Pavin Smith Is Proving That His 2024 Breakout was Not an Anomaly

Despite failing to reach the postseason in 2024, after magical run to the World Series the year prior, the Arizona Diamondbacks still held one of the strongest offenses in all of baseball last season. They sat tied for third in MLB in team wRC+ at 118, second in OPS at .777, tied for first in AVG at .263, fifth in HR at 211 and first in RBI at 845.

Ketel Marte and his NL MVP finalist season, Eugenio Suarez and his 30+ HR and 100+ RBI campaign and Corbin Carroll’s 147 second-half wRC+ grabbed a majority of the headlines surrounding this D-backs offense. However, there were certainly other names that made significant contributions in the batters box as well. One of these names was Pavin Smith.

A former top 10 pick in the 2017 MLB Draft by the D-Backs, Smith had not come close to living up to his first round potential before 2024. After making his debut during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Smith’s highest season wRC+ total was 98 in 2021.

But after back-to-back seasons of sub-90 wRC+ output, Smith finally had his breakout campaign in ’24. in 158 plate appearances across 60 games, the D-backs slugging 1B/OF posted a 142 wRC+ thanks to a .270/.348/.547 slash line with nine home runs and 36 RBI.

While a season like that is bound to spark excitement, there was also reason to enter the 2025 campaign with tempered expectations, given the limited sample size his breakout occurred in.

However, as we enter the mid-May, Smith has done nothing but quash any doubt that 2024 was just a flash in the pan, as he looks even stronger this season than he did last.

Pavin Smith is on a Torrid Pace to Start 2025

While Smith’s stat line was certainly something to marvel at last season, there were some strong underlying metrics behind it.

While he didn’t have enough plate appearances to officially qualify within percentile ranks on Baseball Savant, numerous areas of his game produced top-tier totals nonetheless.

Smith’s quality of contact was excellent, as he sported a 14.7% barrel rate and 32.5% squared-up rate. This aided in nights like he had on September 8, when belted three homers in a single contest.

He also managed to stay disciplined and not venture outside the strike zone, as he sported just a 17.9% chase rate and an 11.4% walk rate.

All of this resulted in some great expected metrics, including and excellent .395 xwOBA, which ranked him 10th in all of baseball amongst hitters with at least 100 plate appearances. For additional context, this placed him higher than his MVP-caliber teammate in Ketel Marte.

Now in 2025, Smith is doing a lot of the same things. From a batted ball perspective, the 29-year-old is still barreling balls at an elite 92nd percentile rate of 16.4%. Then, from a plate discipline standpoint, Smith is sporting a 93rd percentile chase rate, only venturing outside of the zone 19.3% of the time. He also sports an mind-boggling 99th percentile walk rate of 20.0%.

He continues to punish fastballs to a phenomenal degree, like he did in 2024, hitting to a .415 AVG and .780 SLG against them.

And 2025 has also seen Smith take advantage of offspeed offerings a lot more as well, with a more than serviceable .269 AVG and .500 SLG against them. This was an area that Smith was lacking in during the 2024 campaign.

All of this has resulted in a 2025 stat line that looks far superior to his breakout campaign a year ago. In 127 plate appearances across 39 games, Smith is slashing .301/.433/.515 with a 167 wRC+. He’s amongst the best of the best in MLB (in terms of hitters with 100+ plate appearances), ranking 10th in wRC+, 12th in OPS, second in BB%, and third in OBP.

It’s no coincidence that with a hitter like this contributing to the cause, Arizona finds themselves amongst the best teams in the majors offensively once again this year. They fall in the top 10 in team wRC+ (7th with 112), OBP (T-9th at .330), SLG (4th at .438), OPS (4th at .768), RBI (5th at 203), HR (5th at 56) and BB% (3rd at 10.1%).

While this may still only be a 285 plate appearance sample size where Smith has performed like this, the fact he’s been able to spread this over multiple seasons says a lot. It also says a lot that he’s accomplished this with the added pressure of aiding Josh Naylor in filling the void left by the departure of Christian Walker in free agency.

However, the biggest takeaway of Smith’s dominant run might is not simply the fact that he’s gotten better and done so with added situational pressure, but it’s that he’s lead the Diamondbacks offense in the process. Of D-backs hitter with 100+ plate appearances this season, Smith leads them in wRC+ and OBP.

He may not be the type of household name that Marte or Carroll are in this lineup, but it’s time that fans across the league remember the name Pavin Smith, because at this rate a trip to Atlanta in July for this year’s midsummer classic no longer seems like a pipe dream for him.