The NL West boasted two playoff teams in 2024, with the Dodgers and Padres leading the division in most pitching stats. Outside of this, most teams in the NL West underwhelmed on the pitching side, battling injuries, underperformance, and Coors Field.
The Diamondbacks, Rockies, and Giants all project to have stronger pitching in 2025 compared to last year. Still, a few arms such as Eduardo Rodriguez, Tyler Kinley, and Robbie Ray are worth reconsidering to see how their 2025 season can be better than last year’s.
Eduardo Rodriguez had a disappointing Arizona debut in 2024, making just 10 starts due to injury and posting a 5.04 ERA/4.57 FIP while healthy. Entering 2025, Rodriguez looks to be healthy and seeks a full season’s workload in the middle of a strong Arizona rotation.
Since departing from Boston in 2021, Rodriguez’s strikeouts are down, yet his command has only improved. Even with a relatively average BB%, Rodriguez commands all five of his pitches fairly well, generating a 103 Location+ in 2024 despite his poor results.
While Rodriguez’s velocity has slowly declined over the past few years, improvements to his changeup and the development of his cutter and slider have kept contact manageable and strikeouts at a solid 23.8% K rate in 2024.
Rodriguez’s reputation over his 10-year career has been highlighted by his consistency. His highest ERA before 2024 was in 2021, which was 4.71, and yet Rodriguez still posted an elite 3.32 FIP and 13 wins for a 92-win Red Sox team. Entering 2025, Rodriguez should be able to make the necessary adjustments to his game to continue proving his value.
There were also quite a few good signs in 2024 suggesting Rodriguez can do so. Rodriguez’s four-seam ran an elite 33.9 CSW% despite its declining velocity, and his cutter and slider generated elite called strike rates (22.8 and 24.6, respectively). Rodriguez also ran an unlucky 15.7 HR/FB%, a career-high, and .324 BABIP, his highest since 2021.
Overall, Rodriguez has been one of MLB’s most reliable starters for nearly a decade. Despite injuries in recent years, Rodriguez could prove to be a veteran presence in an elite Diamondbacks rotation and help lead their staff to another playoff appearance in 2025.
Tyler Kinley, coming off back-to-back disappointing seasons from 2023-2024 with a 6.16 ERA/4.80 FIP, enters 2025 looking to replicate a season closer to his small-sample dominance in 2022, where he posted a 0.75 ERA/1.74 FIP in 24.0 innings.
Fighting for the closer spot in recent years, Kinley’s results have been far from ideal. Still, in a weak Rockies bullpen, Kinley has shown promise and could be a decent saves option if the right improvements are made.
Kinley’s bread-and-butter has always been his gyro slider, boasting a 5.26 PLV and 110 Stuff+ in 2024. Kinley supported this with a poor four-seam as his chosen secondary, along with a mediocre changeup thrown 4% of the time. To get closer to his 2022 results, Kinley will have to develop a reliable secondary to help his slider miss bats.
This has proven to be difficult. Partially due to his outlier-low extension, Kinley has struggled with adopting a strong secondary in years past, and while his four-seam has often been the choice, its results have frequently been poor.
This is something Kinley is actively working to change – throughout spring training, Kinley experimented with a deeper arsenal, trying out a curveball, sinker, and changeup that he’s tinkered with in the past. If even one of these sticks and is a reliable offering for Kinley, his results will see the difference.
Kinley’s under-the-hood metrics loved him in 2024 – his unique combination of weak contact (87.5 mph average EV in 2024) and whiffs (33.1% whiff rate) made him an intriguing candidate despite his home park of Coors Field. Still, Kinley will need a lot to go right in 2025 for these metrics to lead to better results, although the potential is certainly there.
Robbie Ray hasn’t appeared in more than seven games in a season since 2022, when he had a solid 3.71 ERA/4.16 FIP over 32 starts with the Mariners. This came right after his 2021 Cy Young campaign, where Ray broke out for his only elite season since 2017.
Entering 2025, Ray has a lot to prove. Ray is now 33, and while he seems to be healthy, the aging curve, in addition to Ray’s past arm injuries, would suggest some regression is likely. The primary result of this would be a decline in his swing-and-miss stuff – in Ray’s case, this could either be a feature of a more developed approach to generate more ground balls and weak contact, or a decline in results that would seriously affect his value.
Ray showed few signs of this in 2024 – he ran an elite 36.0% whiff rate while inducing mostly weak contact. Still, this is a small sample, and some weaker numbers, such as an inflated walk (11.6%) and barrel rate (9.4%), likely caused his mediocre results.
Ray’s track record of frequent hard-hit contact and fly balls is risky; while his ability to generate whiffs was able to mitigate damage, Ray will have to limit walks and improve his batted-ball results to counteract any decline in swing-and-miss numbers.
Regardless, health is the biggest factor. Ray hasn’t been consistently starting in years, and a decent sample will provide more clarity as to how Ray’s swing-and-miss stuff has changed since his 2022 season.
It’s important to remember the track record when considering arms like Ray, as he was one of MLB’s best just a few seasons ago. Still, there is a lot of risk in Ray’s profile, and yet the upside makes Ray one of the most intriguing arms in baseball entering 2025.
