The roster for the Salt River Rafters lacks real top prospect buzz from a Diamondbacks’ perspective; the top D-backs’ prospect is Jansel Luis (#12 on MLB Pipeline) and other participants include Drey Jameson (no longer a prospect because he’s no longer a rookie), Jacob Steinmetz (a former prospect who’s fallen off of lists due to injury), and Jack Hurley (a former prospect who has fallen off of lists due to performance).
That doesn’t mean the AFL will not be important for the Diamondbacks this year.
Here’s something to watch for each Diamondback in the AFL.
How does Kyle Amendt’s fastball look?
Amendt is a unique reliever, relying on a fastball that is around 90 MPH but has a lot of carry, and throwing what Statcast categorizes as a slider and curveball off of that. In reality, there’s little lateral movement on any of his pitches, so it might be more natural to call them both curveballs, with one being a harder curve and the other softer. After he returned from injury, his velocity did increase but so did the variance in location. A fastball like this works best at or above the top of the strike zone, and it was in the lower half of the zone and over the middle of the plate a bit too often. His delivery is deceptive enough to be able to make that work for a little while, but he needs to find more consistent location.
Can Kenny Castillo block high quality breaking pitches?
Castillo is generally solid behind the plate for a young offensive catcher, but he has allowed 29 passed balls in the past two seasons. And he doesn’t seem to be improving; he allowed 15 in 612 innings in 2024 and 14 in 460 innings in 2025, which is certainly the wrong direction to be trending. A lot of this comes down to blocking. When he’s catching, he’ll be handling the best arms he’s caught so far (as a group) and there will be plenty of nasty breaking stuff.
Can Yordin Chalas get more swing-and-miss?
It was no real surprise that Chalas didn’t miss as many bats in Hillsboro as he did in Visalia in 2024. But when he returned to Hillsboro this year, he still wasn’t missing as many bats as he needs to, and as a result his strikeout rate dropped from near-elite levels to merely average. Between Hillsboro and Amarillo, batters were swinging about as much as they had in the past, but they weren’t missing as much, or even fouling pitches off as much. He was getting fewer called strikes as well, likely a product of better umpiring.
Is David Hagaman for real?
Hagaman had just 22.1 innings under his belt in 2025 when the Diamondbacks acquired him and assigned him to Hillsboro, the highest level he’d ever pitched at. In 20 innings there, he struck out 27 against just four walks. He allowed just 11 hits for a WHIP of 0.75, but three of the hits were home runs. He and Jacob Steinmetz should get plenty of work in the AFL due to their lengthy injury absences, and it will be interesting to see Hagaman against the best competition he’s faced so far.
Can Jack Hurley swing and miss less?
Over the season, Hurley swung at over half of the pitches he saw and made contact just 60% of the time on those swings. Most of the time he did make contact, the ball went foul. That worked out to striking out 109 more times than he walked in 2025, in just 311 plate appearances. Just five players in the big leagues struck out 100 times and at least six times as often as they walked, and only Riley Adams and his 59 OPS+ had a similar number of plate appearances to Hurley. No major leaguer was able to reach even 150 plate appearances while striking out 40% of the time, and Hurley struck out that often in AA.
Can Drey Jameson be healthy?
After missing all of 2024 thanks to Tommy John, Jameson missed most of 2025 as well. He threw 14 innings in the minor leagues and three in the big leagues. If he can be healthy in 2026, he’s a potential big-armed back-of-the-bullpen reliever. He could compete for the closer role. That competition starts in the AFL.
Where does Jansel Luis play?
Luis played mostly second base after the injury to Demetrio Crisantes, while Cristofer Torin handled more shortstop. But Luis has the higher offensive upside of the two, and has been decent defensively as well. It’ll be interesting to see how he fits into the infield mix for the Rafters.
What does Jacob Steinmetz’s stuff look like?
It’s been far too long since we’ve seen Steinmetz pitch, as he missed the entire season with injury. He ended 2024 with a solid outing, ending a stint at Hillsboro that was very much a mixed bag. He’s still young (he turned 22 in July) and has the stature to be a workhorse on the mound. He’ll get to show what he has against better competition than he’s faced since he started for Israel in the World Baseball classic against a Dominican Republic lineup that included Juan Soto, Manny Machado, Julio Rodríguez, and Ketel Marte. (He gave up a double to Soto as seen above but struck out Machado and got Rodríguez and Marte to ground out.)
Diamondbacks’ Player Stats and Facts
Here’s an ongoing feature for the next few weeks. One stat or fact about every player who appeared for the Diamondbacks in 2025. This will be the first 13 of 65 players.
Philip Abner: Became the first member of the Diamondbacks’ 2023 draft class to reach the major leagues, as he climbed from High-A to the big leagues through 2025. Abner is also the only sixth-round pick in 2023 to reach the major leagues so far.
Blaze Alexander: Alexander made his first professional appearance in left field on September 1 against the Rangers. He started in center field before moving to third base and then to left field, making it the first (and so far only) time that he has played three positions in one game in professional baseball.
Kyle Backhus: Was the first Diamondback pitcher to begin his career with four consecutive scoreless outings since Andrew Saalfrank in 2023, and the 19th to do so in franchise history. Joe Paterson’s 19 scoreless outings to start his career in 2011 is the record, and Doug Slaten, James Sherfy, Clay Zavada, Bret Prinz, and Zac Curtis have also reached double figures in appearances before allowing their first run.
Jorge Barrosa: Barrosa was the shortest player to appear in the National League this year, and Esteban Quiroz (who appeared in 14 games for the 2022 Cubs) is the only player with a lower listed height to appear in major league baseball in the last 44 years. Barrosa, Gustavo Campero, and Jose Altuve became the shortest outfielders to hit home runs since Albie Pearson in 1965.
Jalen Beeks: Led Diamondbacks’ pitchers with 61 appearances on the season. But two of those were technically starts, meaning that 2025 was just the second full season in franchise history in which no pitcher made at least 60 relief appearances. Joe Mantiply led the 2021 Diamondbacks with 57 relief appearances. Those two seasons are also the only seasons in franchise history with more than 40 pitchers to make an appearance. 2023 is in third place with just 34 pitchers used.
Jeff Brigham: Brigham appeared in four games for the 2025 Diamondbacks. He allowed three hits and no runs in the 3.1 innings of work in the first three games, and four hits and three runs without recording an out in the ninth inning of his fourth appearance. The only one of those games the Diamondbacks won? That would be the fourth game, on a walk-off grand slam by Josh Naylor in the 11th inning against the Mariners on June 9.
Juan Burgos: Appeared in exactly 6.2 innings for both the Mariners and Diamondbacks in 2025.
Corbin Burnes: Posted a 21 scoreless inning streak from April 30 to May 21. Despite missing four months of the season, his 63 strikeouts ranked sixth on the team, and his 1.9 bWAR ranked third among pitchers.
Corbin Carroll: Became the fourth player ever to hit 30 home runs, 15 triples, and steal 20 bases in a season, and was the fastest to reach those marks. He hit his 30th home run to complete the trio in his 560th plate appearance. It took Willie Mays 583 plate appearances in 1957, Chuck Klein 706 plate appearances in 1932, and Jimmy Rollins 754 plate appearances in 2007. Every player ever to reach those figures played in the National League, and Rollins and Klein both won the MVP. Carroll will likely become the first player with those numbers not to receive any first-place MVP votes.
José Castillo: Appeared for four different teams in 2025, including being the fifth player to appear for both the Diamondbacks and the Mariners. He’s the only player to have played for each of the Diamondbacks, Mets, Mariners, and Orioles at any point in their career, and he did it all in one season.
Nabil Crismatt: Crismatt has been part of eight different organizations (three of them on multiple occasions) without ever having been traded or claimed on waivers. Since he elected free agency from the Padres on June 25, 2023, he’s signed with the Diamondbacks, Diamondbacks again, Dodgers, Rangers, Padres, Phillies, Phillies again, and Diamondbacks for a third time. That’s eight trips through free agency in just over two years.
John Curtiss: Curtiss is one of four players (all pitchers) from Carroll High School in Southlake, Texas to play in the major leagues. While their careers all overlapped quite a bit, only 2023 saw all four of them appear in the major leagues, and with Ross Stripling’s retirement before the season, it can never happen again.
Adrian Del Castillo: Among Diamondbacks with at least 20 plate appearances, only Eugenio Suarez hit the ball in the air more frequently than Del Castillo. Combined with a 49.3% hard hit rate, his wOBACON of .394 was 99 points higher than his wOBA.
