Silver Slugger winners were announced on Thursday, and most went according to plan, except for Trea Turner
San Diego Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis was the recipient of the National League Silver Slugger award at his position. You can make a very quality case that Tatis deserved the award over Trea Turner and Corey Seager. Tatis became the second-youngest shortstop to win the award behind Alex Rodriguez in 1996.
This is not to slight Seager because he had a fantastic season for the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers. He finished the season with numbers that were essentially identical to Tatis.
Yet, neither one of them put up the numbers that the Washington Nationals shortstop did.
Turner has every right to be upset — he was slighted
Trea Turner finished the 2019 season with a slash line of .298/.353/.497 with a 117 wRC+. The slugging percentage shows he has some pop in his bat and there might be some untapped potential there to get more out of his bat especially with the departure of third baseman Anthony Rendon.
What did Turner do in 2020? He improved dramatically with a .335/.394/.588 with a whopping 157 wRC+. Turner finished the season with a higher wRC+ than Tatis and Seager, who finished with a 149 and 151 wRC+ respectively.
It wasn’t just that one statistic, albeit an important one when grading players at the plate. Turner posted a .406 wOBA, which was the highest amongst shortstops in all of baseball. His .588 slugging also led all shortstops.
One of the biggest things that separates Turner from Seager and Tatis is his strikeout rate. Turner finished the season with a strikeout rate of 13.9 percent, which was good for third in baseball among shortstops. That’s a full two percent lower than Seager and nearly 10 percent lower than Tatis. To have a strikeout rate that low and still put up power numbers that are equal or better than his competition is quite the feat.
The entire 2020 season is subject to small sample size because it was only 60 games long, and players didn’t face the same competition that they normally would have. It’s also hard to know what’s a stable and predictable measurement, but the the more stable statistics such as wOBA and wRC+ show that Trea Turner was the best hitting shortstop in not only the National League, but probably in all of baseball.