The Silver Slugger Award finalists have been named today and the Cincinnati Reds have two players with a chance to win. Elly De La Cruz is a finalist at the shortstop position and Jonathan India is a finalist at second base.
At shortstop, De La Cruz is vying for the award with Willy Adames of the Milwaukee Brewers and Francisco Lindor of the New York Mets. India has to go up against Luis Garcia Jr. of the Washington Nationals and Ketel Marte of the Arizona Diamondbacks at second base.
The Silver Slugger Award is voted on by coaches and managers around Major League Baseball. They can not vote for a player on their own team. It’s awarded to the best offensive player. The last Reds player to win the award was Jay Bruce, who won it in back-to-back years in 2012 and 2013.
When we look at offensive value, reasonable people can have some disagreements on exactly what should determine that exact value. But rather than make some arguments with myself on this, I’ll keep it rather simple and point to the “offensive value” column at Fangraphs, where Francisco Lindor has a significant advantage over all other shortstops in the National League at 34.8. De La Cruz is second among the group at 22.3. That number includes baserunning, too, not just “hitting value”. Not that it would change things much as Lindor would still have a sizable advantage over the rest of the league there, too.
For his part, Elly De La Cruz hit .259/.339/.471 with 25 home runs, 105 runs scored, 76 runs batted in, and he had 67 stolen bases. He led the league in steals. His 25 home runs ranked 4th among National League shortstops. De La Cruz was 2nd in slugging percentage and OPS among his positional peers.
At second base it’s a lot more of the same, but to the extreme. Fangraphs has Ketel Marte at 36.6 in the offensive column. Not a single second baseman from the rest of the league was in double digits. India, for his part, was 6th at 5.7. Marte hit 36 home runs. No other second baseman topped 18. His OPS of .932 was 170 points better than the next best second baseman.
Jonathan India hit .248/.357/.392 on the season with 15 home runs, 84 runs scored, drove in 58, and he stole 13 bases. His 15 homers ranked 4th among second baseman in the league, as did his .750 OPS. His .357 on-base percentage was 2nd best among his peer group.
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