{"id":92719,"date":"2025-01-28T18:41:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T23:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=92719"},"modified":"2025-01-28T18:41:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T23:41:35","slug":"padres-sign-catcher-elias-diaz-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/01\/28\/padres-sign-catcher-elias-diaz-free-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres Sign Ex-Rockies Catcher Elias D\u00edaz to One-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Following five seasons in Denver with the Colorado Rockies, free agent catcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/d\/diazel01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-01-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elias D\u00edaz<\/a> has found a new home with <\/span>the San Diego Padres after spending the second half of 2024 with them<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span>Daniel \u00c1lvarez-Montes of El Extrabase <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">reports that D\u00edaz and the <\/span>Padres <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have come to terms on a one-year<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0deal worth $3.5 million. The deal, pending a physical, also includes a mutual option for 2026<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. D\u00edaz appeared in 96 games between Colorado and San Diego last season, batting .265\/.313\/.382 over that span. Entering his age-34 season, the veteran backstop has a career .251\/.304\/.388 slash line with a .692 OPS and a 5.4 WAR.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Former All-Star catcher El\u00edas D\u00edaz is in agreement on a one-year \/$ 3.5MM deal with the San Diego Padres, sources tell <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ElExtrabase?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@ElExtrabase<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The deal includes a mutual option for 2026 and is pending a physical.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Daniel \u00c1lvarez-Montes (@DanielAlvarezEE) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DanielAlvarezEE\/status\/1884366106451927197?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 28, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Padres Sign All-Star Catcher Elias D\u00edaz to One-Year Deal<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates as an international free agent in 2008,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0D\u00edaz<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> spent five seasons in Pittsburgh before signing with the Colorado Rockies in 2020. Signed to a minor league contract, D\u00edaz made the Opening Day roster for the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, batting .235\/.288\/.353 with two homers over 26 games. D\u00edaz made his first All-Star Game in 2023 and won <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2023\/07\/12\/all-star-game-mvp\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">the game&#8217;s MVP<\/a> after hitting the game-winning home run for the National League.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite hitting .270\/.315\/.378 over 83 games, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/08\/18\/rockies-should-have-traded-not-released-elias-diaz\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">the 34-year-old was released<\/a> following the promotion of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/romodr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-01-28_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Drew Romo<\/a> in August. D\u00edaz signed a minor league contract with the Padres and joined the active roster in September.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What D\u00edaz lacks in offensive power, he makes up for with an above-average contact rate and a below-average strikeout percentage. Despite his ability to score and drive in runs, the main source of his value is his defense. D\u00edaz has long been one of the best defensive catchers in the majors. He caught 79 games last season, boasting a near-perfect fielding percentage, two framing runs, and a 46.9% strike rate. The veteran backstop <a href=\"https:\/\/baseballsavant.mlb.com\/leaderboard\/catcher-throwing?game_type=Regular&amp;n=q&amp;season_end=2024&amp;season_start=2024&amp;split=no&amp;team=&amp;type=Cat&amp;with_team_only=1&amp;target_base=All&amp;sortColumn=n_cs_aa&amp;sortDirection=desc\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ranked 12th among major league catchers<\/a> with four caught stealing outs above average on 48 steal attempts. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">D\u00edaz gives the\u00a0Padres<\/span><b>\u00a0<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a major upgrade behind the plate as well as a right-handed bat that can hit for average and drive in runs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Orlando Ramirez-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following five seasons in Denver with the Colorado Rockies, free agent catcher Elias D\u00edaz has found a new home with the San Diego Padres after spending the second half of 2024 with them. Daniel \u00c1lvarez-Montes of El Extrabase reports that D\u00edaz and the Padres have come to terms on a one-year\u00a0deal worth $3.5 million. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4975,"featured_media":94805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,1071,35],"tags":[3714,3068,2262],"class_list":["post-92719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-padres","category-mlb","category-news","tag-drew-romo","tag-elias-diaz","tag-mlb-free-agency"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94806,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92719\/revisions\/94806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}