Arizona Diamondbacks 2024 Player Review: Bryce Jarvis

Jarvis enjoyed a good season on the mound albeit with a wild ride before his injury ended his season

Arizona Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno (14) shakes hands with Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Bryce Jarvis (40) after defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 27, 2024 at Chase Field in Phoenix. / Owen Ziliak/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK

This article is part of a series chronicling the individual seasons of players who appeared for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2024.

Reviews for players who still have rookie eligibility for 2025 will appear in our prospect season reviews. Players are presented in the reverse order of their aWAR, an average of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs WAR.

Bryce Jarvis, RHP, Age: 26

2024 Contract Status: Pre-Arbitration, $743,600

Bryce Jarvis stats for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2024 and for his career. / Jake Oliver

The Diamondbacks drafted Bryce Jarvis in the First Round of the 2020 Draft out of Duke. Jarvis had a very busy season in 2024 before his untimely injury ended it. In his second MLB season and first full year in MLB, he appeared in 44 games and pitched 59.1 innings.

That was prior to August 2 when he was placed on the Injured List with a right elbow sprain. At that point in time, that was the 4th-highest amount of games worked in MLB as a reliever. Safe to say that Jarvis pitched quite often.

To sum up how frequently he was used, nine times he pitched on zero days rest. Nine other times, he pitched on just one day of rest. 13 times, he pitched on two days of rest.

That's quite often for a relief pitcher who needs time to recover between outings, especially when he throws a lot of pitches in an outing as Jarvis often did.

Thus, it shouldn't be too high of a surprise that he suffered an elbow sprain. Despite being placed on the 60-Day IL on August 6 and missing the rest of the season, the full outlook is that he will be healthy and ready to go come Spring Training in 2025. That's excellent news for him and the D-backs.

In total, Jarvis ended his season with a much worse FIP of 5.12, xERA of 5.27, and xFIP of 5.51 than his real ERA of 3.19. However, that can be explained by his large amount of walks this year, 33 in 59.1 innings, a rate of 5.0 per 9 innings. That was almost double what it was last year.

He struck out 38 batters, but the real saving grace for his season was the ability to induce timely ground balls, especially double plays. He induced 11 double plays and his DP per Opportunity rate of 18% was the best on the team.

With runners in scoring position, Jarvis allowed hitters to hit just .239 and induced six double play balls. With two outs and bases loaded, Jarvis allowed just one hit in seven at-bats.

Despite not often pitching high leverage moments, Jarvis shined when he did. Hitters hit just .222 against him in those moments and had a .599 OPS. He was strong when the game was on the line.

As mentioned earlier, Jarvis quite often pitched on limited rest and when he did, the end results were typically outstanding. The process wasn't always neat or pretty, but he limited runs. On zero days of rest, he had a 2.25 ERA and on one day of rest, he had a near perfect 0.71 ERA.

Jarvis ended his season with a flourish for the final month as he had a 1.50 ERA and 3.17 FIP over 12 innings with six walks and nine strikeouts. It would've been exciting to see if he could keep that up over the final two months of the season, but now the wait will be for Spring Training.

2025 & Beyond

Jarvis is still under contractual control with the Arizona Diamondbacks for quite some time. He came into the 2024 season with just 0.050 days of service time. He spent all of 2024 in the majors so he has just over a year of service time.

That means he's still two years shy of reaching arbitration and has five years to go before reaching free agency. That's if he spends no more time in the minors. Thus, he will be making just slightly more thant the league minimum salary of $760K next year.

Bryce Jarvis will enter Spring Training in a battle to prove his health and ability to limit walks in order to obtain a spot on the Opening Day roster. Jarvis is set to be an important middle-relief pitcher for the Diamondbacks for the foreseeable future provided not many trades or signings happen. Expect to see Jarvis back on a mound at Chase Field in March of 2025.

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