The 9 greatest players in Arizona Diamondbacks history
While Matt Williams is most remembered for the decade that he spent in San Francisco, he was quite productive during his tenure with the Arizona Diamondbacks, which accounted for the final six seasons of a 17-year career.
In between his stints in San Francisco and Arizona, Williams landed in Cleveland for the 1997 season, with the Giants acquiring future National League MVP Jeff Kent in what turned out to be a pretty lopsided trade. Williams did win a Gold Glove Award, Silver Slugger Award and reach the World Series in Cleveland in 1997, but it turned out to be the only season that he spent with the franchise.
As Ken Berger of The Associated Press wrote at the time, Williams had his wish to be traded to the expansion Diamondbacks granted before 1998, their first season of play. The reason that Williams was so intrigued about the idea of going from the defending World Series Champions to a team that had never played a game was because his children lived in the Phoenix area, and after his marriage fell apart, continuing his career with the Diamondbacks was "the only situation that would accommodate my professional aspirations and personal things I need to do for my kids."
A trade to the Diamondbacks did prove to be the best of both worlds for Williams, perhaps even more than he realized at the time of his trade.

In 1999, Williams slashed .303/.344/.536 with 35 home runs, 142 RBIs and an .880 OPS. Williams finished third in National League MVP voting in 1999, trailing only Chipper Jones and Jeff Bagwell.
Two years later, Williams drove in nine runs during the 2001 playoffs, which culminated in the Diamondbacks defeating the New York Yankees to win their first World Series title. In his 15th major league season, Williams won his first championship.
Williams' six years in Arizona were far from perfect. He only played in 100 or more games three different times. He was later accused of purchasing "$11,600 worth of HGH, steroids and other drugs" in 2002, his second last season with the Diamondbacks. Williams admitted that he did purchase and briefly use the substances after a doctor recommended that he so to deal with an ankle injury, but stopped because "he did not like its effects after sampling."
Despite any shortcomings during his time with the Diamondbacks, Williams is unquestionably one of the more productive players in the brief history of the franchise. But he falls just short of cracking our countdown of the nine greatest players in Diamondbacks history: