Breakout NL faces snub Padres star outfielder from being a Silver Slugger finalist

There are snubs, and then there are head-scratchers that make you pull up Fangraphs just to make sure your eyes still work. This one lives in the second bucket. The San Diego Padres’ star right fielder just authored a season that checked both boxes we pretend not to weigh at the same time, impact and aesthetics.

He piled up value in ways that show up in spreadsheets and in moments that feel loud in real time. And yet, when Fansided revealed the Silver Slugger finalists, his name wasn’t there. In an outfield class loaded with shiny new toys and established headliners, that omission reads less like a quiet year and more like voters trying to solve a traffic jam by ignoring one of the cars.

Why Fernando Tatis Jr.’s snub says more about the ballot than his bat

What makes it stickier: he did get a Hank Aaron Award nomination. That’s not a courtesy nod. Clubs typically put forward the hitter who best tells the story of their offense. In other words, his own team essentially said, “This is our guy, league-level bat.” When a player is singled out for overall offensive excellence across the league’s entire hitter pool yet misses a position-specific offensive award, it creates a weird optical illusion: the broader lens recognizes you; the tighter lens doesn’t. That’s where the frustration lives for Padres fans. Tatis Jr. It isn’t about participation trophies, it’s about coherence.

Tatis Jr. finished the regular season with a final line:

• Tatis Jr., Padres — 159 H, 25 HR, 71 RBI, .268/.368/.446 (131 wRC+, .814 OPS)

Scan the finalist list and you see why the room felt crowded:

• Corbin Carroll, Diamondbacks — 146 H, 31 HR, 84 RBI, .259/.343/.514 (139 wRC+)
• Pete Crow-Armstrong, Cubs — 146 H, 31 HR, 95 RBI, .247/.287/.481 (139 wRC+)
• Juan Soto, Mets — 152 H, 43 HR, 105 RBI, .263/.396/.525 (181 wRC+)
• Kyle Stowers, Marlins — 115 H, 25 HR, 73 RBI, .288/.368/.544 (149 wRC+)
• Kyle Tucker, Cubs — 133 H, 22 HR, 73 RBI, .266/.377/.464 (136 wRC+)
• James Wood, Nationals — 153 H, 31 HR, 94 RBI, .256/.350/.475 (127 wRC+)

No dead weight there. And two former Padres just to throw salt in the wound. And you can make an edge case for each of them. But stack the Padres star’s line and the snub still bites. He posted a higher wRC+ than James Wood (131 to 127), hit for a higher batting average than Kyle Tucker and Juan Soto (.268 to .266 and .263), and launched more home runs than Tucker (25 to 22).

Even if he trailed the pack in RBIs. Zoom out with value models and he shows up again: an Off of 31.4, fourth in the NL behind only Soto, Carroll, and Ronald Acuña Jr. That metric goes beyond the traditional Silver Slugger résumé, capturing comprehensive offensive impact rather than just counting bombs and ribbies, and it says he was one of the league’s real problems for pitchers.

So how do you end up with a Hank Aaron nod but no Silver Slugger mention? Start with the rulebook differences. The Hank Aaron Award is an overall offensive honor with club-nominated candidates and a fan/Hall of Fame voting component; it’s designed to surface the best bats in each league, no positional cap. 

The Silver Slugger is position-specific and chosen by managers and coaches, who tend (fairly or not) to reward the loudest traditional offensive packages within a position group. Translation: you can be one of the best overall hitters in the league, but if your position happens to be a shark tank in that particular year, you can get boxed out by the positional vote.

There’s also a subtle perception tax at play. Some will argue, quietly, usually that his Gold Glove-caliber defense and a Hank Aaron nomination create a “spread the love” vibe among voters. It shouldn’t work that way, but humans vote on these things.

When a player shines on both sides of the ball, the offensive award room sometimes overcorrects toward the pure-bat profiles. Add in the noise of power bias (even in an era that says it values OBP and overall run creation), and the calculus can tilt away from a profile that blends high-level contact, on-base, and all-field damage with elite defense and baserunning.

None of this is to say the finalists don’t deserve flowers. But if the assignment is recognize the best offensive outfielders, the Padres star fits the brief, by the numbers, by the tape, by the way opposing dugouts game-plan him. A Hank Aaron nomination said as much.

The Silver Slugger finalists didn’t echo it, and that disconnect is exactly why this snub feels less like sour grapes and more like a miss. If the goal is to honor bats that bend games, you don’t need to squint to see he belonged in this room.