{"id":373367,"date":"2025-12-26T16:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T16:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/373367\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T16:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T16:56:08","slug":"diamondbacks-sign-luken-baker-to-minor-league-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/373367\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamondbacks Sign Luken Baker To Minor League Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Diamondbacks have signed first baseman Luken Baker<\/a> to a minors deal, Just Baseball Media\u2019s Aram Leighton<\/a> reports.\u00a0 Baker qualified for minor league free agency at the end of the season, and he chose to test the open market rather than stick in the Dodgers\u2019 organization.<\/p>\n

A second-round pick for the Cardinals in the 2018 draft, Baker spent most of his career in the St. Louis organization before he was claimed off the waiver wire by the Dodgers in early August.\u00a0 Baker never saw any MLB playing time in Los Angeles, so his big league resume remains his 73 games played with the Cardinals over the 2023-25 seasons, with a .206\/.317\/.338 slash line and four home runs to show for 189 plate appearances.<\/p>\n

This lack of production didn\u2019t exactly merit more playing time, yet Baker was also blocked to some extent by the presence of Paul Goldschmidt<\/a>, Willson Contreras<\/a>, Alec Burleson<\/a>, and others at first base.\u00a0 Baker is limited by his lack of defensive versatility, as he has played only first base and DH during his pro career.\u00a0 This made him an expendable piece even on a Cardinals team that is turning into a rebuild, as Baker is entering his age-29 season.<\/p>\n

Baker got his first call-up to the majors on the strength of a huge season with Triple-A Memphis in 2023, when he hit .334\/.439\/.720 with 33 home runs over 380 PA.\u00a0 He followed that year up with a 32-homer campaign and a lesser (.231\/.345\/.535) slash line in Memphis in 2024, but his numbers continued to tail off, as Baker hit only .223\/.335\/.441 with 18 homers over 409 combined PA with the Cardinals\u2019 and Dodgers\u2019 top affiliates in 2025.\u00a0 While Baker\u2019s numbers improved greatly after his move from Memphis to Oklahoma City, this may have had less to do with a change of scenery and more to do with the move to the pitcher-friendly Pacific Coast League.<\/p>\n

The Diamondbacks\u2019 Triple-A Reno club is also in the PCL, so it wouldn\u2019t be a shock if Baker posts some numbers in 2026 that look pretty gaudy on paper.\u00a0 There\u2019s no risk for the Snakes in seeing what Baker can do in at least a depth capacity, and if he can turn his raw power into any sort of consistent production at the big league level.\u00a0 In terms of the MLB roster, the right-handed hitting Baker could be a fit in a platoon situation with the lefty-swinging Pavin Smith<\/a> at first base and DH, and the D\u2019Backs may be hoping that Baker can follow Smith\u2019s example as a late bloomer who didn\u2019t start to break out in the majors until his late 20\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Signing Baker to a non-guaranteed deal shouldn\u2019t prevent the D\u2019Backs from exploring more prominent right-handed bats for this role, such as<\/a> former Arizona star Paul Goldschmidt.\u00a0 The Diamondbacks\u2019 infield situation in general remains in something of a state of flux, as rumors continue to swirl that Ketel Marte<\/a> could be traded, and that the D\u2019Backs could be a dark horse suitor for Alex Bregman<\/a>.\u00a0 Such moves wouldn\u2019t necessarily impact the first base role, unless another first base candidate or right-handed bat was potentially brought on board as part of a Marte trade package.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Diamondbacks have signed first baseman Luken Baker to a minors deal, Just Baseball Media\u2019s Aram Leighton reports.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,201780,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-373367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-luken-baker","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}