You could never count the 2026 Diamondbacks team out. Even right up until the last weekend of the season when they were all but written off weeks earlier, this team was still giving us reason to be invested and watch meaningful baseball games. But how good was this team really? What went good? What went bad? And most importantly what needs to be addressed so that we are still watching baseball in the playoffs at this time next season? Lets get started.
Team Overview
First, lets look at the season stats.
The 2026 Dbacks managed to win 86 games despite scoring about the same amount of runs as they allowed at 739 scored vs 730 allowed. This is good for a Pythagorean wins total of 81.9 wins so it could be argued that this team overperformed by about 4 wins. That 4 win overperformance vs Pythagorean is 5th highest in MLB. Lets start with the offense. If we look at the trends, the 739 runs was about 52 runs fewer than 2025, and 147 runs less than when they lead the league in offense with 886 runs in 2024. On the run prevention side we see the opposite trend with this team going from 26th in runs allowed in 2024 to 17th in 2026.
Simply put, the offense got worse and the run prevention got better and this team had the same result being a mid 80s win team and just missing the 3rd wild card spot. But lets dig a little deeper shall we?
What Went Right
1. Bullpen- Starting with what went best and perhaps the surprise of the season, the bullpen. There are many metrics used to evaluate relief pitchers, but I love win probability added (WPA) and this group went from 30th in 2025 to 5th. Part of WPA is timing and this bullpen was 4th in Clutch which was worth about 4 wins which is roughly the whole gap over Pythagorean. So when looking at reasons as to why this team was better than its Pythagorean, it could very well be this bullpen entirely making it the MVP of this season for me. The most surprising find I made was Juan Morillo, Brandyn Garcia, and Justin Martinez were worth more WPA (4.05) than the big 3 of Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo, and Corbin Carroll (WPA 3.17). That speaks to how clutch this bullpen was and how not clutch the big 3 was. Maybe we have a new big 3 in 2027 and they come out of the bullpen? Garcia was elite against lefties with a .182 xwOBA and still good against righties with a .264. And his stuff+ backs up the results with a 130 sweeper and a 117 sinker. Martinez looked great in his return from 2nd Tommy John with a 101.8 avg fastball velocity in September, the highest of his career. He did spray the ball around a little bit more than you would like with an 18% BB, however it was only 13 innings so maybe we can chalk it up to some rust. Stuff+ tends to settle faster than many of the other metrics so his stuff+ of 127.5 for 2026 is both really encouraging and completely absurd. For context, among relievers with 10+ innings pitched, JMart’s 127.5 stuff+ ranks 3rd in all of baseball! Aside from the excitement of seeing JMart back, Juan Morillo and Jonathan Loaisiga were the backbone of the group and the glue that held it together giving this team a combined 131.1 innings of 2.33 high leverage relief innings. Worth about 2.7 fWAR combined. Absolutely huge.
2. The Defense- Next up for what went right, the defense. You noticed coming into this season that the front office started referring to ‘run prevention’ rather than pitching? That wasn’t by mistake. They doubled down on their inability to limit hard contact in years past by building an elite defensive team that likely propped up a below average pitching group that still allowed a lot of contact once again in 2026. The defense was +36 in Outs Above Average (3rd in MLB) which equates to about 29 fielding runs or roughly 3 wins. What propelled this defense vs previous seasons? An unsung hero of the defense this season was Geraldo Perdomo who alone was worth +18 Def. Bullpen and defense were difficult to rank which one was more critical to this team in 2026 especially when you consider the starters allowed the 3rd highest contact in baseball in 2026. One thing is for sure, this team would’ve looked a lot different without this defense.
3. Gabriel Moreno finally broke out! Ever since he was batting 3rd in the world series run in 2023, fans have been dreaming of what Gabriel Moreno could look like if things clicked and he was able to stay healthy, and in 2026 fans finally got to see just that! Aside from winning the batting title and being the first catcher to accomplish the feat since Buster Posey, Gabi lead the team with 5.4fWAR. Most importantly his breakout season is backed up by the numbers with a 141 wRC+ and a .363 xwOBA so this wasn’t a fluke by any means. And he was still the superb defender we have grown accustomed to. This was a player finally putting it all together and reaching his star potential. A huge development to add another player with star potential to the middle of this lineup and anchoring the defense with Perdomo.
4. Unlikely Rotation Heroes- The rotation was saved by the most unlikely of sorts. Eduardo Rodriguez was able to have a breakout season and earn almost the entirety of his contract in 1 year putting up 3.2 WAR with a 16-7 record and a sparkling 2.89 ERA in 189 innings. Another not fun exercise you can do with yourself if you want to get into the spooky season spirit a little early is where would this team have been without ERod? Now the only reason for me he is a little lower in this list is that I believe at least a significant portion of the ERod breakout was due to the defense being so good (4.27 xERA), but still you cant take anything away from what he was able to do. The other rotation savior was Michael Soroka. Perhaps the most important signing of the 2025 offseason, Soroka came in and was worth 2.7 WAR in just 116 innings, but lead the rotation with a 3.19 FIP. Without ERod and Soroka’s breakouts, this rotation would’ve sunk this season early in the season.
5. A strong Second Half Surge- For the second straight season this team seemed to surge in the second half going 37-29 after the break. However, it wasn’t for the reasons you maybe would’ve thought as it wasn’t really due to the reinforcements finally arriving, it was genuinely because this team was just playing better baseball. Specifically, the offense went from 4.33 runs/game (19th) before the allstar break to 4.89 runs/game (4th) after. This was the second biggest improvement in baseball over that span.
This was largely driven by the team’s xwOBA jumping from 26th to 5th due to a couple of factors: chase rate dropped 2.2 points, barells rose .9 points (2nd biggest rise) and hard hit rose 1.6 points (3rd biggest rise). About 85% of this improvement came simply from who was batting vs the same hitters improving. Guys like Lourdes Gurreil Jr, Adrian Del Castillo, Alek Thomas, and LuJames Groover saw significantly less PA while guys like Lars Nootbaar, Tim Tawa, and James McCann saw more. Of positive note here, Corbin Carroll’s fastball whiff rate fell from 27.6% to 21.9% while his xwOBA held so its likely the late “slump” was bad luck and nothing more.
Summary
All in all, despite missing the playoffs there was much to be excited about in 2026 and there is foundation to build upon for 2027. Was this team likely a little bit better than it should’ve been? Probably yes. And for that we should be thankful. The season definitely could’ve been much worse. Next week I will be bad cop and cover the dreaded what went wrong.
