Dominic Canzone put together one of the American League’s best offensive seasons, and the Silver Slugger finalists still left him on the outside looking in.
That’s the frustrating part for the Mariners outfielder. Randy Arozarena did make the AL outfield list, and no one is going to quibble with that after the season he had.
But Seattle’s only finalist is Arozarena, which also reflects how much Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez slipped this year. The bigger snub for Canzone came in the designated hitter race, where MLB managers and coaches picked Yordan Alvarez of the Houston Astros and Ben Rice of the New York Yankees as the finalists.
Both Alvarez and Rice cleared 40 home runs, and they finished first and fifth among qualified hitters in OPS+. Only one of them will be announced as the winner on November 17. That leaves Canzone without a finalist spot despite a season that stacks up with the best of them.
Canzone hit 23 home runs and tied for seventh among all AL hitters with a .484 slugging percentage. He also tied for eighth in OPS+ at 134. While Arozarena was the main force behind Seattle’s offense, Canzone was right there beside him for much of the year.
His splits show just how much the Mariners’ lineup shuffling mattered. In 175 plate appearances as a right fielder, he posted an .813 OPS. In 349 plate appearances as a DH, that number jumped to .841.
When Canzone’s breakout really started to take shape in 2025, Kevin Seitzer and Bobby Magallanes were the hitting coaches who helped him stop trying to full everything. That approach clearly paid off, but both coaches are gone now.
Magallanes didn’t even last through July, and his departure lines up with a noticeable change in Canzone’s production. Before Magallanes was fired, Canzone had an .835 OPS and 15 home runs.
Afterward, he finished with an .804 OPS and eight home runs.
There is at least some familiarity in the current setup. New hitting coach CJ Gillman worked with Canzone before, serving as Seattle’s minor league hitting coordinator from 2022 to 2025 before leaving for a one-year stint with the Washington Nationals. Canzone joined the system in July of 2023.
Even with the award omission, the underlying numbers suggest Canzone’s bat was even better than the surface line. His Baseball Savant page is loaded with red, including expected batting average and expected slugging percentage marks that topped his actual batting average and slugging percentage. He also proved he can handle left-on-left matchups, finishing with a 147 wRC+ that made him the best left-on-left hitter in the American League.
So the message for Canzone is simple: keep raking. The recognition may not be coming right now, but the production is already there.
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