Whoever it is that announces Silver Slugger Awards (Major League Baseball? Louisville Slugger? Some PR guy with a Twitter account?) announced them today and the Pirates have two winners this year: Neil Walker and Andrew McCutchen.
I don’t have an incredible amount of insight to add to stories like this one: there are a lot of post-season awards these days (Russell Martin, for example, didn’t win a Rawlings Gold Glove but did win a Wilson Defensive Player of the Year award, whatever the hell that is) and while the big BBWAA awards are worth talking about, the positional ones are mainly worth noting so that we, as fans, can say, “Oh, that’s nice.”
It’s nice that Walker and McCutchen were recognized for their good seasons at the plate. McCutchen is obviously one of the best hitters anywhere, and Walker’s power surge pretty clearly made him the best hitting regular second baseman in the NL. You could almost certainly could make a case for Josh Harrison and Russell Martin, too, but it’s hard to assign a position to Harrison for the 2014 season and while Martin was great, the competition at catcher in the NL was surprisingly stiff. It’s awfully hard to argue against Buster Posey, for sure.
Anyway, I’m not sure that Andrew McCutchen or Clint Hurdle will take home the MVP or Manager of the Year again this year (we can talk about this more when those awards are announced), so these Silver Sluggers might represent the biggest awards the Pirates win this year. Since the Pirates were mainly driven by their offense, I suppose that’s fitting.
