Three remaining free agents the Arizona Diamondbacks should consider
The Diamondbacks have been active this off-season, but they shouldn't call it quits yet. They should consider going after these remaining free agents.
By Noah Wright
The Arizona Diamondbacks have had a very active off-season. They started it off by acquiring Eugenio Suarez from the Seattle Mariners. Then they signed Eduardo Rodriguez to lockdown the starting rotation. Their third big move was re-signing left fielder Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Their most recent signing was Joc Pederson. But there’s still over a month left in the off-season. The Diamondbacks shouldn’t consider it time to lay back and relax. There are still areas on the roster to reinforce. The Diamondbacks should consider pursuing these three remaining free agents before calling it an off-season.
DH/OF Robbie Grossman
Signing Pederson means the Diamondbacks will need to find a platoon partner for him. They don’t have a great option currently on the 40-man roster, and I doubt that they want to turn to one of their minor league signees like Kevin Newman or Andres Chaparro. But veteran outfielder/DH Robbie Grossman could be a great candidate to fill this role.
Grossman turned in a .238/.340/.394 triple-slash, .324 wOBA, and 102 wRC+ through 420 plate appearances. The switch-hitter walked in 13.6% of his plate appearances, marking the eighth season in a row his BB% was above 10%. His 23.3% strikeout rate was slightly below average but manageable. Though Grossman’s .156 isolated slugging percentage also fell just shy of the league average.
But most of Grossman’s damage with the bat came against left-handed pitching. Grossman slashed an impressive .309/.416/.536 against Southpaws. He was one of just 14 batters with a wOBA above .400 at /403 and one of 17 batters with a wRC+ above 150 at 158 against lefties in at least 130 plate appearances. He also led all batters in walk rate vs LHP at 16.8%, more often than the likes of Mookie Betts, Adley Rutschman, and Andrew McCutchen.Grossman may have had a sub-.100 ISO against righties but topped out at .227 against lefties.
Grossman would definitely pay well with Pederson as his platoon mate at DH. It’s not an exact science, but if you were to take Grossman’s numbers vs LHP and Pederson’s numbers vs RHP and combined them, you’d get a .266/.369/.461 batter. If you want to know what that looks like, Brandon Nimmo from the New York Mets posted a very similar triple-slash last season.