2022 Diamondbacks Play of the Year: Nominations open

After diligently watching hours of video highlights, I have come up a list of 22 potential Plays of the Year. There may, quite possibly, be others which slipped through the net of my MLB Video Room search skills, so please feel free to suggest other candidates that may have escaped my attention. The general idea will be a ballot which consists of two infield highlights, two outfield highlights and one offensive highlight, though this is not carved in stone. Below, you’ll find three video highlight reels, one in each sub-category, each followed by a list of the clips it contained. Here’s how this works.

• Go to the comments section.
• If your choice is already mentioned there, give it a “rec”.
• If your choice is NOT mentioned, copy paste the FULL description, e.g. “Christian Walker make a nice diving stop, April 22” and leave that as a new comment.
• Duplicate nominations will get deleted.
• On Wednesday, I’ll tally up the recs, and use those as a guide towards a list of five or so nominees.

I trust this is all clear... Anyway, here are the video reels, which are simply fun to watch, even if you have no interest in voting. There’s a reason this team was ranked so highly by most of the defensive metrics in 2022.

Infielders

1. Christian Walker make a nice diving stop, April 22
2. Sergio Alcantara makes diving stop, April 23
3. Geraldo Perdomo makes a diving stop, May 20
4. Jake Hager dives to turn the double play, June 6
5. Buddy Kennedy makes a neat sliding play, July 9
6. Geraldo Perdomo makes diving stop, July 16
7. Christian Walker makes a superb diving stop, August 6
8. Christian Walker makes a superb leaping snag, August 29

Outfielders

1. David Peralta robs Jorge Soler in the 3rd inning, May 9
2. David Peralta makes the catch in left field, May 26
3. Alek Thomas makes a beautiful home run stealing catch, June 8
4. Alek Thomas robs Pederson with a leaping catch, July 5
5. Alek Thomas makes leaping catch at the wall in 1st, July 10
6. Varsho dashes to make a sliding catch in the 1st, July 10
7. Alek Thomas ends the game with stunning catch, August 13
8. Alek Thomas makes a great diving catch in center, August 26
9. Jake McCarthy makes a great lunging grab in right, October 2

Offense

1. Distance: 461 ft. Christian Walker crushes a solo home run to center, August 15
2. Distance (non-Coors): 455 fr. Christian Walker’s solo homer, August 24
3. Hardest hit: 112.6 mph. Christian Walker’s 33rd home run, September 16
4. Win Probability: +76.2%. Alcántara’s walk-off homer vs. Dodgers, September 14
5. Opening Day Walk-off,. Seth Beer’s three-run HR on National Beer Day, April 7