Trade deadline move might’ve screwed Mariners veteran out of Silver Slugger nod

As the Seattle Mariners celebrate four Silver Slugger nominations (three player nominees and a team nod), an award that’s supposed to honor the best hitters at each position shouldn’t trip over paperwork. Yet here we are: the case with Eugenio Suárez shows the Silver Sluggers still can’t cleanly account for players who switch leagues at the trade deadline.

That’s not a small edge case in modern baseball; it’s a feature of how contenders operate. Teams shop for offense in July, stars change coasts, divisions, and the sport asks fans to follow the ride. The awards should be just as fluent.

The Mariners veteran spent 53 games in Seattle and 106 with Arizona, blasted 49 homers with 118 RBI across the full season, and somehow ends up ineligible for recognition his bat actually earned. Not because he lacked impact, but because he crossed a street the award doesn’t let you cross. 

Eugenio Suárez’s season makes the case for a Silver Slugger rule tweak

There’s no official written rule that says it, but if you’re traded to a different league, you’re basically out of the Silver Slugger race. Geno went from NL to AL, and the math became moot the second the ink dried. Not a snub, but a technicality. And it’s why the award needs a traded-player exception.

Let’s be clear about the argument: this isn’t “give Geno the trophy no matter what.” His full-season line (.228/.298/.526) isn’t going to win aesthete points in a vacuum, and the AL-only slice (.189/.255/.428, 13 HR, 31 RBI) doesn’t sparkle.

Awards aren’t earned in spreadsheets alone; they’re earned in context. Start with the spots that matter: with runners in scoring position he drove 12 HR and 69 RBI, and in high-leverage situations he led all third basemen in homers (5) and ranked second in RBIs (24), proof the big swings traveled with him. 

That clutch profile showed up in Seattle as well as Arizona, even if his late-season line didn’t mirror the early desert surge. Yes, Chase Field helped, and a few first-half road sets were friendly, but the total picture holds: across 2025 he was one of the game’s most dangerous power bats at third base and central to a contender’s push. If the trophy says “slugger,” it should be built to recognize the slug.

Even if you isolate the 106 games he played as a Diamondback, more than finalist Austin Riley’s 102 games this season, you get a version of Suárez that looks like a no-doubt finalist: .248/.320/.576, 36 HR, 87 RBI, 141 wRC+. Stack that against the NL third-base finalists and tell me he doesn’t belong in the conversation.

• Matt Chapman, Giants: .231/.340/.430, 21 HR, 61 RBI (118 wRC+)
• Manny Machado, Padres: .275/.335/.460, 27 HR, 95 RBI (123 wRC+)
• Max Muncy, Dodgers: .243/.376/.470, 19 HR, 67 RBI (137 wRC+)
• Austin Riley, Braves: .260/.309/.428, 16 HR, 54 RBI (103 wRC+)

Suárez’s NL sample jumps off the page. And that’s the point: the current rule treats midseason reality like a clerical error. The league asked Suárez to pick up and hit in a different league, and he did. The award shrugged because the form wasn’t filled out in one column.

Here’s a potential fix: create a Traded-Player Exception for Silver Sluggers. If a player is traded across leagues, they should be eligible either (a) in the league where they logged the most plate appearances at that position or (b) via a unified “combined-league” ballot that evaluates their position-specific hitting over the full season. Give clubs and voters a clear threshold.

Because right now, the system asks fans to pretend one of 2025’s most prolific power seasons from a third baseman didn’t really count for award purposes. That’s silly. Suárez may not have been a lock for either league’s trophy, and that’s fine, but he absolutely earned a seat at the finalist table.