You don't necessarily have to be a career slugger to win a Silver Slugger. The annual award, presented by Louisville Slugger and earned by the most powerful presence at each position across the diamond (one honor for the American League, one for the National League), has a storied history, featuring the game's who's who racking up the accolades. But the list of winners also features ... these guys.
Remember the feeling of poring over All-Star Game rosters over time and realizing, even 10 or 15 years later, that something very strange happened here? The Silver Slugger winner archive will give you the same feeling — except, unlike the ASG, not every team requires a rep. These guys really earned it, winning the vote from a jury of their coaches and managers (one manager and three coaches per team weigh in, according to Louisville Slugger).
These Silver Slugger winners only captured a single trophy in their careers, but you can't take that away from them.
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Amazing Silver Slugger Award one-hit wonders
Morgan Ensberg, Houston Astros (2005)
2005 National League champion Morgan Ensberg wasn't just the winner at third base that season; he won it in a runaway. Two seasons removed from posting 25 homers and a 131 OPS+ in 127 games, Ensberg shrugged off a down 2004 by bashing 36 home runs, driving in 101 runs and finishing fourth in the NL MVP voting before the 'Stros swapped leagues. That .945 OPS and World Series appearance represented Ensberg's peak at the age of 29, but it wasn't a bad one. Nevertheless, he was surprisingly out of baseball three years later.
Jeff Blauser, Atlanta Braves (1997)
Blauser, the light-hitting stalwart infielder on the mid-90s Braves, saw his offense tick up a few times throughout his career, most notably in 1993 and 1997, both All-Star seasons. He finished his final year in Atlanta by hitting .308 with 17 home runs and an .886 OPS. Notably, Blauser's Silver Slugger win came right in the heart of the period that redefined what it meant to be a slugging shortstop. Soon, players like Alex Rodriguez would dwarf those power numbers. In 1997, though? Blauser types still reigned supreme.
Johnny Estrada, Atlanta Braves (2004)
Estrada's first full season as an MLB starter at the age of 28 earned him a trip to the All-Star Game and the Silver Slugger win as the NL's preeminent catcher. He was barely on the map in 2003, playing just 16 big-league games for the Braves and mostly toiling at Triple-A Richmond. The very next year? A .314 average, 76 RBI and some down-ballot MVP votes (he finished 18th). Estrada, out of baseball by 2008, put up one more solid offensive season with the 2006 Diamondbacks, but never again posted an OPS+ above the league-average mark of 100.
Michael Barrett, Chicago Cubs (2005)
Tough mid-2000s at the catcher position in the National League, folks!
Michael "Don't Call Me Marty" Barrett's win followed Estrada's, as he hit .276 with 16 home runs in 133 games for the North Siders. The next year, White Sox catcher AJ Pierzynski hit Barrett in the face harder than the Cubbies catcher had hit any baseball the previous season.
Adam Lind, Toronto Blue Jays (2009)
Slugging Blue Jays first baseman/DH Adam Lind had a very "Brandon Belt-like" end to his MLB career, when he was somewhat surprisingly ridden out on a rail after posting a 122 OPS+ with Washington in part-time duty in 2017, his age-33 season.
His strongest full season came in '09, when he powered out 35 home runs and hit .305 with the Jays at the age of 25. The rest of Lind's career featured plenty of representative pop and 200 home runs on the dot, but he never again ascended to these award-winning heights.
Rich Aurilia, San Francisco Giants (2001)
An ultimate fan favorite in San Francisco (and notably the favorite player of a young Giants supporter named Aaron Judge), Rich Aurilia truly leveled up and crashed the national spotlight in 2001, shedding the "grinder" label in favor of the upgraded version, "grinder who can also destroy the baseball".
Aurilia raised his OPS+ year-over-year from 102 to 146, hitting .324 with a remarkable 37 homers and a league-leading 206 hits. We can hazard a guess when Judge began watching the Giants religiously (though, uh, someone else on that roster homered 73 times that season).
Damaso Garcia, Toronto Blue Jays (1982)
Damaso Garcia finished fourth in Rookie of the Year voting and made the All-Star team twice in the '80s ... and he didn't win the Silver Slugger in any of those seasons.
Instead, the honor came in 1982, when he hit .310 with five homers and 42 RBI, as was the style at the time. Garcia was an effective and pesky player during his 11-year career, eight of which came in Toronto. He wasn't exactly an offensive juggernaut, though — except in '82, when the rest of the league paled in comparison to his thunderous bat (in context).
Joe Crede, Chicago White Sox (and it was 2006, not 2005!)
Crede led the White Sox to their only modern title in 2005, bashing a pair of home runs each in the ALCS against the Angels and the World Series against Ensberg's Astros while hitting .368 and .294 in the two rounds, respectively. But it was the next season in which he earned his Silver Slugger, parlaying that October run into 30 homers, 94 RBI and an .828 OPS, all career highs.
Even odder? Crede, on his way out of the game, was named an All-Star for the first and only time in 2008, when he played just 97 games, battling injuries throughout August and September. He defected for one final year to Minnesota in 2009, then hung up his spikes.
Dee Strange-Gordon, Miami Marlins (2015)
Dee Strange-Gordon would've cleaned up Silver Sluggers in Damaso Garcia's era, but in 2015?! Typically, these awards went to powerhouses, not players who hit .333 with four home runs.
But that doesn't tell the story of Strange-Gordon's first season in Miami, in which he led the league in batting average, hits (205) and steals (58). Kudos to the Silver Slugger voters for honoring an old-school baller with blazing speed.
Of course, he had enough pop in his bat for at least one noteworthy home run, shocking the world with a leadoff homer from the right side of the plate (he's a lefty) to honor his fallen friend and teammate Jose Fernandez. Do not watch this if you want to keep your keyboard dry.
Daniel Hudson, Arizona Diamondbacks (2011)
Yes, pitchers used to win this thing, too, from Livan Hernandez (2004) to Micah Owings (2009) to Mike Hampton (repeatedly). But by far the oddest, in the rearview mirror, is Daniel Hudson, who finished his career in 2024 as a reliever in the World Series champion Dodgers' bullpen. He's best known as the man who closed out the 2019 World Series for the Nationals. He's closed out a lot of things!
But, once upon a time, he was a budding young starter who tossed 222 excellent innings on the playoff-bound 2011 Diamondbacks. He also hit .277 with a bomb in 79 plate appearances. The more you know.