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2014 AZ SnakePit Awards: Pitcher of the year, call for nominations

We reach the big two categories, with the penultimate award being for our best man on the mound... This might be quite terse!

By Jim McLennan
#25 and last... Joe Paterson
#25 and last... Joe Paterson
Mark J. Rebilas-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.

Pitcher of the Year nominations

After a couple of rounds where the competition turned out to be extremely close, without an "obvious" candidate, this one might be a bit more of a foregone conclusion. Though, the team as a whole struggled badly in the pitching department - our team ERA of 4.26 was ahead only of the Rockies, so there's perhaps an argument to be made for not awarding this one at all. But there were some decent individual performances, so let's start by crunching the numbers. Here are the stats for all 25 pitchers used by the Diamondbacks in 2015, in descending order of ERA+.

Rk Name W L ERA G IP H R ER HR BB SO ERA+ FIP WHIP
1 Joe Thatcher 1 0 2.63 37 24.0 23 10 7 3 3 25 145 3.30 1.083
2 Evan Marshall 4 4 2.74 57 49.1 50 17 15 3 17 54 138 2.89 1.358
3 Oliver Perez 3 4 2.91 68 58.2 50 25 19 5 24 76 129 3.23 1.261
4 Eury De La Rosa 2 0 2.95 25 36.2 37 12 12 2 14 32 128 3.49 1.391
5 Bradin Hagens 0 1 3.38 2 2.2 4 1 1 0 3 2 128 5.01 2.625
6 Josh Collmenter 11 9 3.46 33 179.1 163 75 69 18 39 115 108 3.87 1.126
7 Brad Ziegler 5 3 3.49 68 67.0 60 29 26 5 24 54 108 3.70 1.254
8 Zeke Spruill 1 1 3.57 6 22.2 27 11 9 0 4 14 106 2.56 1.368
9 Vidal Nuno 0 7 3.76 14 83.2 71 37 35 10 20 69 100 3.90 1.088
10 Andrew Chafin 0 1 3.86 3 14.0 13 6 6 0 8 10 100 3.63 1.500
11 Chase Anderson 9 7 4.01 21 114.1 117 56 51 16 40 105 93 4.22 1.373
12 Bronson Arroyo 7 4 4.08 14 86.0 92 40 39 10 19 47 92 4.32 1.291
13 Addison Reed 1 7 4.25 62 59.1 57 31 28 11 15 69 89 4.03 1.213
14 Will Harris 0 3 4.34 29 29.0 27 14 14 3 9 35 87 3.20 1.241
15 Wade Miley 8 12 4.34 33 201.1 207 103 97 23 75 183 86 3.98 1.401
16 Ryan Rowland-Smith 0 0 4.91 6 7.1 7 5 4 0 4 9 80 2.31 1.500
17 Randall Delgado 4 4 4.87 47 77.2 71 44 42 6 35 86 77 3.39 1.365
18 Brandon McCarthy 3 10 5.01 18 109.2 131 65 61 15 20 93 75 3.82 1.377
19 Mike Bolsinger 1 6 5.50 10 52.1 66 36 32 7 17 48 68 4.01 1.586
20 Trevor Cahill 3 12 5.61 32 110.2 123 76 69 9 55 105 67 3.89 1.608
21 Matt Stites 0 0 5.73 37 33.0 33 23 21 6 16 26 66 5.47 1.485
22 J.J. Putz 1 1 6.59 18 13.2 17 10 10 1 6 14 58 3.57 1.683
23 Bo Schultz 0 1 7.88 4 8.0 13 7 7 1 1 5 50 3.88 1.750
24 Daniel Hudson 0 1 13.50 3 2.2 4 4 4 0 0 2 32 1.63 1.500
25 Joe Paterson 0 0 33.75 3 1.1 4 5 5 0 1 0 14 7.63 3.750
Team Totals 64 98 4.26 162 1444.1 1467 742 683 154 469 1278 88 3.83 1.340
Rank in NL 15 1 14 13 13 14 14 12 7 8

It's a pretty dispiriting list, even if I note a FIP which suggests the team "should" actually have had better results, based purely on the pitching. Was this bad defense or bad luck? Possibly a little of both. You could argue the nominees select themselves, with only five managing to throw 40 innings with an ERA+ that even reached 100: Perez, Marshall, Collmenter, Ziegler and Nuño. There's then quite a steep drop-off to the next tier - and it's never a good sign when you have to go all the way down to 13th in the rankings to find your closer. It's probably a worse one when the high-water mark from your Opening Day rotation is Arroyo's ERA+ of 92.

2015 should be better, albeit on the Plexiglass principle that it can't really get much worse. But for now, does anyone think there's a case for nominating anyone outside the top five mentioned in the previous paragraph? Or is this one of those cases where the numbers don't lie?

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