VenomStrikes’ Presents their 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks Awards
The 2021 MLB regular season for the Arizona Diamondbacks is over. Unfortunately, they did not make the playoffs and endured a rather really tough season. They finished with the second-worst record in team history with a 52-110 record. As such, there wasn’t much to truly enjoy as a Dbacks fan, or was there?
Venom Strikes tends to be more positive and uplifting in their views of the Diamondbacks. As such, we wanted to highlight some players that deserve to be recognized for their performance as Dbacks players this year. So, without further ado, here are our rewards recipients.
MVP of the 2021 Dbacks: Ketel Marte
Are you really surprised that we chose Ketel Marte? I mean, it came down to Marte, Carson Kelly, Eduardo Escobar, and Pavin Smith. We wanted to choose Escobar, but with him not on the team, it felt rather rough to do that. Pavin did play plenty but struggled towards the end. Carson Kelly was the leader of the team and had a career year, but we have another award in mind for him. Thus, it left only the leader and star of the team, Ketel Marte left.
Marte did struggle through an injury-plagued season due to Arizona’s nonsense about starting him in center-field. Towards the end of the season, Marte started to play at second base a lot more often. Let’s hope that can carry over into next season. He’s under contract through 2024.
Over 90 games this year, Ketel was a 1.8 WAR player, which if you expand that to a full 162-game season would be 3.24 WAR. Despite that, he was third on the team in WAR behind Eduardo Escobar (2.3) and Carson Kelly (2.2). His OWAR (offensive War) was 3.4, which is terrific in only 90 games. If we expanded that over a whole 162-game season, it would be 6.12. His offense is ELITE.
Of course, if we only looked at his main stats, we would see that. Over those 90 games, he had 340 at-bats with 52 runs, 29 doubles, 1 triple, 14 home runs, 50 RBIs, 2 stolen bases, 31 walks, 60 K’s, and 108 total hits. His batting line was .318, .377, .532, .909, and a 143OPS+. (100 is average).