skyking162

The Silver Sluggers were announced yesterday, a nice recent addition to the crop of off-season awards. They’re analogous to the Gold Gloves, but for the league’s “best offensive producers”. Because managers pick the winners, it’s an interesting test of how well the game’s best minds actually value production.

I’ve ranked their decisions, comparing runs above replacement of the actual winner to the best player according to my own calculations (which include things like SBs, GIDPs, and HBPs, but not general baserunning or game context.) In general, the choices are much better than with the gold gloves, because offense is a lot easier to measure and the difference in value between players is much wider than for fielding.

Nailed It

• AL 3B - Alex Rodriguez: ARod was further ahead of second place (Chone Figgins, believe it or not) than Figgins was ahead of replacement level.
• AL 1B - Carlos Pena: Nobody else was within 35 runs of Pena, making this the easiest non-ARod decision.
• AL DH - David Ortiz: Another no-brainer. This was Ortiz’s best season in a great career and he deserves more MVP love than he’ll get.
• NL 2B - Chase Utley: Utley holds the largest gap at any NL position, lapping the field by 25 runs. He’s the only player to win both the skyking162 gold glove and silver slugger awards.
• AL OF - Magglio Ordonez: Maggs was the most productive hitter who didn’t play the hot corner in Yankee Stadium.
• AL CA - Jorge Posada: Victor Martinez also made a decent showing, but had the benefit of playing first base once a week.
• AL OF - Vlad Guerrero: 2007 wasn’t a monster season by Vlad, but he still got on base and drove runners home.
• NL CA - Russell Martin: He’s the right choice, although “slugger” seems inappropriate. Martin was the least productive winner, only 34 runs above replacement. Do they have to award one of these to every position?
• NL OF - Matt Holliday: He’s both overrated and awesome.
• NL 3B - David Wright: Chipper Jones and Miguel Cabrera were both within 10 runs of Wright.
• NL 1B - Prince Fielder: There’s just something in inherently valuable in hitting 50 homeruns. Albert Pujols was only a couple runs behind.
• AL 2B - Placido Polanco: Brian Roberts was actually decimal places ahead of Polanco, but given the large error bars on this sort of thing, I’m not going to worry about that.
• NL P - Micah Owings: I actually don’t have offensive values for pitchers, but when you hit .333, slug .683, and make Dontrelle Willis look like Tony Pena Jr. at the plate, I’m ok just going with those numbers.

In The Ballpark

• NL OF - Carlos Beltran: Ok, so he was only a couple runs worse than Adam Dunn. But you had to know I’d do anything to recognize Dunn for his accomplishments.
• AL SS - Derek Jeter: I have Carlos Guillen as three runs better, but that probably counts as nitpicking.
• AL OF - Ichiro Suzuki: Curtis Granderson was five runs better than Ichiro, who was in a dead heat with Grady Sizemore. Given than Granderson was screwed out of both a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger, I doubt he’s going to finish as high in the MVP voting as he should — at least third and probably second.

Let’s Try That Again

• Ok, so nobody actually falls in this category. I’m just leaving it in to point out how awful the two choices in the last category were.

Might As Well Give It To Joe Carter

• NL SS - Jimmy Rollins: Ok, so Rollins gets an undeserved Gold Glove and an undeserved Silver Slugger? Can I still put money down on him winning (an undeserved) MVP? In all fairness, this award is Hanley Ramirez’s, the offensive force who was one of the top dozen hitters in all of baseball in 2007.
• NL OF - Carlos Lee: Seriously? Not Barry Bonds, the guy who was the best offensive NL outfielder in 2007? Is “Carlos Lee” code for any of Raul Ibanez, Bobby Abreu, or Ken Griffey Jr.? Because I’ve got those guys exactly as valuable as Lee in 2007.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.