Dominic Canzone is not a Silver Slugger finalist, so he'll just have to keep raking

Dominic Canzone was one of the best hitters in the American League this year, so it's too bad that you wouldn't know it from perusing the American League finalists for the Louisville Slugger Silver Slugger awards.

Randy Arozarena is among the AL outfielders who made the cut, and nobody in their right mind will argue he doesn't deserve the honor after the year he had. Yet he is, alas, the only Seattle Mariner on the list. That partially speaks to how much Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez fell off this year. It also speaks to the choice the voters faced in the designated hitter race.

It's MLB managers and coaches who do the voting for the Silver Sluggers, and they chose Yordan Alvarez of the Houston Astros and Ben Rice of the New York Yankees as the finalists in the DH spot. Each topped 40 home runs and they finished first and fifth, respectively, among qualified hitters for OPS+. Only one can be announced as a winner on November 17, and that's a shame in its own right.

It's nonetheless fair game to feel like Canzone deserved better. Though it was mostly Arozarena who carried the Mariners' lifeless offense this season, the 29-year-old Canzone was often right there with him. He hit 23 home runs. He tied for seventh among all AL hitters with a .484 slugging percentage. He likewise tied for eighth in OPS+ at 134.

Setting aside the Alvarez and the Rice of it all, the Mariners' instability in right field didn't do Canzone any favors. He had an .813 OPS in 175 plate appearances as a right fielder, compared to an .841 OPS in 349 plate appearances as a DH.

Dominic Canzone will miss out on a Silver Slugger, but there's more where that came from

When thinking about what lies ahead for Canzone, a sense of uncertainty inevitably creeps in.

Though it really took hold in 2026, his breakout first began in 2025 with help from hitting coaches Kevin Seitzer and Bobby Magallanes, who got him to stop trying to full everything. That clearly worked, but both of those guys have since been fired. Indeed, Magallanes didn't make it to the end of July, and his firing marks a disconcerting shift in Canzone's production. Before Magallanes was fired, he had an .835 OPS and 15 home runs. After his firing, he had an .804 OPS and eight home runs.

Still, let's give new hitting coach CJ Gillman some credit and assume he isn't blind to what worked for Canzone in 2025 and 2026. It's also not as if he and Canzone are unfamiliar with each other. Before Gillman bolted for his one year with the Washington Nationals, he was Seattle's minor league hitting coordinator between 2022 and 2025. Canzone joined the system in July of 2023.

There's also the more basic reality that even Canzone's results undersell how much he walloped the ball this season. There's red all over his Baseball Savant page, including for an xBA and xSLG that finished above his actual batting average and slugging percentage. He also proved he's no platoon hitter, as his 147 wRC+ made him the best left-on-left hitter in the American League.

All anyone needs to tell Canzone right now is to keep doing what he's doing. It's award-worthy stuff, so he'll just have to trust that it'll be recognized as such some day.

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