Red Sox's Silver Slugger News Highlights Importance Of Alex Bregman's Free Agency

Championships don't correlate directly to the amount of Silver Slugger winners a team has, but it's also not a bad indicator.

Major League Baseball announced this year's Silver Slugger finalists on Thursday, and as one might expect, the teams with names all over the lists did well in the playoffs. The Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers, this year's World Series participants, each had four finalists, which tied for the most in all of baseball.

But the Boston Red Sox? They had just one finalist, and in a classic twist of fate, that finalist is the one player whose offseason fate will most strongly dictate the club's future, one way or another.

Red Sox can't afford to let Bregman's power go

Third baseman Alex Bregman, a former Silver Slugger winner in 2019, was named a finalist alongside the Tampa Bay Rays' Junior Caminero and the Cleveland Guardians' José Ramírez.

It's highly improbable that Bregman will win -- Caminero mashed 45 home runs to Bregman's 18, and Ramírez had 30 bombs, 44 stolen bases, and an OPS 42 points higher than the Boston star. But the larger point is that no other Boston player was a finalist at any other position.

One could argue that Trevor Story was snubbed, though the AL is chock-full of star shortstops. And rookie star Roman Anthony might win a half-dozen Silver Sluggers if he stays healthy throughout his eight-year extension.

But the Red Sox can't afford to let one of their only sure things walk out the door this winter, even if Bregman's contract is destined to age somewhat poorly as he enters his mid-thirties. And there are even more factors to the story that prove the point.

For one, Bregman's leadership is crucial to the Red Sox's success, as Anthony and fellow youngsters Marcelo Mayer and Kristian Campbell try to establish themselves as big-league stalwarts.

Then, one has to consider the role Bregman's arrival this year played in Rafael Devers' departure. Devers won two Silver Sluggers in a Red Sox uniform, and he just turned 29, so he'll have a shot to win a couple more across the country in San Francisco.

Slugging wins in the postseason, and even if Bregman returns, the Red Sox don't project to have enough of it next season. But if they let the three-time All-Star walk, they could be starting from square one.

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