An unexpected 40-man roster addition, but what can we expect from the pitcher?
Last week we discussed Tim Tawa. So it makes sense to follow up with a look at the other player added by the team to the 40-man roster, before the Rule 5 draft. That was right-handed pitcher Joe Elbis; Preston already mentioned him, but I figure with him added, he deserves a deeper dive. He’s one of the youngest prospects there, turning 22 in September: Cristian Mena is the only one younger. Elbis signed for Arizona in July 2019, at age sixteen for $275,000. But obviously, the arrival of COVID, and the cancellation of the 2020 minor-league season, delayed his entry to professional ball. He didn’t make his first appearance until almost two years later, debuting for the Arizona Complex team on June 29th, 2021.
He made an immediate impression there, as he got stretched back out to starting pitcher length. Over nine starts there, working up to seven innings in his final outing, Joe had a 3.40 ERA, but a stellar K:BB of 46:4. That got him a cup of coffee with the Visalia Rawhide, for whom he made three starts in September. Over those 14 innings, he had a 3.86 ERA, but again, good peripherals with a 13:3 K:BB ratio at the higher level. Unfortunately, after that promising start, 2022 proved to be almost a lost season. Elbis’s campaign ended in April after just three starts for Visalia. He went on the IL with inflammation in his shoulder, and never made it back that year.
2023 saw Elbis make the most out of his bus pass, shuttling between A-ball Visalia and High-A Hillsboro on no less than five occasions during the season. The numbers for the Rawhide continued to look very good, with a 1.76 ERA across ten starts and 41 innings, allowing just one home-run over that time. But the step up proved a tricky one, Joe posting a 4.84 ERA at the higher level. Hitters there were better able to lay off his pitches out of the zone, leading to a less-impressive K:BB of only 60:37 across 74.1 innings. However, worth remembering he only turned 21 at the very end of the season, and Joe was more than three years younger than the typical pitcher at the High-A level.
Elbis was able to make the necessary corrections last year. Particularly outstanding, he had three consecutive scoreless starts in May for Hillsboro, covering nineteen innings with a K:BB of 15:2. That helped to win him Pitcher of the Month honors for the Northwestern League. It was part of a nine-game spell where he allowed a mere seven earned runs over 59.1 IP – an ERA of just 1.06 – and held opponents to a .488 OPS. Elbis was named Pitcher of the Month by the Diamondbacks for his performances in June, going deep into his appearances with 34.2 innings over five starts, and a 2.08 ERA. That got him another promotion, this time to Double-A Amarillo.
His ERA there was 4.60, but that was inflated by his final outing: over the seven previous starts at AA, Elbis had a 3.70 ERA, and it’s possible he simply ran out of gas. He had thrown twenty more innings than in 2023, and we had seen a similar struggle towards the end of that season, with an ERA above seven in his final four games. Building up stamina, to be able to endure the rigors of a full campaign, is likely to be something the team want to see from Joe in 2025. They clearly have faith in his long-term value, adding him to the 40-man roster, ahead of better-known prospects like Kristian Robinson, when Elbis was seen as not much more than a possible minor-league pick in the Rule 5 draft.
Writing when he was added, Nick Piecoro said of Joe, “He does not have overpowering stuff, averaging about 92 mph with his fastball, but he throws strikes with a deep repertoire that can include up to six pitches… Most scouts view him as little more than a back-of-the-rotation type,” and Elbis is still quite deep on most prospect rankings. The Sports Illustrated crew has him at #36, though Fangraphs rank him at #15, saying “The arm-side movement of his curveball gives him a weapon against lefties, and an improving changeup might give him a second… He is an up/down starter type with the physical characteristics for continued growth that might allow him to fill a stable fifth starter role down the road.”
On the one hand, Elbis is very young and inexperienced, with just 45 innings thrown above the High-A level. While Mena is younger, he had pitched 124 innings in Double-A and 84.2 in Triple-A when he made his major-league debut last July. Though both players signed in the same cycle, and lost their first season of development to COVID, Mena subsequently stayed healthy – well, until the forearm strain which ended his 2024 campaign at the end of July. I suspect on that basis, Elbis will begin this year in Double-A, and if he makes the same adjustment he did in High-A, can look forward to being tested in the fires of Reno later in the season.
With Zac Gallen, Jordan Montgomery and Merrill Kelly’s rotation spots potentially opening in 2026, it’s likely the team will be looking for one or more replacements. Both Mena and Elbis could be in the mix to take over, along with other prospects like Yilber Diaz. But we already saw Mena in the big-leagues, at the tender age of 21 years, 195 days. If the D-backs’ rotation depth is sorely tested again in 2025, it’s not impossible Elbis could find himself taking the mound at Chase Field.