The Braves have one real shot at Silver Slugger hardware this year, and it comes down to Matt Olson.
The Louisville Slugger Silver Slugger awards, presented by FanSided, will be announced on Tuesday, November 17, and Atlanta is watching closely. Drake Baldwin and Michael Harris II were both left out, but Olson did make the finalist list at first base. The problem is that the field is loaded, and Olson’s path to a second Silver Slugger is anything but clean.
At first base, Olson is up against Jake Bauers of the Brewers, Alec Burleson of the Cardinals and Rafael Devers of the Giants. The prediction here is Olson, but only by a slim margin.
His 41 home runs give him the loudest raw power numbers in the group, and he also leads National League first basemen with a 4.0 fWAR. Still, a good portion of that value comes from his defense, which makes the case less straightforward than the homer total suggests.
Bauers looks like the biggest obstacle. He led the finalists with a 143 wRC+, and he brings the kind of counting stats voters tend to notice.
The Brewers’ 2026 story could help him too. The bet here is that he gets more support as a utility option than he does at first base, but Olson’s late-season slump leaves enough room for an upset.
Second base is much murkier. Brandon Lowe of the Pirates and Brice Turang of the Brewers are separated by style more than anything else.
Lowe has the bigger power line, with 35 homers and a .233 ISO compared with Turang’s 21 homers and .182 ISO. Turang, though, owns a six-point edge in wRC+ at 127 and offers stronger all-around production.
The lean is Turang, though Lowe’s power could still sway a voting group that likes the louder numbers.
Shortstop, on the other hand, should be much simpler. Elly De La Cruz was the clear top hitter at the position in the NL, and the numbers back that up.
He leads the group in fWAR at 6.4 and in wRC+ at 139, and he also put together a 30/30 season. CJ Abrams has some eye-catching counting stats, but De La Cruz’s advantage in batting average and on-base percentage is big enough to make this one feel pretty settled.
Third base is a coin flip. Alex Bregman of the Cubs and Max Muncy of the Dodgers had very similar seasons, and neither one created much separation from the other.
Muncy gets the tiniest edge in wRC+, which is enough to make him the pick here, along with the fact that he plays for the Dodgers. But this is the kind of race where either name would make sense.
The outfield has one clear pair and one messy final spot. Pete Crow-Armstrong and James Wood stand out from the pack, especially Crow-Armstrong, who also won the NL MVP award.
Those two are basically locked in. The last spot is where things get crowded, with Corbin Carroll, Jackson Chourio, Seiya Suzuki, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jordan Walker all in the mix.
Carroll and Walker look like the longest shots, and Tatis spent significant time at other positions. Suzuki gets the nod here thanks to his 134 wRC+ and 26 homers, though it is close.
At catcher, Gabriel Moreno should have this wrapped up. Even if Drake Baldwin had not faded after his oblique injury, he still would have had a tough time beating Moreno, who hit .311 and posted a 141 wRC+. Hunter Goodman’s 41 homers are impressive, but this race is not really in doubt.
Designated hitter is just as straightforward. Kyle Schwarber is on the ballot, but Shohei Ohtani is the pick, and he is the pick until proven otherwise.
Ohtani finished second in NL MVP voting, so Schwarber never had much of a lane. Voters are going to keep leaning Ohtani for a long time.
Utility should go to Jake Bauers. Sal Stewart had a tremendous rookie season, and Fernando Tatis Jr. is in the conversation too, but Bauers was the engine behind the Brewers’ offense and a major reason they were good enough to win it all. His offensive numbers, outside of steals, stack up as well as or better than Tatis Jr.’s, which makes him the expected choice.
For the National League team award, the Cubs get the edge. The Dodgers and Nationals might seem like obvious candidates at first glance, but Chicago’s offense was the loudest of the bunch.
Crow-Armstrong helped drive that surge, and the Cubs finished with a 129 wRC+ as a team, which was 18 points better than the next-best offense in the National League. Once you look at the numbers, it becomes an easy call.
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