Overview
- Rating: 8.25
- 2025 stats: 106 G, .248/.320/.576 = .897 OPS, 36 HR, 87 RBI, 3.3 bWAR
- Date of birth: July 18, 1991 (age 33 season)
- 2025 earnings: $15 million
- 2026 status: Free agent
2025 review
It’s weird to think that, after the 2021 season, Suarez’s career felt like it might be over. He had concluded a dismal campaign in Cincinnati, hitting below the Uecker Line and being comfortably below replacement
level overall (-0.5 bWAR). He was dealt to Seattle the following March, in a trade our siblings at Lookout Landing called “a salary dump”, the Reds paying half the remaining salary. But it turned out Seattle got a bargain, Suarez being worth 6.5 bWAR over the following two seasons, before being dealt to Arizona in a salary dump of the Mariner’s own. His 2024 was one of two halves, but the strong finish set Eugenio up to be a keystone of the Arizona offense in 2025.
Undeniably, that is what he proved to be, fully justifying the decision to exercise the $15 million option. In just 106 games before being traded, he hit 36 home-runs, good enough for equal fifth on the franchise single-season list. If he had stayed here, he would have had a solid shot at becoming our first fifty HR guy since Luis Gonzalez in 2001. Instead, we had to settle for him being the only player in Arizona history to hit a homer every four games, across more than a single season: a total of 66 HR in 264 games (it’s kind of an interesting list). He ends 2025 with exactly the same number of homers here as for Seattle, where he played over a hundred more games.
This year, Suarez started the season as he finished the last one, blasting four home runs in the opening three games, quickly followed by a game-changing grand-slam against the Yankees. After that, he was 5-for-18 on the year – all five hits being home-runs. Suarez didn’t hit his first single until the fifteenth game of the season. This was followed by a bit of a cold patch: basically, a three-week spell where he batted .136, with a .467 OPS. But if we had learned anything from last year, it’s that this is standard practice for the player: he’s streaky. We just had to wait, and things would surely turn around for him.
In case you had somehow forgotten, they did. He joined baseball’s most exclusive club against the Braves at Chase Field on April 26. Suarez swung the bat four times, and got four home-runs, only the twentieth player in major-league history to carry out that feat. Unsurprisingly, that won our Single-game Performance of the Year ‘Pittie, being something only accomplished once before in franchise history. It won Suarez the second of no less than four NL Player of the Week honors. As well as his opening series power, he also took home the award in June, and again just after the All-Star break. He’s only the second player in the league with four wins in a year, since it was started in 1973.
The final one was effectively Suarez’s last hurrah as a Diamondback, part of a spell where he hit seven home-runs in just 18 at-bats. It included his 36th and final HR of the year for Arizona against Houston on July 21. With the D-backs falling out of contention, trade chatter inevitably swirled, regarding the unprecedented opportunity – no player with 35+ HR had previously been dealt mid-season. There seemed to be a lot of interest, but just before the deadline Suarez was dealt, and returned to Seattle, following his team-mate in Arizona, Josh Naylor, dealt there earlier in July. The price was high: two months of Eugenio cost the Mariners three of their top twenty prospects.
Suarez had gone a bit cold before the deal, going 3-for-25 with a dozen strikeouts over his final seven games for the Diamondbacks. It’s certainly safe to say that Arizona got the best of Suarez that year. While he did hit thirteen home-runs for his new team, giving him a total of 49 for the year, Eugenio batted only .189 in the regular season as a Mariner, with a K% jumping from 26.8% with Arizona, to 35.9% in Seattle. He did play a part in the team making it to the post-season, where they lost in seven games to Toronto in the ALCS. But he was underwhelming there too, despite hitting three home-runs, including a pair in Game 5 against the Blue Jays, with a .700 playoff OPS and 18 strikeouts in 51 PA.
2026 outlook
Suarez hit free agency after that for the first time in his career. Also worth noting, due to the mid-season trade, he was not eligible to receive a Qualifying Offer. As I write this, Suarez has yet to find a new employer, and the D-backs have yet to find a credible replacement at third-base. MLB Trade Rumors had him as their #20 free agent of the winter, projecting a three-year contract worth $63 million, with a return to the Reds, or going to the Red Sox, initially seen as suitable destinations, and the Cubs reportedly also in the mix. A reunion with Seattle should not be ruled out, their GM saying “His steady presence, great makeup, [and] what he brings to a clubhouse every day, it’s really hard to replicate. So we’ve maintained contact with Geno’s reps all winter long.”
What seems off the table is Suarez coming back to the Diamondbacks. While the team has repeatedly been linked to free agent Alex Bregman, there has been no indication of any interest in signing the older Suarez, who will turn 35 in July. It does appear we have seen the last of Geno in Sedona Red. But we will certainly remember fondly those incandescent spells when his offense could power the whole team, and in particular that night in downtown Phoenix, where literally everything he touched with his bat turned into a home-run.
