Who expected Jake to be our highest ranked outfielder in these surveys?
2024 overview:
- Rating: 7.77
- 2024 Stats: 142 G, 495 PA, .285/.349/.400 = .749 OPS, 109 OPS+, 1.7 bWAR
- Date of Birth: July 30, 1997 (age 26 season)
- 2024 Earnings: $766,000 (league minimum)
- 2025 Status: Final year pre-arbitration, 40-man roster
2024 review
The best indication of Jake McCarthy improvement is simply the fact he spent the entire year on the 26-man roster. Jake fell short of a hundred games for the D-backs in both 2022 and 2023, due to spells in both seasons where he was optioned down to Reno Aces. That was not necessary this year, and as a result, he appeared in 142 games, starting over 15 times at each of the three outfield positions. He hit a career high .285, and also set a personal best with 56 RBI. While that’s partially a result of his increased playing-time, of particular note was his reduced strikeout rate. This continued its downward trend, to only 15.8%. That was from 19.9% in 2023, which was already below the MLB average of 22.4%.
This was largely a result of McCarthy’sliw whiff rate (percentage of swings and misses). At 17.6%, that ranked Jake in the 86th percentile (lowest) on his Baseball Savant page. However, it wasn’t all good news. What also stands out there is a low quality of contact for McCarthy. His bat speed, barrel rate and hard-hit rate all came in the bottom five percent, and his overall exit velocity was worse still. At just 84.5 mph, Jake finished ahead of only three other batters. Some of that was made up for in Jake’s speed. His average sprint speed of 29.8 ft per second was best on the team, and sixth in the National League. He was able to use it to leg out 22 infield hits, also a team best this year, and also stole 25 bases in 31 attempts.
The left-handed batter was very much a pull hitter when he got the ball in the air. The chart above shows McCarthy had zero home-runs to left or center. Indeed, there were basically none even to right-center, all Jake’s bombs coming within a few yards of the foul pole in right. Every one of his eight homers came off right-handed pitchers, but otherwise McCarthy held his own in general against southpaws. His batting average was only two points down against them, and his OBP thirteen points less. All told, the difference in Jake’s platoon OPS was a manageable 74 points, though this was an increase on his previous gap.
His defense resulted in him being nominated for a Gold Glove in the outfield, though the metrics show an interesting lack of agreement in his fielding ability. This is likely a cause of the sharp discrepancy in his value between bWAR and fWAR. The former has him at a respectable 1.7 WAR, but the latter valued McCarthy at getting on for twice as much, at 3.0 WAR. All told, he basically swapped roles with Alek Thomas this year, becoming the everyday third outfielder, while it was Thomas’s turn to spend time down in Triple-A. Indeed, there’s was a point where there was discussion of Jake being a contender for the National League batting title. He had a five-hit game on July 27 (above), and about three weeks later, was hitting .313 – it was five points better than eventual winner Luis Arraez on that date.
A September slump, batting .234, dropped him back off the pace, and he finished just short of enough PA to qualify. But merely being in the conversation was something we did not expect to see before the season. McCarthy turned 27 on July 30th, and that means he should be coming into his prime over the next few years. A BABIP thus year of .329 is high by MLB standards, but was in line with Jake’s career figure, and is what you’d expect given his near-elite speed. As long as he remains as quick on his feet, that number should also remain comfortably above the norm.
2025 expectations
Despite the good year, it’s still not certain he will be on the Diamondbacks major-league roster come Opening Day. Outfield depth is one of the team’s strong points, and could end up being leveraged by GM Mike Hazen to help address areas of need. Corbin Carroll and Lourdes Gurriel Jr seem to be untouchable, so that would mean one of McCarthy or the younger Thomas could be deemed superfluous to needs. There’s a case to be made that trading Jake would be selling high, though publicly, Hazen has downplayed the possibility. “We’ll see. I’m still skeptical that a trade is going to happen, but we’ve gotten a lot of calls. There’s not many center fielders out there is what I’m gathering.”
The Yankees and the Phillies are the teams who have been most linked to a possible McCarthy trade. There has been no formal indication this is more than fantasy rosterbation. Then again, there was nothing to indicate the team was going to trade for Josh Naylor either. Hazen runs a very tight ship in the rumor department, so we will see what happens. I probably would recommend against buying a McCarthy jersey for Christmas. However, if he is still around next year, and playing center every day once again, I’d be fine with that as well.