2019 SnakePit Awards: Game of the Year nominees

After some spirited discussion and much consideration, we’ve got it down to the following five candidates for the final vote. Each score goes over to the SnakePit recap of the game in question, so you can use that and the video clippage, in order to figure out what is deserving of your vote.

Blowout: D-backs 15, Red Sox 8 - April 5

As openers go, this one certainly rocked, with the Diamondbacks setting a franchise record for runs in their first game in Phoenix, sending home happy a sellout crowd which was the season’s second largest. And it came against the reigning World Series champions, to boot. This was actually even more of a blowout than the score suggest, Boston scoring a bunch of garbage runs late, after ending the sixth inning down 14-1. Ketel Marte homered twice, including a grand-slam. and drove in five runs, while seven Arizona players had multi-hit games. One of those was pitcher Zack Godley, who also picked up his only win as a starter for the year, with 5.2 innings of one-run ball.

Comeback: D-backs 6, Mets 5 (11 innings, walk-off) - June 1

Through five innings, this looked a thoroughly lost game. Arizona had fallen behind after just pitches, were trailing 4-0, and Jacob DeGrom had faced the minimum against them to that point. While the Diamondbacks did eventually get on the board against deGrom, the D-backs wee still down by four, going into the bottom of the eighth. But a Tim Locastro HBP started a four-run rally against the Mets bullpen there. It was capped off by Adam Jones’s two-run homer, which tied the game up at five, and ensured deGrom would go home with a no-decision. Meanwhile, the Arizona bullpen allowed two hits over seven innings, before Locastro delivered a walk-off hit past a five-man infield.

Season High: D-backs 2, Reds 0 - September 7

This one was nominated by Jack, who wrote: “That game left us thinking they might actually pull this off. It moved them to 8 games over .500 at 75-67, and they were just 1.5 games back of the Cubs for the Wild Card... They lost 6 in a row after that game, and the race was over. But it was really the high point of the season.” This contest has already won one award, Alex Young’s eight innings of shutout ball, setting an Arizona rookie record with a dozen strikeouts, taking home Performance of the Year. The victory gave the D-backs an 11-1 record over their last 12 games, with the sole loss coming in extras after a blown ninth-inning lead. It was their best streak in two years.

Squeaker: D-backs 1, Reds 0 - September 14

Highlighted by Justin, no question about the most unique victory of the year - or, perhaps, even the decade! The Diamondbacks prevailed here, despite managing just one base-runner. Nick Ahmed doubled to lead of the third, taking third on an error, and came home on a Dyson sacrifice fly. They won on just 25 plate-appearances, the fewest in a 9-inning victory by an NL team in over 27 years. Merrill Kelly, Kevin Ginkel and Archie Bradley made it stand up, combining on a three-hit shutout of the Reds. The game was the shortest of the year at Chase by a full eleven minutes, coming in at just 2:15, the second-quickest home contest since 2011. The teams combined to need only 201 pitches for the whole thing.

Marathon: D-backs 3, Cardinals 2 (19 innings, walk-off) - September 24

And, at the other end of the spectrum... Taking just seven minutes shy of seven hours, and finishing at 1:33 am, we have the longest game by innings in the entire history of the Diamondbacks. Arizona managed just one hit off Jack Flaherty in seven innings, but Mike Leake kept it close enough that Ildemaro Vargas’s home-run in the ninth tied the game up. It looked over again in the 13th, after St. Louis scored, but Caleb Joseph singled home another tying run, and we went on... And on... And on... Finally, in the bottom of the 19th, with the D-backs one out away from using a position player to pitch, Vargas walked it off. He had a four-hit night, despite not having entered the game until the bottom of the ninth!