Overview
- Rating: 4.83
- 2025 Stats: 32 G, 25.1 IP, 4.62 ERA, 4.24 FIP, 1.421 WHIP, -0.1 bWAR
- Date of Birth: January 31, 1998 (Entering age-28 season)
- 2025 Earnings: $461,720
- 2026 Status: Pre-arbitration
2025 Review
A successful bullpen needs a variety of not just velocity, but also arm angle, pitch selection, and pitch movement. That’s where pitchers like Kyle Backhus come into the picture. He’s a prototypical pitcher who likely would never have found success at the major league level in a pre-Moneyball era. There’s even a scene in the movie where Peter Brand introduces Billy Beane to Chad Bradford, a “submarine” pitcher (i.e. one whose release point is closer to the ground) who was dismissed by most of the league because
of his unorthodox arm angle. After successfully convincing Beane to sign Bradford, he went on to a very successful career, helping to pave the way for other unconventional pitchers like Backhus. While Backhus’ arm angle and release point are nowhere near the extremeness of Bradford’s, he still finds himself outside the mainstream as his 9 degree arm angle is one of the shallowest in the league. In addition, it’s not as if he’s lighting up the radar gun either as his average fastball velocity of 91 clocks in at the ninth percentile in the league.
Even with those handicaps though, the young lefty finally found some real success this season. After failing to get drafted following his graduation from Sam Houston State in 2021, the D-Backs took a flyer on him despite an unremarkable college career 4.66 ERA and 1.368 WHIP out of the bullpen. Each year after that beginning though, Backhus made steady improvement and earned promotions nearly every year, culminating in a solid 3.94 ERA with Reno last season and then following it up with an eye-popping 2.05 ERA this season at the same level. So when both Corbin Burnes and Cristian Mena went down at the beginning of June, the front office elected to bring Backhus up for his debut, beginning an excellent six weeks in which the Texas native pitched to a 2.31 ERA in 14 games. Sadly, the rest of the season was less kind as he posted a 6.59 ERA over his next 18 games before being demoted back to Reno to end the season.
How was he able to find as much success as he has? It’s relatively simple – he has some of the best extension in the game and the aforementioned arm angle accentuates the natural movement of his pitches, especially his sinker, which “rises” toward the batter. That type of movement can be particularly difficult to pick up for left-handed hitters who are already at a disadvantage against “submarine” pitchers and can even cause fits for righties who are unused to seeing pitches coming from an angle like that. His lack of a true putaway/strikeout pitch does limit his upside as a high-leverage reliever, but his command (4.1 BB/9) and maturity should keep him in setup pitcher territory moving forward.
2026 Outlook
Backhus did more than enough this year to virtually guarantee himself a bullpen spot coming out of Spring Training for this coming season. It’s theoretically possible that the team could acquire enough relief depth before then to push him back to Reno to start the season, but I find that relatively unlikely. At 28, he likely has little left to learn even in the upper minors and should instead be continuing his development with the big league club. There’s certainly some warning spots in his game as some of the expected stats indicate there’s some potential negative regression in his future, but he’s still established himself enough in my mind to at least have an opportunity to show how he can continue to develop and improve his game at the highest level.
