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2014 AZ SnakePit Awards: Rookie of the Year, call for nominations

New players are the lifeblood of any team. Let's take a look at all those who came out of the box marked "Rookies" in 2014 for the Diamondbacks. Which ones will make it to the final ballot?

By Jim McLennan
Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports
How this works

Here is the complete list of winners since we started these in 2006. We'll be running one category a week for the next seven weeks, which should take us into the first week of February, when it'll almost be time for pitchers and catchers to report! So, that's nice. Here is the schedule:

For each, the pattern will be the same. Monday will be an open call for nominations - I'll offer some suggestions to get you going, but these are not etched in stone. So feel free to offer any suggestions in the comments - the number of "recs" received by suggestions will be a major factor in deciding which, if any, make the final list of nominees. That will then be posted on Wednsday morning, with accompanying video as appropriate. There will then be a two-day window for voting, with the winner being anointed on Friday morning. Rinse, repeat the following week, for the next category.

Rookie of the Year nominations

I think this one is probably a little bit different from the previous three categories. There, we had a fairly obvious winner, but choosing the rest of the nominees was more difficult, with a fairly broad range of potential candidates. Here, there doesn't seem to be one clear leader, but it's not hard to figure out who the six nominees should be. While there were a total of 19 rookies used by the Diamondbacks this year, their ephemeral nature takes care of most of these. Only three rookie hitters reached 150 PAs, and only four pitchers threw forty innings. But, for the sake of completeness, here are the stars for all ten batters and nine hurlers, in descending order or playing time.

Hitters

Rk Player PA Age G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS
1 Ender Inciarte 447 23 118 418 54 116 18 2 4 27 25 53 19 3 .278 .318 .359 .677
2 David Peralta 348 26 88 329 40 94 12 9 8 36 16 60 6 3 .286 .320 .450 .770
3 Chris Owings 332 22 91 310 34 81 15 6 6 26 16 67 8 1 .261 .300 .406 .706
4 Jake Lamb 133 23 37 126 15 29 4 1 4 11 6 37 1 1 .230 .263 .373 .636
5 Tuffy Gosewisch 132 30 41 129 6 29 8 0 1 7 3 24 0 0 .225 .242 .310 .553
6 Alfredo Marte 114 25 44 106 8 18 5 1 2 9 6 34 1 0 .170 .221 .292 .514
7 Nick Ahmed 75 24 25 70 9 14 2 0 1 4 3 10 0 1 .200 .233 .271 .504
8 Roger Kieschnick 41 27 25 41 2 8 1 0 1 2 0 16 0 0 .195 .195 .293 .488
9 Brett Jackson 5 25 7 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 .000 .200 .000 .200

Pitchers

Rk Player IP Age W L H R ER BB SO ERA FIP BA OBP SLG OPS
1 Chase Anderson 114.1 26 9 7 117 56 51 40 105 4.01 4.22 .268 .330 .450 .779
2 Vidal Nuno 83.2 26 0 7 71 37 35 20 69 3.76 3.90 .228 .282 .378 .660
3 Mike Bolsinger 52.1 26 1 6 66 36 32 17 48 5.50 4.01 .308 .353 .519 .872
4 Evan Marshall 49.1 24 4 4 50 17 15 17 54 2.74 2.89 .266 .332 .378 .709
5 Eury De La Rosa 36.2 24 2 0 37 12 12 14 32 2.95 3.49 .262 .342 .348 .689
6 Matt Stites 33.0 24 0 0 33 23 21 16 26 5.73 5.47 .260 .345 .480 .825
7 Zeke Spruill 22.2 24 1 1 27 11 9 4 14 3.57 2.56 .300 .330 .356 .685
8 Andrew Chafin 14.0 24 0 1 13 6 6 8 10 3.86 3.63 .265 .379 .306 .685
9 Bo Schultz 8.0 28 0 1 13 7 7 1 5 7.88 3.88 .382 .389 .559 .948
10 Bradin Hagens 2.2 25 0 1 4 1 1 3 2 3.38 5.01 .400 .538 .500 1.038

Things we learn

  • Brett Jackson and Bradin Hagens were on the 2014 Diamondbacks. Expect them to be two of those answers nobody gets in a future Saturday Sporcle.
  • Tuffy Gosewisch, who turned 31 in August, was still a rookie. The only older ones in the majors this season were the Cubs' Tsuyoshi Wada [Japanese, so a special case] and Guilder Rodríguez, who spent 13 years and over a thousand games in the minors before getting a cup of coffee with the Rangers in September.
  • Mind you, even Tuffy's a babe in arms beside Alan Zinter who was a 36-year-old rookie for the team in 2004. That's the same age as Jim Morris was, but Disney never made a movie about Zinter, starring Dennis Quaid.

While I don't want to destroy any element of tension here, I don't think it's too difficult to figure out that our final poll will likely consist of three hitters, two starting pitchers and a reliever. However, I am open to hearing arguments for any other rookies you think deserve to be included.

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