Pavin Smith is getting another look in Arizona, and the Diamondbacks are hoping this stint comes with a little more punch.
Smith will be back on the roster and in the starting lineup tonight against the Rangers after Arizona designated him for assignment and sent him outright to Triple-A Reno in July. Catcher/DH Adrian Del Castillo is going down to Triple-A to clear a spot on the active roster, while Tyler Locklear has been recalled and placed on the 60-day injured list after fracturing his right thumb earlier this week.
It’s a familiar move for a player who has spent the last 10 seasons in the organization. Smith, now 30, was Arizona’s first-round pick in 2017 and reached the majors in 2020.
The promise has always been there, but for a long stretch, the production never quite followed. From 2020-23, he hit .240 with a .698 OPS and 91 wRC+ across more than 1,000 plate appearances, and even with the platoon edge, the bat usually settled in at ordinary.
Then came 2024, when Smith forced the conversation. In 60 games and 158 plate appearances, he put up an .896 OPS and a 143 wRC+.
Most of his work came against opposite-handed pitching, and the sample was small, but the underlying damage was real. Among more than 200 NL hitters with at least 150 plate appearances that season, Smith ranked third with a .396 expected wOBA.
He was pulling the ball more, especially in the air, and that helped him barrel it twice as often. Pair that with his strong plate discipline, and the profile started to look like something much more dangerous.
In 2025, the surface numbers stayed solid. Smith played 87 games and finished with a .797 OPS and a 123 wRC+, though injuries limited him for most of the second half.
The warning signs were harder to miss, though: his whiff rate climbed, his strikeout rate climbed with it, and his big batting average on balls in play did a lot of the heavy lifting. His Statcast expected numbers looked much closer to the 2020-23 version of Smith than the breakout hitter he showed the year before.
This season went sideways quickly. A few games into 2026, Smith suffered an elbow injury that kept him on the injured list until June. When he returned, the bat never came around - he hit .417 OPS with a 19 wRC+ in 81 plate appearances - and Arizona dropped him from the 40-man roster just before the All-Star break.
The reset in Reno appears to have helped. In 39 games for Triple-A, Smith hit .927 OPS with a 125 wRC+, including a 1.033 OPS and 148 wRC+ over his last 20 games.
Even in the Pacific Coast League, those numbers stand out. He walked at nearly a 20% clip, which is not something to expect at the big league level, but he also cut down his strikeouts and showed real power.
Smith is headed for free agency after the season, so these final weeks matter. He’ll be trying to convince someone to hand him a major league deal this winter, and Arizona will be trying to squeeze some offense out of him right away. The Diamondbacks are currently half a game behind the Padres for the final NL Wild Card spot, and Smith is likely to get chances at both first base and DH - two spots where the lineup could use a lift, especially against right-handed pitching.
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