It began, as it so often does, with a seemingly innocent tweet, this time from Dan Szymborski of ESPN:
Dan Szymborski @DSzymborski
Never been interested in the Silver Slugger award, but I would like to see a Nate Silver Slugger award.
. . . which begat this:
Dan Szymborski retweetedAny player who slugs . 538? RT @DSzymborski: Never been interested in Silver Slugger award, would like to see a Nate Silver Slugger award.
. . . which begat this:
Per BR Play Index and @dianagram, the complete list of Nate Silver Slugger awards. @fivethirtyeight pic.twitter.com/bfjn88eeLd
Dan had blessed us with the list of all players who qualified for the batting title AND slugged .538 in that year. So of course this meant that the VORG had a new annual award to hand out.
Nate Silver is of course the former Baseball Prospectus guru who became (in)famous for using his forecasting/modeling acumen to correctly identify, with amazing accuracy, which politicians would win various elections, via his FiveThirtyEight site.
So, the first annual VORG “Nate Silver Slugger Award” will be given to the player at each position in each league who comes closest to a .538 slugging percentage (on either side of it), with ties broken by whichever player has the higher number of plate appearances. As an aside, Melky Mesa was the ONLY player in either league to slug exactly .538 in 2013.
The envelope please . . .
American League:
| Player | PA | Pos ▴ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Danny Valencia | .553 | 170 | DH |
| Kurt Suzuki | .545 | 35 | C |
| Edwin Encarnacion | .534 | 621 | 1B |
| Robinson Cano | .516 | 681 | 2B* |
| Adrian Beltre | .509 | 690 | 3B |
| Jhonny Peralta | .457 | 448 | SS |
| Brennan Boesch | .529 | 53 | OF |
| Ryan Raburn | .543 | 277 | OF |
| Melky Mesa | .538 | 14 | OF |
Generated 11/8/2013.
National League:
| Player | PA | Pos ▴ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Henderson Alvarez | .500 | 35 | P |
| Dioner Navarro | .492 | 266 | C |
| Paul Goldschmidt | .551 | 710 | 1B* |
| Matt Carpenter | .481 | 717 | 2B* |
| Donnie Murphy | .530 | 163 | 3B |
| Troy Tulowitzki | .540 | 512 | SS |
| Jayson Werth | .532 | 532 | OF |
| Michael Cuddyer | .530 | 540 | OF* |
| Yasiel Puig | .534 | 432 | OF |
Generated 11/8/2013.
* - Won the real-life “Silver Slugger” this season at his position.
2 thoughts on “The “Nate Silver Slugger Award””