Louisville Slugger announced the 2006 Silver Slugger awards on Friday. From the article (emphasis is mine):
Silver Slugger Awards were determined by a vote of MLB managers and coaches who selected the opposing players they felt were the best offensive producers at each position in the American and National Leagues. Selections were based on a combination of offensive statistics, including batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
Now look at this:
| Player | G | AB | OBP | SLG | AVG |
|
A |
143 | 535 | .431 | .671 | .331 |
|
B |
159 | 581 | .425 | .659 | .313 |
Player B won the award. Player A of course, is Albert Pujols. Player B is Ryan Howard. I’m mildly disgusted.
That “combination of offensive statistics” must’ve been heavily skewed by HRs and RBIs.
RBI is such a misleading stat. Pujols had less chances than Howard (427/509), but drove in a higher percentage (20.61%/17.88%). But we wouldn’t want math to get in the way of the numbers.