Jake McCarthy

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Jacob Joseph McCarthy

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Biographical Information[edit]

Outfielder Jake McCarthy was supplemental first round pick by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2018 amateur draft, with the 39th overall pick, out of the University of Virginia. A native of Scranton, PA, he was an outstanding football player in high school, rushing for a school record 6,000 yards during his career, including over 2,000 in his senior year. With the Cavaliers, he hit over .300 each of his three seasons, and really turned some heads with a .387 average in a brief stay in the Cape Cod League in 2017. He probably would have been drafted higher were it not for a wrist injury that cut his playing time his senior season.

After signing with Arizona, he began his professional career in 2018 with the AZL Diamondbacks before getting a quick promotion to the Hillsboro Hops of the Northwest League. In 58 games, he hit .288/.378/.442. In 2019, he moved up to the Visalia Rawhide of the California League and hit .277/.341/.405 in 53 games as his season was shortened by two injuries. However, he was enough to play in the Arizona Fall League after the minor league season. He was then forced into idleness by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but as one of the organization's top prospects, he was still able to work out at the team's alternate training site. He was a spring training invitee in 2021. He made his major league debut with the D-Backs late in the season, hitting .220 in 24 games.

He became a quasi-regular with the Diamondbacks starting in 2022, playing 99 games that year and in 2023, and 142 games in 2024. In spite of all that playing time, he was never a regular at any of the three outfield spots, the closest being when he played 84 games in right field in 2023, which was also by far his worse year with the bat among the three: his OPS+ was 117 in 2022 and 108 in 2024, with batting averages of .283 and .285 those two years, but just 77 in 2023, when he batted .243. He finished fourth in the voting for the 2022 National League Rookie of the Year Award, but did not make the All-Rookie team, the three outfield spots going to Michael Harris, Julio Rodriguez and Steven Kwan. Ironically, his poorest season, 2023, was also the year the D-Backs made it to the World Series, where they lost to the Texas Rangers, but he did not play a single postseason game. He was a good fielder able to play all three outfield positions, but he was hampered by his lack of power, with 8 homers in each of his two good years, and just 2 in his weaker one.

In 2025, his playing time went down significantly, as he had just 206 at-bats in 67 games, likely a result of some major struggles at the plate, where he finished with a .204 batting average, 4 homers, 20 RBIs, and an OPS+ of just 62. His struggles meant that he returned to AAA for a spell, playing 49 games with the Reno Aces. He did well in the Pacific Coast League, batting .314 albeit with just 1 homer.

On January 10, 2026, he was traded to the Colorado Rockies in return for minor league pitcher Josh Grosz. On May 13th, he pulled off an extremely rare play for the Rockies: an unassisted double play as a left fielder. He caught a short line drive from Bryan Reynolds of the Pittsburgh Pirates while running towards the infield, and when he saw that Oneil Cruz was running from second base on the play, he continued his sprint to touch the bag himself, preceding Cruz by a wide margin, as the latter had given up in his attempt to return to his original base, knowing his goose was cooked. It was the first such play in Rockies history, and the first in the majors in 13 years. On June 22nd, he ended a game in extremely rare fashion, as he turned a 2-0 deficit in the bottom of the 9th into a 3-2, walk-off win, by hitting a bases-loaded triple off Aroldis Chapman of the Boston Red Sox. Even rarer, the hit was the eighth straight for Colorado, as they had ended the 8th inning with four straight singles, but the final two had resulted in a runner being thrown out at home, so they had failed to score. The first three batters in the 9th had also hit singles to load the bases and set the stage for Jake's clutch hit. He accomplished an extremely rare feat on July 3rd when he hit both a lead-off homer and a grand slam in a 15-3 win over the San Francisco Giants; he was only the seventh major league player to do so in one game, and the first since George Springer in 2021. One of these players had also done so in a Rockies uniform, Charlie Blackmon on May 31, 2016. For good measure, Jake also stole a base in that game.

He is the brother of Joe McCarthy.

Further Reading[edit]

  • Steve Gilbert: "This D-backs OF from Scranton talks 'The Office' connection", mlb.com, June 14, 2023. [1]
  • Thomas Harding: "Rockies add outfield depth by acquiring McCarthy from D-backs", mlb.com, January 10, 2026. [2]
  • Thomas Harding: "An unassisted DP ... from left?! McCarthy's a Rockies first, MLB first in 13 years", mlb.com, May 13, 2026. [3]
  • Thomas Harding: "Leadoff HR and grand slam in same game? It's only been done 7 times EVER", mlb.com, July 4, 2026. [4]
  • Michael Kelly; "Rockies walk off Red Sox ... in a way we haven't seen in 20 years! Colorado also ended the game with 8 straight hits -- which no team has done in decades", mlb.com, June 22, 2026. [5]

Related Sites[edit]

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