Brandon Pfaadt Set for Second Cactus League Start vs Giants

The Arizona Diamondbacks are back on the warpath after a scheduled off day on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they'll take on their NL West rivals, the San Francisco Giants at Salt River Fields.

Game time is 1:10 p.m. Arizona time. There will be an audio-only webcast provided on Dbacks.com for free.

The Diamondbacks will send young right-hander Brandon Pfaadt to the mound to make his second start of Spring Training. In his first outing, Pfaadt looked quite sharp, tossing two scoreless innings with a pair of strikeouts and just one baserunner allowed.

Pfaadt's command looks to be on the right track to open Spring. In 2024, there was a large gap between his results and peripherals, as a poor-looking 4.71 ERA was underscored by an extremely proficient 3.61 FIP.

Still, he was one of Arizona's most consistent arms this past season, pitching to a career-high 181.2 innings, leading the D-backs' rotation in innings by a wide margin.

Other pitchers slated to get game action for the D-backs include LHPs Kyle Nelson and Kyle Backhus, as well as RHP John Curtiss, who has yet to allow a baserunner, among other minor league arms.

The Giants will send young lefty Kyle Harrison to the mound. Harrison had his ups and downs in 2024, as he pitched to a 4.56 ERA and 4.33 FIP over 124.1 innings.

Harrison throws only three pitches, and relies on his 92-93 MPH fastball nearly 60% of the time. He does throw a slurve and changeup, but his deception likely comes from his low arm angle slot. At 24 degrees, it leans somewhat closer to a sidearm delivery.

He's made one appearance so far this spring and looked good, going two scoreless innings with three strikeouts.

Lineups

The Diamondbacks will send out mostly starters after a day off, but outfielder Corbin Carroll remains out of the lineup after being removed from Sunday's game with lower back tightness.

Both Carroll and manager Torey Lovullo were minimally concerned with the injury, and Lovullo described Carroll as "day-to-day."

Instead, the Diamondbacks will send out the Gurriel-Thomas-McCarthy outfield alignment - perhaps one of the better looks from a defensive perspective.

Ildemaro Vargas will DH once again. Though he was brought on to compete for the backup utility infield role, Vargas has been quite hot at the plate so far in the Cactus League.