Former Diamondbacks pitcher Nabil Crismatt has found a new home this winter. Per El Extrabase’s Daniel ÂÂÃlvarez-Montes, the Colombian pitcher has agreed to a minor league pact with the Texas Rangers. It will serve as his second stint with the Rangers, after pitching for their Triple-A affiliate in 2024.
Crismatt, 31, has bounced around eight different organizations over the years. His journey in professional baseball has seen stops with the Mets, Cardinals, Mariners, Rangers, Padres, Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Phillies. In all, he’s appeared in 122 MLB games and carries a career 3.71 ERA over 211 innings.
Crismatt has been either a starting pitcher or a bulk reliever for the majority of his career. Only six of his appearances are starts. Five of them came with the Diamondbacks in 2025.
Nabil Crismatt’s 2025 Season with the Diamondbacks
Crismatt signed a minor league deal with the Phillies in the previous offseason. After failing to make their roster last spring, he spent most of the season with their Triple-A affiliate, Lehigh Valley. With the Iron Pigs, he pitched to a 4.04 ERA in 100.1 innings as a starter.
With no path to the major leagues, Crismatt was released from the Phillies on August 4. He quickly signed a deal with the Diamondbacks, who lost a lot of rotation depth to injuries. It was his second stint with the club, following a one-game cameo in 2023. He found himself back in the major leagues with Arizona on August 17.
As an emergency option, Crismatt gave the Diamondbacks some competitive innings. In eight appearances, five starts, he pitched to a 3.71 ERA in 34 innings. It ultimately wasn’t enough to keep the club’s postseason hopes alive, as the team ran out of steam in the season’s final week.
In 2025, he showed some contact suppression abilities. Crismatt induced chases at a 33.2% rate, leading to soft ground ball contact. His hard-hit rate of 29.7% and barrel rate of 5.1% rated well in a small sample size. Ultimately, he didn’t rank well in the expected metrics, yielding a .280 xBA and 4.58 xERA. Those metrics account for exit velocity and launch angle data on balls put into play.
After a somewhat successful run with the club, Crismatt was designated for assignment on September 26. The move was to give long-time minor leaguer Austin Pope, their 15th round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft, a taste of the big leagues. Crismatt was outrighted to Triple-A Reno two days later but then elected free agency after the season ended.
Nabil Crismatt Scouting Report
Crismatt throws the entire kitchen sink. He utilizes a four-seamer, sinker, cutter, slider, curveball, and a changeup. He is, by definition, a junk baller, using a deep arsenal to disguise a low-velocity fastball that averaged 89 MPH in 2025.
The key pitch in his arsenal is the changeup, his most commonly used offering, as a means to miss bats or induce soft contact. It yielded a 33.3% whiff rate and put away hitters in two-strike counts 25.7% of the time.
Despite solid quality of contact metrics and a strong walk rate of 5.9%, Crismatt had to settle for a minor league deal. That could be a result of his poor expected metrics and the lack of an extended track record at the MLB level.
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