Fellow finalists Willy Adames and Jackson Chourio miss out
Awards season continued tonight with the announcement of the Silver Slugger awards, given to the player in each league who was deemed to be his position’s best hitter. The Brewers came into the evening with 22 Silver Slugger awards in the team’s history, including one just last year for catcher William Contreras. Contreras and the Brewers added one more to their tallies tonight, while the team’s other finalists, Willy Adames at shortstop and Jackson Chourio in the outfield, came up short this year.
Contreras, as expected, repeated as the award winner at catcher. His 131 wRC+ was 14 points higher than any other catcher who played at least 85 games—his older brother, Willson, was the only primary catcher in baseball who eclipsed that mark but he missed about half the season.
Chourio was viewed as a longshot in the National League outfield, though general weakness at the position this season meant that he had an outside shot. It was not to be though, as all three NL outfielders came from the NL West: Jackson Merrill and Jurickson Profar from the Padres and Teoscar Hernández from the Dodgers.
Adames, also, was not expected to win at shortstop. Adames had a great year offensively but the winner of the award was the Mets’ Francisco Lindor, who is widely expected to finish second in MVP voting. Sometimes the cards just don’t fall in your favor.
A full list of winners is available here.
Awards season continues on Thursday with the announcement of the All-MLB team (for which Contreras should have a decent shot as well), the Reliever of the Year awards, the Designated Hitter award, and the Comeback Player of the Year awards are given out.