{"id":513957,"date":"2026-01-10T21:55:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T21:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/513957\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T21:55:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T21:55:20","slug":"jake-mccarthy-traded-to-the-colorado-rockies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/513957\/","title":{"rendered":"Jake McCarthy traded to the Colorado Rockies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The D-backs announced this morning that outfielder Jake McCarthy has been dealt to Colorado, in exchange for pitching prospect Josh Grosz. McCarthy was a first-round pick (18th overall) in the 2018 draft, and reached the majors in 2021. He had a solid rookie campaign the following year, coming fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting, but was unable to achieve consistency. He got off to a wretched start last year, being sent down to Triple-A after hitting .073 through the first three weeks of the season. While slightly better on his return, his OPS thereafter was still only .674, and he was firmly below replacement level by bWAR last year (-0.7 bWAR).<\/p>\n

The move does leave the D-backs thinner than ever in the outfield. The 40-man roster currently has only four players tagged as outfielders, and one of them is Lourdes Gurriel, who is going to spend the first few months of the year on the injured list. Right now, our outfield would consist of Corbin Carroll, Alek Thomas and Jorge Barrosa, which is basically The Matrix trilogy in the form of baseball players. But it does appear the team has now committed to Thomas, a couple of years younger than McCarthy, as the center-fielder of the future. He is still only 25 years old, though over the past two seasons, has barely been above replacement level himself.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Mike Hazen explained the rationale<\/a> behind the trade in a press conference this morning: \u201c[It was] more construction of the 40-man roster right now with the out-of-options guys we have coming into camp, the amount of outfielders we have. We felt like this was a spot of getting value for Jake. Obviously, Jake\u2019s a good player and he\u2019s done a lot of really good things here. But we felt like getting in front of this heading into spring was something that we needed to tackle\u2026 We felt like given the number of guys we had\u2026 I think it was probably as much about opportunity as anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grosz was originally a Yankees prospect, being their 11th-round pick in 2023, before being dealt to the Rockies at the trade deadline last July. He turned 23 in September, and had a 5-14 record as a High-A starter, with a 4.67 ERA combined between the two farm affiliates. He was ranked as Colorado\u2019s #20 prospect<\/a> when MLB Pipeline updated their rankings in the middle of last year, which concluded \u201cHe has the ceiling of a back-of-the-rotation starter and could end up as a multi-inning reliever.\u201d So much for all those people on social media who thought McCarthy – a fourth outfielder with no minor-league options – would be enough to get the Diamondbacks a high-leverage relief arm.<\/p>\n

With Grosz being very much a work in progress, it does open up a slot on the 40-man roster for Arizona. Whether there is another move in the offing to take advantage of that, we will have to wait and see. Good luck to Jake in Colorado. It\u2019s actually the first trade between the teams involving a major-leaguer since 2012, when the Rockies traded Matt Reynolds to the Diamondbacks in exchange for Ryan Wheeler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The D-backs announced this morning that outfielder Jake McCarthy has been dealt to Colorado, in exchange for pitching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2405],"tags":[14273,5,167,52,4316,4,168],"class_list":{"0":"post-513957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-colorado-rockies","8":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks-news","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-colorado","11":"tag-colorado-rockies","12":"tag-coloradorockies","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-rockies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115873036867754456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}