 10 arms, while Prospects 1500 were even more bullish, ranking Bratt as Arizona’s fifth-best pitcher (and it was perilously close there: Bratt was #13 overall, with the pitchers ahead of him occupying spots #9-12).
Mitch’s best talent is his control. He just doesn’t walk many batters: last year at Double-A, he issued only 21 free passes across 122.1 innings of work. His K:BB for the year was better than seven, and he actually improved on that after the trade. Small sample size warning, but in Amarillo, he had a K:BB ratio of 42:5 across 31.2 innings for the Sod Poodles. That 8.4 ratio was easily the best of any Arizona prospect in 2025 – nobody else, regardless of innings pitched, was able even to reach 7.0. Purely on walk rate alone, Bratt was tied for the lowest figure of anyone with 10+ IP in the D-backs’ system.
That’s the good news. The bad news is, his strike-throwing comes with a cost: a lot of hard contact. All told, Mitch allowed almost as many home-runs (18) as walks (21) last year. His fastball typically sits around 91 mph, and none of his pitches appear to be particularly outstanding at this point. Fangraphs rates them all 45-50, with the latter grade seen as the ceiling across the board. It seems that Bratt is going to need to learn how to pitch, in order to be successful, because he won’t be blowing the ball past batters based on stuff alone. That mean mixing up his offerings and locations, in order to keep hitters off balance, while continuing to show the good control he has done thus far.
While the fact he is a left-handed pitcher certainly raises his profile, the addition to the 40-man roster in November was likely more to do with Mitch being Rule 5 eligible, rather than immediate plans for him in the big leagues. Despite his young age, Bratt has already completed five years in the minors, having been drafted out of high school. He was picked by Texas in the fifth round of the 2021 draft, out of Georgia Premier Academy. I think he may start the year in Double-A again, mostly because the Reno Aces rotation appears full: Cristian Mena, Kohl Drake, Dylan Ray, Spencer Giesting and Yu-Min Lin are probably ahead of Mitch on our current depth chart.
As mentioned in our World Baseball Classic articles, Bratt is Canadian, though his appearance in the 2023 WBC did not go well. If he reaches the majors here, he won’t quite be a pioneers, but it’s close. The D-backs have only had one pitcher born in Canada across their history. It was Adam Loewen, who made eight appearances in relief, as part of the 2016 squad. It didn’t go well – a 15.00 ERA. So Bratt definitely has a shot at becoming our most successful pitcher from North of the border. [Since you ask, there have been three such position players. Most recently, of course, was Josh Naylor: but before him, Arizona was home to Jamie Romak and Danny Klassen]
Arizona
$3M in federal funds will go to University of Arizona mineral processing plant near Sahuarita
The federal government is providing $3 million to support a new mineral processing plant at the University of Arizona. The facility will be connected to an underground mine near the town of Sahuarita.
The facility will serve as a training lab, with students, faculty, and industry partners using both traditional and experimental methods to crush rocks and separate materials.
The federal funding comes after the school also received an $850,000 award from the Arizona Legislature.
Kray Luxbacher is the executive director of the School of Mining Engineering & Mineral Resources.
“It’ll prove a fertile training ground for those engineers, and it should bring research to the University of Arizona, allowing us to train metallurgical engineers at the graduate level,” she said.
Luxbacher says the goals of the facility are aligned to train students and increase mineral production in the U.S.
“If you look at the United States right now, we’re graduating only about 200 mining engineers every year across the country, and we estimate that we need between 400 and 600 a year just to fill industry needs,” she said.
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