Examining Gabriel Moreno's breakout 2026 season

As the D-backs fight for one of the National League Wild card spots, it’s hard to not notice how Gabriel Moreno's breakout season has played a big role.

The 26-year-old backstop has long been viewed as a potential franchise-type player and already produced at a high level before this season. From 2022-25, Moreno had a .753 OPS and ranked 10th among primary catchers with 8.4 WAR, per FanGraphs, despite only playing in 316 games across those four seasons (more on this later).

This year, though, Moreno has skyrocketed into the upper echelon of players. In 110 games, Moreno is running a .298/.376/.460 slash line with 11 home runs and has been worth 4.2 WAR, which is tied for 14th among all position players. With Arizona’s pitching issues and Ketel Marte and Geraldo Perdomo playing below their 2025 levels, Moreno’s development has been vital for the D-backs.

With this in mind, here’s a deep dive into Moreno’s progression as a star this season.

The following Statcast numbers are entering Wednesday’s games.

Adding more pop and contact to a high-floor skillset

Moreno already had the luxury of having a high floor for a catcher, no small feat given the demands of the position. Before this year, Moreno was one of the best defensive catchers in baseball and did everything pretty well at the plate.

What separated Moreno from being a truly great catcher, though, was limited power. Moreno’s 11 home runs this season are a career high and make it the first time he’s hit double-digit homers in a season. And his .460 slugging percentage represents a career high and roughly 40 points higher than his career mark.

None of this has been by accident. Moreno has added 0.8 mph of bat speed this season, a significant development to push him closer to the league average. There’s ample research showing the importance of bat speed leading to more power, especially when we’re talking about almost a full mph.

With that increased bat speed has come a propensity to hit more balls in the air to the pull side. Why does that matter? Because pulled balls in the air are the best type of batted ball a hitter can produce. In the Statcast era, the league is collectively slugging 1.251 on fly balls, line drives and pop-ups hit to the pull side.

When Moreno debuted for 25 games in 2022, his pull rate was 3.3 percent. That figure has increased in every succeeding season, with Moreno pulling 16.8 percent of his batted balls in the air to the pull side this year. It’s hard to not see the combination of faster swings and more batted balls pulled in the air leading to more power.

Impressively, Moreno has also dropped his whiff rate to a career-low 15.1 percent in the process. Generally, you’d think there’s a push-pull relationship between power and contact, making this improvement in both areas all the more impressive.

Staying healthy

Part of Moreno’s breakout season is also a byproduct of him staying healthy.

It’d be unfair to label Moreno as injury prone, especially considering how grueling the catching position is, but it’s undeniable that he struggled to establish himself as a surefire catcher that played 125-plus games a year.

Moreno’s 110 games this year are just the second time he’s played in more than 100 games in a season and he’s about to match his career-high 111 games in 2023. Moreno has dealt with various injuries, both upper and lower body, that limited his full potential to play most of a full 162-game season.

Now that he’s remained healthy this year -- he spent time on the injured list in April due to a strained left oblique -- we’ve seen his value in a bigger sample. It also helps that the D-backs have felt comfortable having him DH more often given his success at the plate.

Add in the big changes he’s made at the plate and he has played like a star and one of the better catchers in baseball, only trailing Detroit’s Dillon Dingler in WAR.

Moreno’s progression has been the difference in where Arizona sits in the playoff picture. Without this massive breakout, it’s hard to imagine the D-backs being in the race to snag the final NL Wild Card spot.