Diamondbacks Pitcher of the Year: Nominations

Clay Buchholz

I hope Buchholz doesn’t win, simply because I’ve already had to write two articles about him, and a third would have me leaning heavily on the thesaurus! So, pardon me if I simply repeat what I said about Clay all the way back... on Sunday: “No-one who endured the Lovecraftian sense of creeping dread which was Kris Medlen’s outing, can have any doubts about the saving throw Clay Buchholz provided for Arizona fan sanity this season.” We’d have been delighted had he given Arizona an ERA of four. That he basically slashed that in half, setting a franchise record for lowest ERA by any pitcher with 80+ innings of work, was one of the most remarkably pleasant surprises in D-backs history.

Patrick Corbin

If you’re going to have a career year, the season you hit free agency would be the time to do it. Corbin threw a career high number of innings, reaching 200 for the first time, accompanied by a career high strikeout rate. The 246 K’s Patrick recorded, was the most by any Arizona pitcher since Randy Johnson in 2004. He came within an infield checked-swing of no-hitting the San Francisco Giants on April 17, an outing already honored as the Performance of the Year. With a personal best ERA of 3.15, Corbin deserved a significantly better record than the 11-7 achieved, in large part a result of the offense scoring a total of 10 runs across those seven losses.

Zack Greinke

Another season, another All-Star appearance and another Gold Glove - Greinke’s fifth of each. He was simply consistent: two-thirds of his 33 starts this year saw Zack pitch between six and seven innings inclusive. But over a nine-game spell from June 23 through August 7, he was near untouchable, throwing 59.2 innings with a 1.36 ERA, and he had a record of 9-1 over June and July. On July 22, he struck out 13 batters: Greinke’s most in an Arizona uniform, and trailing only a 15-K outing, back in 2009 as a Royal, in his career. Going 15-11, Zack became the first Diamondbacks pitcher to give the team consecutive 15-win seasons since Ian Kennedy in 2011-12.

Yoshihisa Hirano

Someone else I wrote about recently, when Hirano won our Rookie of the Year award. He set a franchise record by making 26 consecutive scoreless appearances between May 6 and July 3, falling one game short of the MLB record by a Japanese-born pitcher, set by Koji Uehara. Had he not been moved into the closer’s role for much of September, he might well have broken another colleague’s record: the rookie mark of 34 holds, belonging to Akinori Otsuki (Hirano finished with 32, as well as a trio of saves). As a result, he became the first Diamondback to appear on a NL Rookie of the Year ballot since Ender Inciarte in 2014, and the first EVER Arizona reliever so honored.

T.J. McFarland

T.J. was basically Brad Ziegler at one-tenth of the cost: his 67.9% ground-ball rate was the highest in franchise history by a non-Ziegler (min 50 IP). And McFarland got better as the season went on. After June 10, he pitched 31.2 innings with an ERA of 1.42, holding opponents to an OPS of .501, and T.J’s last home-run allowed was on June 4. His season did end prematurely, due to a bone spur, causing him to miss the last three weeks, but he still lead the team in relief innings, with 72.0. Save for that, he’d likely have entered the top 10 in franchise history for bullpen IP in a season - and almost everyone else on that list played for the D-backs in 2007 or earlier.