As regular readers know, I've been awarding Heroes and Zeroes for each series played, picking out the best and worst performances by Diamondbacks. With some help from my faithful spreadsheet, I've collated all those, scoring on a +3/-3 scale and added them up to find the overall Heroes and Zeroes. We first did this in the All-Star break, so let's begin with the Heroes + Zeroes for the second half of the season:
Pitchers
Webb +14
Valverde +5
Vargas +4
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Bruney -4
Cormier -5
Ortiz -11
Position Players
Glaus +11
Clark +7
Tracy +7
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Snyder -1.7
Counsell -5
Terrero -6
As before, these are split into pitchers and position players, though in the second-half at least, the position players seemed to be on an almost equal footing. Webb continued his domination among the pitchers, but Valverde's reliability in the closer spot got him recognised too, and Vargas remained a pleasant acquisition.
Among the everyday players, Glaus had a couple of monster series, while Clark and Tracy were reliable in the second half. Snyder was reliable too...just reliably bad, while Counsell's performance fell off a cliff. And as for Terrero, well, we'll have more to say about Luis later, but I'm sure you can guess the reason for his appearance.
So, putting these together with the scores from the first half of the season, we get the Heroes and Zeroes for the entire season. The envelope, please...
Pitchers
Webb +27
Estes +10
Halsey +8
Vazquez +7
Medders +3
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Choate -4
Herges -5
Koplove -7
Bruney -14
Ortiz -21
It wasn't even close, at either end of the spectrum, and I don't think there'll be many surprised to hear that Brandon Webb and Russ Ortiz are the Hero and Zero of 2005 among the pitching staff. Both proved very consistent: Webb consistently good, Ortiz consistently terrible. Estes proved quietly credible, as did Halsey, while Vazquez was hurt by his occasional awful performances which inevitably led to a bunch of -3's. Failed closer Bruney made a very bad impression, while there were several others in the bullpen (un)worthy of note.
Position Players
Glaus +16
Clark +14
Tracy +11
Green +7
Gonzalez +6
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Snyder -2.2
Counsell -4
Clayton -5
McCracken -6
Terrero -6
Hero of the Year for 2005 among the position players goes to Troy Glaus, largely because clutch performance was only a minor consideration. :-) He had one excellent month (hitting .293 in August, with 9 HR), and avoided anything worse than a -1 in the second half. Clark and Tracy followed close behind, as you'd expect - Clark was one of only 6 major-leaguers to post an OPS over 1.000 in 150+ PA's. Green didn't actually make much impression on the panel in the second half: an anemic September, batting .270 with only 3 RBIs, likely contributed to his performance.
Luis Terrero is the AZ SnakePit Zero of the Year, and the reason why can be summed up in three words: hidden ball trick. That moment of incompetence will appear on SportsCenter re-runs for years to come, and was the biggest embarrassment in franchise history. McCracken didn't reach such depths, but was wholly incompetent in center field, batting .234 with a single home-run in 128 at-bats.
Up the middle, Clayton did rebound in the second-half, but is still known in our house as 'Royce the Rally-Slayer'. Counsell's post-All Star OPS of .664 was 110 points down on his pre-break figure. And Snyder? Only his defense and limited playing time stopped him from sinking further, as his OPS of .598 ranked 311th out of 313 among major-leaguers with 250+ PA's. Little wonder Moorad is keen to upgrade offensively.
Congratulations - or commiserations - to all those involved, and we'll do the same again next year.