As one of the more unlikely pennant winners in recent years, the 84-win Diamondbacks of 2023 nearly reached baseball’s peak for the second time in franchise history. While it hasn’t been all doom and gloom for the Snakes, they haven’t been back to the postseason since, and they likely face an uphill battle to do so in 2026.
Despite becoming sellers at the 2025 Trade Deadline, the D-backs remained in the playoff hunt up to the final week of the season. While contending in the competitive National League West feels unlikely, they have enough talent at the top to leave things up in the air, though the realistic estimate is likely somewhere around the .500 mark.
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Arizona Diamondbacks
2025 record: 80-82 (4th in NL West)
2026 FanGraphs projection: 81-81 (3rd in NL West)
As mentioned, there was a bit of a fire sale come deadline time for the Diamondbacks last season. In the span of a week at the end of July, Arizona sent off two of their best hitters in Josh Naylor and later Eugenio Suárez to the Mariners, as well as Randal Grichuk to the Royals. On the pitching side, they shipped out veteran hurlers Jordan Montgomery, Shelby Miller, and Merrill Kelly to cap off their mid-season sale.
Despite moving on from a significant portion of the talent on the top of their roster, the D-backs were able to stay in contention nearly through the end of the season, thanks in large part to the talent at the top of their depth chart.
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Heading into 2026, their strength remains at the top of their lineup. Their veteran leader, Ketel Marte, is quietly one of baseball’s better position players. After a 2023 campaign that saw him put up a 152 wRC+ and finish third in MVP voting, the now 32-year-old slashed .283/.376/.517 for a 145 wRC+ in his 126 games. He is a star-level player, and perhaps a borderline MVP-type at his best. Looking forward—assuming there are no awkward clubhouse-disrupting incidents—he projects to continue with at least All-Star level production.
Elsewhere in the infield, Geraldo Perdomo was the biggest surprise for the club in 2025, and among the most significant around the league. The 26-year-old shortstop played nearly every game, nearly tripled his career high in homers with 20, and finished as a top-five position player in all of baseball by fWAR with a mark of 7.1. If the D-backs can get even a reasonable portion of that production back in 2026, they’ll be thankful. If they can, he and Marte form one of baseball’s best double play combos.
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It doesn’t stop there, either, as Corbin Carroll mans the outfield for the Snakes. Since bursting onto the scene in 2023, the 25-year-old quickly established himself as one of the game’s most talented young players. On the heels of a comparative down year, he locked in that status in 2025, with his first 30-homer season, a 139 wRC+ and 6.5 fWAR. There’s little reason to suspect he won’t continue producing at an elite level in the desert, or perhaps even grow on what he’s established.
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The top of the lineup is obviously strong, and the Diamondbacks will look to benefit from a few veteran acquisitions in the lineup as well. The Snakes brought in Nolan Arenado via trade, and Carlos Santana in free agency hoping to solidify positions they sold from at last year’s deadline.
The pitching side of things is slightly less exciting for the D-backs, as they’ll look to get everything they can out of their veteran arms. Zac Gallen, who took a step back after a few years of Cy Young Award contention, enters his age-30 campaign on the heels of a 4.50 FIP and a the lowest strikeout rate of his career. Ryne Nelson enters the season on the other end of swings on an upswing. 2025 saw him manage a 3.39 ERA in over 150 innings, as he’ll hope to build on a career-year to this point.
Veterans Eduardo Rodriguez, Brandon Pfaadt, and Michael Soroka round out the projected rotation for Arizona, and likely bring more questions than answers. Rodriguez was not great in 150 innings last year and now enters his mid-30s, Pfaadt is still waiting to take a jump to being a consistent big league starter, and Soroka has an obvious injury history that brings reasonable concern. The lack of certainty makes the return of a re-signed Merrill Kelly and former Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes (from Tommy John surgery) all the more important for Arizona.
The bullpen also brings about plenty of questions. There are some new-ish names in the fold projected to fill substantial roles out of relief in 2026, with Taylor Clarke and former Yankee Jonathan Loáisiga now on board, as well as the return of their veteran closer from 2023, Paul Sewald. The unit does, however, lack locked-in dominant arms in the back end for high-leverage spots.
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The Diamondbacks have loads of talent at the top of their depth chart, but middling supplementary players and injury trouble in the rotation lead to plenty of questions outside of the top few guys. Perhaps the biggest barrier to their success, however, is the dominant Dodgers, and perennially competitive clubs in the Padres and Giants.
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