Who predicted the 2017 Arizona Diamondbacks Opening Day roster?

I’d forgotten about this one, until I came across the form while writing up the Place Your Bets piece, but it’s still an interesting item, I think. If you’d forgotten, we broke the 40-man roster down into five blocks from near-certs to long-shots, plus the non-roster invitees. You had to pick two players from each group who would be on the Opening Day roster, getting more points, the more “uncertain” the block. Plus you got a wild-card choice of a player outside the group at that point. I’ve now finished up tallying the results for the 56 entrants. Let’s take a look at the various groups:

Group A: Dead-certs (1 point)

• 8 on Opening Day roster
• Most popular: Paul Goldschmidt (57 selections)
• Least popular: Patrick Corbin, Chris Ianetta (0)
• Bracket-buster: None

Group B: Probables (2 points)

• 7 on Opening Day roster
• Most popular: Brandon Drury (37)
• Least popular: Jake Barrett (0)
• Bracket-buster: None. Barrett was the only one not to make it, but nobody picked him!

Group C: Likely (3 points)

• 4 on Opening Day roster
• Most popular: Randall Delgado (34)
• Least popular: Enrique Burgos, Socrates Brito, Zack Godley (3)
• Bracket-buster: Phil Gosselin

Group D: Possibles (4 points)

• 2 on Opening Day roster
• Most popular: Archie Bradley (44)
• Least popular: Steve Hathaway, Bradey Shipley (6)
• Bracket-buster: Ketel Marte

Group E: Long-shots (5 points)

• 0 on Opening Day roster
• Most popular: Evan Marshall (37)
• Least popular: Dawel Lugo (4)
• Bracket-buster: Marshall

Group F: Non-roster invitees (6 points)

• 1 on Opening Day roster
• Most popular: Gregor Blanco (38)
• Least popular: Erik Davis, Miller Diaz, Reymond Fuentes (0)
• Bracket-buster: Blanco

Group G: Wild-card selection (8 points)

• 3 on Opening Day roster: Jorge De La Rosa, Daniel Descalso + Tom Wilhemsen
• Most popular: David Hernandez
• A lot of people didn’t understand how this worked. You didn’t get to choose any of the people in the other categories. Zack Greinke, for instance, was not a valid selection. Nobody scored any points here though, so it probably didn’t matter!

This gives a total possible score of 50 points. And the winners are...

1. Wayne Anstead - 23
2. Conner Valocchi - 22
   Drew Sharpe
   Farrell Quinlan - 22
   ryeandi - 22
3. Drew H - 20
   Jeremy Ulrich
   preston.salisbury
   Sprankton
   Brandon Geddings(MidnghtDrgn)
4. Hurricane - 19
5. Charlie R - 17
   Beth McLennan
6. SirBradford - 16
   Ben Sharp
   Spencer O'Gara
   shanmanhall
   Tigersnake
   Jake Lieberman
   Dano_in_Tucson
   John R
   Robbie Ray
   Mark Johnston
   FootstepsFalco16
   DbacKid
   Nate Rowan
   Jesse Friedman
   Alec Tanton
   Craig from Az
   brymm
   Joel Preston
   Michael Santel Jr.
   Dan B
   ScottsdaleZonie
   Joey millsap
   OE_thunder
   Xerostomia
   Dalton Feely
   Dan-in-Chitown
   AgingBarbarian
   Joseph Watts
   fandbacks
   Aaron Nelson
   Drew Henderson
   Diamond Jim
   Dbacks4Ever
7. eel - 15
8. Dback hopeful - 13
   Chad Beck
   DBackRed
   Jordan C. Bozeat
9. Noblevillain - 12
   Rapdawg
10. Daniel Zuckerman - 9
    Eric Peterson
    Tim

Congratulations to Wayne for a hard-fought victory. He lost ground by selecting Enrique Burgos out of Group C, but made up for that by nailing Bradley and Hazelbaker out of Group D to score maximum points there. He then correctly selected J.J. Hoover as one of the non-roster invitees in Group 5, giving him six points and snatching victory by a single point. A lot of people on 16 points, most commonly achieved by getting both choices on the roster from the first three groups, plus one of the Group D players.

Thanks to all who took part: we’ll do it again next spring training!