AL Silver Slugger Winners: Beltre Wins, But Ortiz Gets Snubbed

Adrian Beltre brought home a Silver Slugger award to Boston Thursday, being named the best offensive third baseman in the American League after exploding for .321/.365/.553 last year with the Red Sox.

As is often the case, the Silver Slugger awards aren't quite so controversial as the Gold Gloves. But while we Sox fans could only be annoyed at the success of our rival that time around, this time it's one of our own that has been slighted.

First off, here are all the winners:

We'll see what's wrong after the jump.

For the most part, all is well. Adrian Beltre definitely deserved his, beating out Evan Longoria in most categories including the all-encompassing wOBA. Alexei Ramirez may be one of the weakest silver slugger winners ever, but there's really nobody to contest him (actually, Jed Lowrie beats him by about 12 batting runs above average, qualifying be damned!), and Shin-Soo Choo has a legitimate argument against Carl Crawford.

But the real snub comes at DH, where Vladimir Guerrero's win proves that old triple slash voting is alive and well.

Consider:

This looks like a pretty easy choice. Vlad leads healthily in average and RBI, trailing Papi only in homers. And if this were a few decades ago, then yeah, almost nobody would have a problem with Guerrero taking it home. But come on, even ESPN is using the new triple slash.

Now, between Ortiz and Scott, it's questionable thanks to a 14 game difference in games played and nearly 100 plate appearances. But Ortiz and Guerrero? Papi is on a whole different level.

Come on voters. Wake up already.