If this year’s Hops are going to be anywhere near as exciting as the franchise is excited about them, 2025 could be awfully entertaining for fans of the team.

“The D-Backs have been talking about this roster for a couple of years,” Hops President and General Manager K.L. Wombacher said. “There’s been a buzz ever since they came here two days ago. These players compete. (The Diamondbacks) told me that they compete every day. That they’re together. That they have a good clubhouse. And in baseball, when you can come out day after day after day to grind through 132 games…and you have that close knit clubhouse, those are the teams that typically are special.”

Wombacher addressed the media April 3 as part of the team’s Media Day prior to Friday’s opener against Eugene.

Among the representatives on hand were first-year manager Mark Reed; outfielder and 2022 second overall draft pick Druw Jones; Arizona’s 2024 first round pick, outfielder Ryan Waldschmidt; and infielder Demetrio Crisantes, all of whom help to make up a roster featuring seven players in the Diamondbacks’ top-17 prospects.

Jones — the son of former Major League great Andruw Jones — has had the early portion of his professional career hampered by injury, but after playing 109 games last season at Single-A Visalia and once again seeing his potential, the 21-year-old is eager to get beyond what has been, and on to whatever will be in his burgeoning baseball career.

“A lot of rehab, a lot of time spent off the field, but mainly just trying to learn and get to this point and just be able to take everything in,” Jones said regarding his career to this point. “I want to be a major leaguer at the end of the day, and play for a very long time at that level. So…going into every day, just trying to be excited and get out here and play every day.”

Waldschmidt, who stems from Florida but played collegiately at the University of Kentucky where he was part of a Wildcat team that ended Oregon State’s 2024 season in the super regionals, played 14 games at Visalia last year, hitting .273 with seven RBI. The 22-year-old said that while he’s anxious to get his career kickstarted this season, he knows it’s in his best interest to keep things as simple as possible in order to do so.

“As a kid, you grow up always wanting this and wishing to be here, and when you get here, it’s pretty similar to every other spot you’ve been in your life,” Waldschmidt said. “And as long as you don’t make the stage too big and just stay focused and keep doing your same routine as you did your entire life…you seem to find a little bit of success.”

Crisantes is beginning his third season of professional ball despite being just 20 years of age.

Last season over a 92-game stretch, the native Arizonan batted .341 with seven home runs. But even more impressively, Crisantes reached base in his final 57 games last season, leaving him just 14 games shy of the unofficial minor league record.

He believes in himself and his ability, along with his teammates, many of whom he’s come up with in the organization. Which is why he doesn’t just anticipate success this season, he expects it.

“We’ve been playing together for a while,” Crisantes said. “I feel like all of us play together really well, so just continue doing what we do. We made the playoffs last year. We made playoffs in the ACL two years ago. So, I don’t see why we’re not going to make the playoffs here.”

And the playoffs are something the Hops and their fans haven’t experienced since winning the Northwest League Championship in 2019. Reed, however, while understanding his responsibility to develop future Major League talent, also values winning, and said he is fully committed to doing just that.

“The organization is giving me the reins to be able to manage how I want to manage, to put things in motion, run the bullpen how I want to and pinch hit and put plays on,” Reed said. “They’ve given me the full range to manage the game to win and I think that’s the culture of our system now, teaching these guys the way to play the game and to go into a winning atmosphere, like the championship organization that we have become.”

The losing here in Hillsboro has worn on Wombacher in recent years, as has the franchise’s stadium dilemma that was ultimately resolved early last year. Now, with the stadium well into construction and what appears to be a winning roster taking the field, it’s all smiles at Hillsboro Ballpark as the 2025 season prepares to get underway.

“We’ve gone through a lot since 2020 and this opening day is a little bit different for me,” Wombacher said. “This has been our first normal offseason since 2019 and we’ve been kicking butt, so it feels so awesome. Seeing the season ticket holders here last night, the excitement they have for the new ballpark and the new season, then getting the excitement around this team. It just leads to a lot of enthusiasm”

The Hops went on to take two-of-three games from Eugene over the weekend and travel to Everett for six games against the AquaSox this week, before returning home for consecutive six-game sets with Spokane and Tri-City beginning April 15.