2022 Diamondbacks Most Valuable Player: Nominations open

The final category in the awards which, to a certain extent, pulls together some of the entries in the previous categories. Traditionally, we’ve awarded spots in the final poll by right to the winners in the Rookie of the Year, Unsung Hero and Pitcher of the Year awards. Which in this case would be Jake McCarthy, Geraldo Perdomo and Zac Gallen. However, none of these are absolutely carved in stone, and if there are better cases to be made for other contenders, then I’m prepared to hear them.

To help in your consideration, here are the bWAR figures for everyone on the 2022 D-backs who was worth more than half a win this year. I’ve not split up pitchers and position players, since both are eligible for consideration here. There is the usual argument to be made, that pitchers do have an award specific for them, and so this one should be considered to be for position players, except in truly exceptional circumstances. It has certainly not been a showstopper here. Both the last two seasons have seen pitchers crowned as MVP here, in Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen.

However, you would have to go back to Brandon Webb in 2007 to find a previous case, and in both of the two past years, there was no obvious position player candidate (in 2020 and 2021 the best single-season position player bWAR was a mere 2.1 bWAR, from Eduardo Escobar last year). That certainly wasn’t the case in 2022, with four position players providing more value than Escobar did, and there’s really no significant gap between Gallen, Christian Walker and Daulton Varsho at the top of the table. Here are the specific figures in question.

• Zac Gallen - 5.1
• Christian Walker - 5.1
• Daulton Varsho - 4.9
• Merrill Kelly - 3.6
• Josh Rojas - 3.2
• Jake McCarthy - 2.4
• Ketel Marte - 1.5
• Alek Thomas - 1.4
• Drey Jameson - 1.3
• Corbin Carroll - 1.2
• Kyle Nelson - 1.0
• Joe Mantiply - 0.9
• David Peralta - 0.9
• Carson Kelly - 0.8
• Ryne Nelson - 0.8
• Emmanuel Rivera - 0.8
• Zach Davies - 0.7
• Geraldo Perdomo - 0.7

In case you’d forgotten over the festive period, here’s how this works. We need to narrow the candidates down to five or thereabouts, for the final poll. This will be done largely on the basis of recs in the comments, though the decision of the judging committee i.e. me, will be final in this regard. Just identify the player - maybe in bold, just to make it stand out, now there’s no more subject line for comments - and make your case in the rest of the comment. If you agree with a choice already made, give it a rec. If you don’t see your choice, post a new comment. I will delete subsequent top-level comments about the same game. Poll to follow on Wednesday.