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The 2026 Louisville Slugger Silver Slugger Award finalists, presented by FanSided, are finally here. These standouts, breakouts and superstars defined offensive excellence this season, as determined by a vote of Major League managers and coaches. All 30 MLB teams have four votes each: One for their manager and three for coaches of the team’s choice. Votes are verified by the accounting firm of DMLO.
The finalist group will be whittled down to winners on Nov. 17, streamed exclusively on FanSided's The Baseball Insiders podcast, co-hosted by Adam Weinrib and FanSided MLB insider Robert Murray. The show will be broadcast from the iconic Bat Vault at the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory in Louisville, Ky., and will feature guest appearances from six previous and current Silver Slugger award winners.
This year's group of finalists is a crowded one, featuring three players with two nominations each in different positions, a fleet of potential free agents and trade targets who'll dominate the offseason conversation, and quite possibly the most unconventional nominee in the history of the award. Who says the modern game of baseball looks unrecognizable from the version of the past, huh? Echoes of baseball's history are all over this list.
First Base
Hosts Robert Murray and Adam Weinrib will broadcast directly from Louisville Slugger's Kentucky museum, surrounded by decades' worth of Hillerich & Bradsby's finest bats, including curiosities like a Johnny Bench model bat (its curved handle helped him learn to trust his own swing again mid-career).
Special guests include Albert Pujols, Anthony Rizzo, Ryan Howard and Eric Hosmer.
It's possible we've never had a player redefine "Slugger" like Chandler Simpson of the Tampa Bay Rays, who has yet to hit a home run across the first two seasons of his MLB career. His .400 average/.900 OPS in the 2026 World Series represented a new high-water mark for the diminutive outfielder, who has a different swing for every occasion. He evolved from one of the league's worst defensive outfielders in 2025 to a Gold Glove finalist this fall, and also earned a Silver Slugger finalist nod in remarkably unconventional fashion.
And who knows whether or not Tristan Peters will be the final Savannah Banana nominated in Silver Slugger lore, but the White Sox outfielder is certainly the first. Will it be a revolution or blip? For now, he's a remarkably deserving curiosity.
The most brutal decisions here include a few diametrically opposed, but still similarly deserving, sets of contenders. Will the panel of MLB coaches and managers voting lean toward Hunter Goodman's eye-popping 41 home runs in a repeat bid, or Gabriel Moreno's .311 average, 16 homers and 143 OPS+? How will the group decide between two different 30-30 club shortstops in CJ Abrams and Elly De La Cruz, as well as the National League leader in base hits, Otto Lopez?
And will Kyle Schwarber's league-leading (tied with Pete Crow-Armstrong) 45 homers finally be enough to topple Shohei Ohtani, who just finished an injury-marred down year that looks like his competitors' best work? These two went head-to-head for NL DH honors last season and Schwarber came up short in his quest for his first Silver Slugger since 2022. It seems like there's no better time than the present to expand his trophy case, but ... Ohtani remains fairly undeniable.
History will be made on Tues., Nov. 17. The Pirates are the only team without a Silver Slugger win since 2021, and they're in pursuit of their first win since all the way back in 2015, with Lowe among the final two NL second baseman. Trout will look to extend his active lead in individual Silver Sluggers by adding a 10th to his trophy case. Bregman's fifth career finalist nod comes with his third different team, joining Luis Arraez and Juan Soto in that category.
No matter who gets crowned, the lineup will be a special one, and plenty is at stake in less than two weeks when the full roster is revealed exclusively on The Baseball Insiders and FanSided.
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