And, so, we come to the final award of this campaign. I don’t think this category will prove too troubling to establish nominees. The traditional route has been that the Pitcher and Rookie of the Year get automatic slots, and the other three slots are chosen in the usual way. This year, the byes go to Ryne Nelson and Andrew Saalfrank; since they are both pitchers, this would make it most likely that the others would go to position players. And there just happen to be three position players on the D-backs, whose performance was head and shoulders above everybody else. Still, let’s respect the process, shall we?
Certainly the offense was what kept the team playing meaningful baseball into the last week of the season. It wasn’t as good as 2024, scoring 95 fewer runs (the pitching conceded three fewer). But that was still good enough for sixth in the majors, and they ranked in the same spot for OPS+ too (108). That included coming third in slugging, and that’s why I’m a bit concerned about next season, after the losses of Eugenio Suarez, Josh Naylor, etc. The engine room was Geraldo Perdomo, Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte, who combined for 17.2 bWAR. Everybody else added up to just 6.3 bWAR. The Cubs were the only team with more 4+ WAR position players.
To provide some objectivity to suggestions, as I did for the pitchers, below is a table which lists key statistics for the Arizona position players who finished in the top ten either by bWAR or fWAR in 2025. Don’t feel obliged to limit suggestions to these players, but I would be slightly very surprised if we end up with any nominations come from outside this list. There seemed to be more agreement between the two systems here. The top four were identical, and the top nine had the same players in a different order. The only change was at #10, where bWAR had Tim Tawa, while fWAR had Pavin Smith – he was #11 by bWAR.
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