MLB awards futures: Bets for Gold Glove, Silver Slugger and Reliever of the Year

Gold Glove Bets

We don’t need to dive into each player hyper-specifically for this market because the logic is overlapping on a lot of these. For just over a decade now, this award has included a sabermetric portion of determining a winner, with a weighted 25 percent of the award relying on defensive metrics beyond just a manager and coach vote.

What has been interesting is that adding that sabermetric element has also seemed to influence the standard voters, and the award of late has really strongly overlapped with the best (and most available) defensive metrics many of us fans would go to, such as defensive wins above replacement and Statcast Outs Above Average.

DWAR, in particular, has been a very strong proxy for this award, so naturally the best start to look for value in the current market is to look at dWAR projections for 2024 and see what players pop compared to their current odds. 

Doing so made a common pattern appear: Young players potentially stepping into more playing time.

In generations past, these types of players likely wouldn’t be any real threat to the GG award because the established name at the position was just handed it again year after year. However, in recent seasons, that hasn’t proven to be the case. Anthony Volpe won for AL SS last season in his rookie season. Andres Gimenez won at 2B in 2022, his first full season in the league. Jeremy Pena, Jonah Heim, Brenton Doyle, Trent Grisham, Jose Trevino — these are all players who have won a Gold Glove in the past two seasons alone.

This award is farrrrrrr from the “give it to the big name” award it once was. It’s more like a “control + sort WAR leaderboard” many awards have become. Just this time it’s defensive WAR. 

Nicky Lopez projects right next to the top tier of second basemen on a per-inning basis, and the results from last season matched that, so the biggest thing will be staying in the lineup all season. Thankfully, the White Sox are pure trash and have no reason not to roll him out there every day and see if there’s anything there.

Jose Siri and Johan Rojas both benefit from center field roles that will be theirs to start the season. Both were Gold Glove-caliber on a per inning basis last year, and while Siri may have to compete with Josh Lowe for center field innings once Lowe returns from injury, he’s such a strong outfielder that if he can bank some center field WAR while Lowe is out, he’ll be in a good position by the end of season.

Zac Gallen is a very sturdy pitcher with a strong defensive reputation in a very injury prone pool of players at the NL pitcher spot. By Eno Sarris’ health grades, he’s the shortest odds pitcher in this market with better than a ‘C’ health grade.

Bryce Harper is a look from fellow Action Network baseball savant Anthony Dabbundo, who likes Harper to excel at first base now that he’s had a half season to adjust to the position.

Finally, Patrick Bailey is just mispriced compared to the market. He should be a notable favorite. He’s the best defensive catcher in baseball rather handily, and while Gabriel Moreno (who is priced like the favorite at +100) is a strong young catcher, he’s not in Bailey’s class and certainly shouldn’t be favored over Bailey.

Silver Slugger Bets

The Silver Slugger hasn’t had as changes as notable as the Gold Glove in recent years, and the award is pretty straight forward — it’s the best hitter at each position in each league. Going through recent seasons, it’s pretty much just a “control + sort wRC+” contest, but with some nuances like Luis Arraez winning last season, so there’s definitely some narrative to this award. 

However, with these bets, I was pretty much just looking for undervalued hitters (skewing slightly toward the slugging side of things) in their current markets.

All three of these hitters are guys I am on in a variety of ways this season, so none of the three are particularly surprising. For Swanson, I like targeting a market where Mookie Betts is the heavy favorite, but I am with folks in thinking that either by trade or just realignment, he might not end the season there. 

Reliever of the Year Bets

Finally, this award is also relatively new. It came into being in 2014 to replace the Delivery Man of the Year Award, and the Rolaids Relief Award before that. (The Rolaids Relief Award is such a perfect example of a heinous marketing ploy that became so ingrained that it also carries a likable nostalgia hit now, kind of like how the Staples Center in L.A. almost never made you think of the big box store, and was dearly missed when they changed to Crypto.com Arena, which is just as craven).

The award has almost always been handed out to the closer with the best ERA that season. Devin Williams won the award as a setup man in 2020, but that was a COVID-shortened season, and Josh Hader won with just 12 saves in 2018, but he was the closer by the end of the season. Of the 20 winners, 14 have had an ERA under 2.00, with the highest ever being Hader in 2019 at 2.62. 

So basically we want a filthy closer with the ability to post a really low ERA. These pitchers offer that exact potential and at really solid betting numbers. In fact, I put this award last because it is least known, but these are some of my favorites from the whole article. 

By The Bat projections at FanGraphs, Emmanuel Clase has the lowest projected ERA among current closers, with Jhoan Duran (currently hurt) second. After that, though, it’s Munoz then Alvarado. Scott just 0.29 off that pace, and Scott actually ranks best by Pitching+ of the latter three. 

Closer is such a volatile position that I like targeting longer shots here, with Clase the exception because he just pops off the chart so much (he ranks first among closers in Pitching+). All of these guys have the ability to go low with their ERA and put together a Reliever of the Year Award-winning season.