J.D. Martinez Becomes First Player In MLB History to Win Two Silver Sluggers in One Season11/8/2018 
The Silver Slugger award winners were announced tonight, as Major League Baseball loves to drag things out.
If they were smart they'd have a big awards show like the NFL and NHL does to celebrate the season and all the great talent in the league. Instead what the MLB does is announce every award semi-randomly throughout the weeks following the end of the season. Speaking of, HUGE s/o to JBJ winning his first career gold glove. Incredibly overdue (and I'm a lazy scumbag for not blogging it earlier) They had a night just announcing the finalist for the major awards. As we've seen over the years, if there's one thing baseball loves to do, it's make stupid marketing decisions. Anyways, when I saw the award list on twitter I thought there was a mistake, like how did J.D. win two Silver Sluggers? He's only one dude. But no, it was very much intentional, J.D. Martinez won a silver slugger as an outfielder AND designated hitter in 2018.
At first glance I though it was kind of ridiculous, I mean J.D. was a DH this year. I didn't really think of him as an outfielder, but to my surprise he appeared in 57 games between the two corner spots. Generally I think it's kind of gimmicky to do this, I remember a few years ago Khalil Mack was All-Pro at two different positions and thinking it was dumb, but then I saw the numbers: ​​
Martinez started 93 games at DH and had 350 at-bats. He had 57 starts in the outfield (32 in left and 25 in right) while accumulating 219 at-bats.
Winning at both positions was made possible by the way Martinez seemed to rake whenever he got to play defense. In those 57 outfield starts, Martinez slashed .384/.450/.680 with 16 homers and 51 RBIs. As a DH, his line was .297/.373/.597 with 27 homers and 79 RBIs. via: www.mlb.com/news/jd-martinez-makes-silver-slugger-history/c-300468394
When you see his splits between DH-ing and playing the field it makes me understand why this happened. J.D. showed his appreciation for the recognition on instagram shortly after winning 2 (two) silver sluggers.
Banner year for Joses!
It is kind of weird though, as we've never seen this happen before in baseball. Makes me wonder if we'll ever see the day someone wins two gold gloves in a year? I'm interested to see what his baseball reference page will look like now for 2018 with two silver sluggers to fit in the award column. It's gotta kind of suck for the other guys out there who had great seasons in the outfield, like really dude? Couldn't give him just the DH award? I know I'd be pissed. Suck on that with your Chiclets, Aaron. 
​Even though he only played 57 games in the outfield, in those games J.D. was a stud. People will say he was a below average outfielder under all the sabermetrics, but he had one of the most memorable catches a Red Sox player has all season banging into the outfield wall in Detroit. ​J.D. also did not commit an error in 2018. ​That slash line blows my mind. I know nerds will try to de-value batting average, but I am not in that camp. Dude hit fucking .384 while playing the field, which to me is kind of surprising. That's basically .400. Granted it's not a gigantic sample size, but it's still two months of the season. It makes me wonder if maybe J.D. should be a full time outfielder? Idk if the numbers will hold up but that is a pretty major discrepancy between batting averages. You'd think being off your feet, just chillen as a DH his numbers would be better...jk J.D. does not just chill, he analyzes the swings of everybody, and made many guys on this team better in 2018. Which makes him incredibly valuable despite "below-average" defense metrics. I couldn't have been more wrong about him. I was a little apprehensive to signing him just because I didn't believe in his durability (this was only the 2nd time in his career he played in over 125 games) but J.D. Martinez, even with only one season under his belt has proven to be one of the best free agent signings in Red Sox history. 1st or 2nd in the triple crown stats. 43 homers, league leading 130 RBIs and .330 batting average. Year one the team wins a 108 games and this little thing called a World Series title, oh and for good measure in lieu of a MVP "finalist" (he'll still likely finish top 5 in the voting) he's been awarded two silver sluggers. 
It doesn't really matter since Mookie is going to win MVP, it's not like the should-be-winner got slighted, but it's fucking lunacy to me that a dude that was top 2 in the triple crown stats didn't get the recognition he deserves as an MVP finalist.
​Whatever, I think he's cool with this. 
P.S. S/o to Mookie too, winning everything and he's a new dad. Best team in baseball. Please keep this team in tact (minus letting Kimbrel walk).
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