A season of suspended development.
Overview
- Rating: 1.82
- 2024 stats: 2 G, 1 IP, 36.00 ERA, 15.17 FIP, 6.000 WHIP, -0.3 bWAR
- Date of birth: December 27, 1992 (age 31 season)
- 2024 earnings: League-minimum, minus salary owed from date of suspension
- 2025 status: Ineligible List (eligible for reinstatement June 5, 2025); 2 options left.
Voting overview
2024 review
I decided to take a gamble and volunteer to do the very first Player Review of this offseason. To earn the ignominy of being the first player to be reviewed, poor performance generally isn’t enough. No, there has to be a little something extra. Andrew Saalfrank’s 2024 season certainly fit that bill. After a promising 2023 season that included some high leverage appearances in the playoffs, I was pretty excited about the prospect of the young lefty being a staple in the 2024 bullpen. It was not to be as he went from postseason contributor to parlay casualty.
Andrew Saalfrank came into Spring Training vying for one of two Opening Day lefty bullpen spots with Kyle Nelson and Joe Mantiply. Saalfrank pitched a total of 9 innings over 8 games with a 4.00 ERA in Spring Training which wasn’t enough to beat out his competition and he was reassigned to minor league camp as one of the last roster cuts less than a week before Opening Day.
In Reno, Saalfrank made 8 appearances in March and April, totaling 10.1 IP with a 2.61 ERA (all 3 ER he allowed were in a single appearance). He wasn’t getting a ton of strikeouts (6), but he wasn’t walking a ton (3), either. Jim identified walks as a needed point of improvement for Saalfrank in his writeup on Saalfrank’s player review last year, so the early results indicated some improvement in that area.
On April 23, the Diamondbacks made a flurry of roster moves due to injuries with the big league club. Miguel Castro and Kyle Nelson went on the IL and Andrew Saalfrank and Justin Martinez were recalled in addition to Tommy Henry coming back to the big league club to replace Merrill Kelly in the rotation as he was also placed on the IL. Saalfrank made his first appearance the next day in St. Louis and it didn’t go well. He did inherit a bit of a mess from Bryce Jarvis, coming in to face lefty Lars Nootbaar with the bases loaded and 1 out in the 8th, trying to preserve a 2 run deficit. Nootbaar took the first pitch that Saalfrank threw in the majors in 2024 and hammered it off the right field wall to score 2. Saalfrank then intentionally walked right handed hitter Masyn Winn to face another lefty, Nolan Gorman, who roped the first pitch he saw down the first base line, but Gold Glover Christian Walker was there to catch the liner and make the unassisted double play. Saalfrank’s first appearance consisted of 2 pitches to record 2 outs and allow 2 inherited runners to score. Deuces wild!
Saalfrank’s second, and final, appearance in MLB occurred five days later and went even worse. To be fair, while he didn’t inherit a jam, he did come in to face the top of the Dodger order and Betts-Ohtani-Freeman trio isn’t an easy task for anyone as this October just proved. Saalfrank was able to retire Betts on a groundout, but then the wheels came off as the aforementioned problem with walks reared its head. Saalfrank walked both Ohtani and Freeman on 5 pitches each, then they advanced an extra base on a wild pitch before Saalfrank walked Will Smith to load the bases. Teoscar Hernandez came up and tattooed a sinker that one hopped the wall and landed in the pool for a ground rule double, signifying the first earned runs Saalfrank had ever allowed in the regular season and ending his outing. Scott McGough would come on in relief and allow both of his inherited runners to score and be charged to Saalfrank, ballooning his ERA to an even 36.00 with 4 ER allowed in 1 total inning pitched on the season.
Saalfrank remained on the roster for another day after that outing before being optioned down to Reno on May 1st in favor of Blake Walston. Saalfrank made 10 more appearances in Reno through the rest of May and June 1st. His walk numbers were inflating back to 2023 levels, averaging 4.1 BB/9. He was able to keep runners from scoring, though, accruing a 2.72 ERA through the month and he also converted 3 of his 4 Save Opportunities. However, the entire complexion of Saalfrank’s young career changed on June 4th.
Major League Baseball found itself in the headlines for all the wrong reasons at the launch of the 2024 season. Baseball’s biggest star, Shohei Ohtani, was caught in a journalistic and federal investigation that tied him to an illegal bookmaker in southern California. Ohtani was cleared of wrongdoing by the Feds and then Major League Baseball officially closed its investigation and cleared Ohtani on June 4th. In conjunction with the Ohtani announcement, though, MLB also announced the suspension of four players for one year due to violation of Rule 21, betting on baseball. Andrew Saalfrank was one of the four.
Saalfrank was suspended for bets occurring during the 2021-22 seasons (actually all but one bet occurred in 2021, with a single wager made March 9, 2022). The young pitcher was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery during 2021, but he pitched in Hillsboro and Amarillo during the 2022 season. Reports stated that Saalfrank’s baseball betting totalled $445.87, with nearly all of that on professional baseball (a single $1.80 wager was made on college baseball). He had a total net loss of $272.64 on his bets and was only correct on 5 of his 29 wagers.
It is important to note that Saalfrank did not bet on any games in which he was involved and MLB concluded that no game outcomes were affected by his bets.
2025 outlook
It’s tough to project exactly how 2025 will play out for Mr. Saalfrank. He won’t be eligible for reinstatement until early June, and then who knows how long he’ll take to get into form once back. Best case scenario is probably late July to early August to be ready for major league call up, if necessary, but he’s certainly not a lock to play at Chase at all next season. AJ Puk and Joe Mantiply figure to be the top 2 lefties in the bullpen as currently constructed, and if Kyle Nelson is fully healthy by next summer he would be ahead of Saalfrank in the lefty pecking order as well. Personally, I’m not betting on him to make a single appearance with the Diamondbacks in 2025.