The right-handed pitcher showed promise before his year ended prematurely due to injury
2024 Overview
- Rating: 5.23
- MLB Stats: 44 G, 59.1 IP, 3.19 ERA, 5.12 FIP, 1.433 WHIP, 0.8 bWAR, -0.6 fWAR
- Date of birth: December 26, 1997 (26 year old season)
- Earnings: Pre-arbitration
- 2025 Status: On 40-man roster, 2 options remaining
As can be seen, opinions on Jarvis spanned the entire spectrum, with a plurality of voters giving him a 5. That’s probably fair. How he got to those numbers is the more interesting part.
For the first time in his career, Jarvis began the season in the major leagues, and his first appearance did not go well. He gave up two runs in three innings in the lone game the Diamondbacks lost against the Rockies in the season-opening series. That was a prophetic beginning to the first part of his season. He primarily did mop-up work or was an option of last resort in extra innings. In that role, he took both of his losses on the season, losing at home against the Cubs and in Baltimore.
After that Baltimore loss, his ERA stood at 4.91, but that was misleading, as (partially thanks to those extra inning appearances and Rob Manfred’s zombie runner) he had allowed four unearned runs. His RA/9 was 6.55, which was much more comparable to his FIP of 6.12. Walks were the biggest problem; he’d allowed 17 walks against 19 strikeouts in his 22 innings. He’d also allowed four home runs. Not the way you want it to be, needless to say.
But he followed that loss in Baltimore with nine straight scoreless appearances. And from that point on, he essentially had one rough inning, on June 4 against the Giants. That inning featured a pair of walks and a home run by Mike Yastrzemski. Apart from that, in 19 games between his loss in Baltimore and the end of June, Jarvis allowed four runs for a 1.48 ERA.
July 3, 2024, may have been the best outing of Jarvis’s career so far. Cristian Mena had gotten a spot start in Los Angeles, and after giving up four runs in the first inning, had settled down and pitched two scoreless innings. The Diamondbacks tied the game in the top of the third, and took a 5-4 lead in the top of the fourth. Jarvis came on in relief for Mena and got seven outs without allowing a hit (albeit with two walks) before a Miguel Rojas double chased him from the game. But while he was pitching, the Diamondbacks had turned their 5-4 lead into an 8-4 lead, and Jarvis picked up his lone win of the season.
While that outing in July may have been the highlight, from mid-June onward he was excellent. While walks were still an issue (he walked eight in 14 innings) he posted a 1.80 ERA with a 3.82 FIP and a 1.1 WHIP. In addition to the win, he picked up a couple of holds as he was used in higher-leverage situations in addition to five multi-inning appearances.
Unfortunately, July 30th was his final appearance, as a sprained elbow brought his season to an end thereafter.
The sharp division between how Baseball-Reference’s WAR sees his 2024 season and how Fangraphs WAR sees it is entirely a product of his RA/9-FIP difference. But given how he cut out the home runs over the last month and a half of the season, his FIP was coming back down to a more reasonable level. Still, though, there’s an awful lot of blue on his Baseball-Savant page and only his fastball velocity is decently above-average.
2025 Outlook
Assuming Jarvis is ready to go in spring training, he will be competing for a spot in the bullpen, likely as a multi-inning middle reliever. Given that he has two options remaining, he will likely wind up splitting time between Phoenix and Reno. But there remains a ton of potential here, and if the new coaching staff is able to unlock that potential, he could wind up part of the late inning mix.
Also, while his future appears to be the bullpen, it would be unwise to entirely rule out a return to the starting rotation. His fastball is an above-average pitch, and his changeup demonstrates similar tail. If his cutter or slider can become average pitches, he still has a chance to become a back-of-the-rotation starter. Yes, the rotation is crowded at the moment, but it seemed overcrowded last season and Mena, Yilber Diaz, and Blake Walston all wound up making starts.
To forecast 2025 for Jarvis would require information that is simply unavailable at the moment. How is his elbow? What is he working on through the offseason? Without knowing that, it’s really impossible to know. What does seem clear is that he is spending at least a decent chunk of the offseason in the desert. He’s getting ready for 2025, and here’s hoping that it will be a much better one.