Yandy Diaz – The Perfect Tampa Bay Ray

It’s arbitration season, so by extension – pun intended – it’s also contract extension season. Yesterday, I took a look at a deal I wasn’t particularly enamored with, the Mets’ signing of Jeff McNeil. Today, let’s turn our attention to the Tampa Bay Rays’ three-year, $24M extension of 3B Yandy Diaz, which buys out his final two years of arbitration and first year of free agency and also includes a $12M club option for the 2026 season.

Very, very quietly Diaz has settled in as the Rays’ chief on-base threat in recent seasons. He carries a .372 career OBP, and peeked just over the .400 mark in 2022 at .401. Even more quietly, Diaz actually got down ballot MVP votes last season, finishing 20th in the voting.

The Rays build their club very differently than most due to their budgetary constraints. As indicated in last week’s article on the four-year, $31M extension of LHP Jeffrey Springs, the club has never had an Opening Day payroll above last year’s mark of $83.9M. These guys simply aren’t going to go out and pay market value for the top available free agent talent. What they can do – and have proven to be especially adept at – is identify under-the-radar prospects, or players with a singular talent with lasting power, or who fit especially well in the Rays’ program, or in their ballpark, and bring out the best in them. In the cases of Springs and Diaz, sometimes they evolve into star-level players.

Diaz went from Cleveland to Tampa Bay in the winter of 2018-19 in a three-way deal that also included Seattle. From the Rays’ point of view, they were sending 1B/OF Jake Bauers – seen by most of the industry as a superior prospect – to the Indians for Diaz. Both prospects’ trajectories were headed downward at the time of the trade – Bauers had made my annual top prospects list (purely statistically generated based on production/age relative to league/level) five straight times, peaking at #10 in 2015, while Diaz had missed the list in 2018 after making it the four previous seasons, peaking at #65 in 2017.

Bauers was becoming increasingly launch angle and pull-focused, a trend that continued when he got an MLB opportunity in Cleveland. He got away from what had allowed him to thrive in the lower minors. On the other hand, the Rays let Diaz be Diaz, and he gradually evolved into his best self.

Who is Yandy Diaz as an offensive player? Well, he’s the anti-launch angle/dead pull superhero. He hits the ball on the ground regularly, and hits it hard. He also pulls the ball less frequently than just about any player in the major leagues. This puts a relatively hard cap on his power upside, but it gives him an exceedingly high floor.

Strengths? Diaz has one of the very best K/BB profiles in the game. Both his K (10.8%) and BB (14.0%) rates were over two full standard deviations better than league average last season. That K rate was a career best, the BB rate second only to his pandemic-shortened 2020 mark. Such a superlative K/BB profile gives Diaz considerable margin for error with regard to contact quality/authority.

And he needs some of that margin. Though his fly ball authority did climb a bit last season (90 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score, 90.7 mph average fly ball exit speed), he hasn’t and likely never will post above league average marks in that area. He makes up for it, however, by consistently spanking his liners and grounders materially harder than league average. In only that shortened 2020 season were his average liner and grounder exit speeds in the average range. His average liner exit speed was over a full standard deviation above average in 2019, 2021 and 2022, and his average grounder exit speed were over a full standard deviation better in 2019 and 2021, and over two full standard deviations better in 2022.

Exactly how far can an elevated grounder exit speed get a player? In general, it’s a nice trait, but not a needle-mover. Unless you play your home games in Tampa, that is.

Tropicana Field’s infield is the fastest in the game, and my batted ball-based park factors bear it out. Going back to 2014, Tropicana and Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium are the only two parks to post a grounder park factor of over 100 in every season. And Tropicana easily beats out Kauffman as the #1 grounder-friendly park.

Tampa’s grounder park factor is typically way over 100, averaging 117.4 over the past decade. Diaz hit his grounders quite hard in 2022, with his exit speed mix supporting a projected .248 AVG-.269 SLG on the ground (141 Unadjusted Grounder Contact Score). In reality, Diaz performed much better than that on grounders, hitting .279 AVG-.322 SLG (187 Unadjusted Grounder Contact Score).

Diaz hits a ton of grounders, hit them hard, and hits them to all fields. Add in relatively well-hit liners, near-average fly ball authority and an elite K/BB profile, and you have a player with a very high floor – and a surprisingly solid ceiling. Despite a relatively one-dimensional bat-first game lacking much in the way of baserunning or defensive value, Diaz right now is one of the best non-superstar offensive performers in the AL.

Diaz will be worth this extension, and then some. And since his best traits tend to age well, he is likely well worth that $12M team option in 2026, his age 34 season.