This story was excerpted from Steve Gilbert’s D-backs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MESA, Ariz. -- Put yourself in the shoes of Caden Rose and Dylan Ray. Best friends since childhood growing up in North Alabama, they dreamed of being professional ballplayers. Now they're beginning to see those dreams materialize. Invited to the Arizona Fall League, they've finally gotten to spend time together

Defense is increasingly becoming a young man’s game. From 1957, the year they were first handed out, to 2012, only nine rookies won Rawlings Gold Glove Awards. The same number have captured the game’s top defensive prize since 2013, including six in the past three seasons alone. Red Sox right

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Life as a Minor League reliever has thin margins. Your ERA can be torpedoed by one bad outing. There’s also the obvious caveat that the fewer innings you throw, the less often scouts, evaluators and members of the organization get to see your stuff. But the quickest

This fall, for the first time, the majority of Arizona Fall League stadiums are outfitted with Statcast technology. That enables us to peek under the hood and get a better sense of how some of the game’s best prospects are performing on the annual elite prospect circuit. With that in

This story was excerpted from Steve Gilbert’s D-backs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Mookie Betts made the baseball world do a double-take when he shared before Game 3 of the NLCS that he was taking hundreds of swings in pregame workouts, hoping to break out of an early postseason slump. It may have seemed daunting to anyone hearing that number,

Each week, MiLB.com profiles an elite prospect by chronicling the steps he's taken toward achieving his Major League dream. Here's a look at second-ranked D-backs’ prospect Druw Jones. For more stories about players on The Road to The Show, click here. Druw Jones’ professional career was defined by injuries until

Here are the top performers from the second week of AFL action:

This story was excerpted from Steve Gilbert's D-backs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Gino Groover’s first full regular season probably couldn’t have started any worse, and it probably couldn’t have ended any better. Drafted in the second round last year out of NC State, the D-backs’ No. 9 prospect was playing his fourth game of the year for High-A Hillsboro -- and his

Welcome to Crooked Numbers, a monthly column dedicated to Minor League Baseball on-field oddities and absurdities. The edition, rounding up the month of August, features RBI explosions, epic sweeps, same-named individuals and, of course, much more. Keeping track of this type of thing is a team effort, so get in

PHOENIX -- The D-backs have been devastated by injuries this year, with all but one of their projected members of the Opening Day rotation spending time on the injured list, and yet they find themselves holding a postseason spot if the season ended today. The role their Minor League system

PHOENIX -- Adrian Del Castillo knew it the moment the ball left the barrel of his bat. He pointed to the sky triumphantly, peering in the direction of the D-backs’ dugout as his slow saunter out of the batter’s box turned into a light trot, the ball sailing a Statcast-projected