2022 Diamondbacks Reviews, #49 Luke Weaver

Overview

• Rating: 2.37
• 2022 Stats: 26G (1 start), 6.56 ERA, 2.69 FIP, 1.822 WHIP, 9.6:3.3 K:BB
• Date of Birth: 08/21/1993 (29 at time of publishing)
• 2022 Salary: $2.875 million
• 2023 Status: Claimed by Seattle Mariners in October after Royals placed him on waivers

2022 In Review

A couple of years removed from being a key piece in the Paul Goldschmidt trade, Weaver entered the season in the bullpen and immediately continued his familiar stay on the IL, pitching only 2/3IP in April before elbow inflammation caused his most recent stay. He stayed there until the middle of June, when he came off the IL and pitched in 3 June games, allowing 12 runs across 7.2 innings.

After that he was exclusively used in low leverage and single-inning situations and performed well, pitching 8 innings and allowing a single run across 8 July appearances before being dealt to the Royals in exchange for Emmanuel Rivera.

His time with the Royals was just as forgetful as his early season D-backs appearances, pitching to a 5.59 ERA across 19 innings. His overall peripherals still remained the highlight, as he struck out a batter per inning for a tanking Royals team that saw Weaver as a rotation piece going forward.

2023 Outlook

The Royals swapped disappointing players in their Weaver-Rivera trade at the deadline with eyes toward converting Weaver back to a starter, but Weaver never turned that corner and with a projected arbitration salary of over $3 million, he was placed on waivers only to be picked up by the Mariners. The Mariners love these kinds of reclamation projects, and our friends at Lookout Landing had this to say about Weaver:

Weaver checks a lot of boxes the Mariners like: former Cardinals pitching prospect, former top prospect, injury bounceback candidate, throws a fastball up in the zone, and solid peripherals but underperformance for whatever reason. The Mariners have a track record for optimizing pitcher arsenals, and Weaver comes with a good one.

They’ll come to realize that the solid peripherals come with injured list time, and at 29 years old with a $3 million price tag, I have a feeling it won’t take long to see Luke Weaver’s name on the official transaction page of mlb.com pretty soon. The Goldschmidt trade return is looking bleaker by the moment.