The 2026 SnakePit Awards’ single-game performance race doesn’t have a runaway favorite this time around, and that’s what makes it interesting. Last year, Eugenio Suarez’s four-homer explosion was the easy call.
This season? Much murkier.
No obvious winner, no bad pick, and a field that ended up leaning heavily toward pitching, with one relief outing getting the nod over an offensive performance.
A few of these nights were the kind that stick in your head long after the final out. Thanks to BTBaseball, kilnborn and Bryce.dbacks for helping narrow the list down, the final group settled into what might best be described as the Diamondbacks Hall of Quite Good. Still, every one of these performances earned its place.
Jose Fernandez’s debut on 3/31 came out of nowhere and turned into a statement. He went 3-for-4 with two home runs, including a solo shot off Casey Mize in the fourth and a three-run blast in the eighth that finished off Arizona’s comeback.
The D-backs had trailed 5-0 before scoring seven straight, and Fernandez drove in four of those runs. His nine total bases stood out on their own, but the bigger note was how rare the start was: before him, only one D-back had reached as many as six bases in his first game, and that was Travis Lee in the franchise’s first ever game 28 years ago.
Fernandez also posted a WP of +64.5%, something no previous Arizona debutant position player had gotten within shouting distance of, and it was the highest in the NL since Kyle Farmer for the Dodgers in July 2017.
Merrill Kelly’s 5/15 outing in Coors Field was all about control in a place that usually strips pitchers of it. He went the distance, allowing four hits and one run while walking nobody and striking out three.
It was only the Diamondbacks’ one complete game over the past three years, and just the fourth Arizona starter to throw a complete game in Denver in 243 attempts. It was also the first there for nearly 13 years.
Randy Johnson didn’t do it. Curt Schilling didn’t.
Brandon Webb didn’t. Kelly did, with the only blemish being a solo homer by Hunter Goodman, who hit 41 on the year.
Even that fit the setting, since the previous Arizona complete games at Coors had all come with at least one run allowed.
Then there was Gerardo Carrillo on 7/28, who delivered one of the most extreme relief outings in franchise memory. In extras, he covered two innings, allowed no hits, and stranded both Manfred Men, finishing with a +76.7% WP.
That’s the highest ever by an Arizona reliever, topping Anthony DeSclafani’s +65.1% from last year. It’s also the best by any National League reliever since 2020 and the seventh highest in the wild-card era going back to 1995.
Even more striking: it came in just his third major-league appearance. Carrillo entered with a runner on second and no outs in a tied game in the 11th, a spot where failure was the expected outcome.
Instead, he kept the game alive, then came back out for the 12th and did it again. He needed only 17 pitches, retired all six hitters he faced, and struck out three.
Eduardo Rodriguez followed that up on 7/29 with the kind of start a tired bullpen desperately needs. Arizona had used six relievers the night before, so the margin for error was thin.
Rodriguez answered with eight shutout innings against the Pirates, allowing five hits, one walk and two strikeouts while posting a +46.4% WP. He had been averaging barely five innings over his previous four July outings, but this one was different from the start.
He threw a seven-pitch first inning and needed fewer than 15 pitches in five of the first six frames. Pittsburgh managed only two plate appearances with a runner in scoring position all night, and Rodriguez worked four over the minimum before handing it to Brandyn Garcia to finish it off.
Justin Martinez’s 9/11 inning may have been the most overpowering of the bunch. In one inning, he struck out the side on nine pitches for an immaculate inning, one of only two the Diamondbacks had from 2013-25 and the other coming from Michael Soroka in his Arizona debut.
Martinez was making just his eighth appearance back after missing 14 months because of elbow surgery, and there was no sign of rust. Six of his nine pitches hit triple digits, with the fastball topping out at 102.6 mph.
One Tigers hitter took an 89.2 mph splitter for a strike before having to deal with 102.5 mph on the next pitch. Detroit swung at six pitches, missed five times and fouled off one.
It was, by the numbers and by the eye test, a brutal inning to survive.
Now it’s your turn to pick the best of the bunch.
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