I’ve just realized that I need to kick this into gear a bit if we’re to finish the series before Opening Day. While the Cy Young of the 2010s will be determined by the Starting Pitcher poll currently ongoing, and MVP of the 2010s is such a foregone conclusion, I’m not even going to bother, we still have Unsung Hero, Rookie and Game of the Decade to get through in the next month. So I’ll probably shorten the nomination/poll/announcement for these three categories, get them knocked out.
As a starting point, here are the winners in this category of the single seasons from 2010 through 2019. Links go to the poll and/or winner announcement.
- 2010 Unsung Hero: Stephen Drew
- 2011 Unsung Hero: Ryan Roberts
- 2012 Unsung Hero: Brad Ziegler
- 2013 Unsung Hero: Josh Collmenter
- 2014 Unsung Hero: Evan Marshall
- 2015 Unsung hero: David Peralta
- 2016 Unsung Hero: Chris Owings
- 2017 Unsung Hero: Zack Godlley
- 2018 Unsung Hero: Clay Buchholz
- 2019 Unsung Hero: Alex Young
Some of those probably ruled themselves out of contention with subsequent recognition. I’d be hard-pushed to call Peralta, for example, “unsung” any more, considering he has won both a Silver Slugger and a Gold Glove in seasons since being honored here, and since the departure of Paul Goldschmidt, may well now be as close as anyone, to being the face of the franchise. Similarly, Ziegler went on to finish #5 all-time for Arizona in saves and #1 in appearances by a pitcher, and is the only man since 2012 to have consecutive seasons leading the team in saves. Others, like Buchholz, may simply have been too fleeting a presence in the desert.
We’re also looking at the decade as a whole, not any individual season. So it’s possible there could be candidates who were truly below the radar across multiple campaigns, but whose overall contributions merit consideration. To that end, for your information there are two links below, listing first position players and then pitchers for Arizona, by overall bWAR over the 2010-2019 period.
As is traditional for this category, I’m going free format here, and not providing any pre-approved list of candidates from which you have to choose. The final candidates will be entirely decided by your suggestions and recommendations, as outlined below.
The nomination process
- If you see a player mentioned in the comments you think should be one of the nominees, you should rec that comment.
- If you do not see a player mentioned which you think should be a nominee, you should write a new comment with their name as the subject. You can then explain in the body of the comment your reasons why.
- If you want to nominate multiple candidates, please do so - just use one comment for each, so they can be individually rec’d.
- Duplicate comments for the same player will be removed.
- The three comments with the most recs will probably become the nominees in the final ballot for Unsung Hero of the decade. I say “probably” because as ever, the judging panel are omnipotent and omniscient.