Maikel Garcia’s Silver Slugger snub will have Royals fans feeling unwanted déjà vu

While the Royals are surely celebrating their face of the franchise in Bobby Witt Jr. capturing his second consecutive Silver Slugger Award on Friday, there were three other Kansas City hitters up for awards at their respective position as well.

It seemed unrealistic to think every one of their nominees would take home honors, but after the winners were announced on The Baseball Insiders YouTube channel, there was likely one question that was on the minds of the Royals faithful.

Where was Maikel Garcia?

After seeming like the frontrunner in the utility category, Garcia somehow fell short of victory, with the group of MLB coaches voting on the award favoring Zach McKinstry of the Detroit Tigers.

What makes this an even more painful pill to swallow is that this isn’t the first time Garcia has been overlooked for McKinstry.

Maikel Garcia’s Silver Slugger snub will have Royals fans remembering All-Star replacement fiasco

Just months ago, after the initial nods for the 2025 Midsummer Classic were handed out, the inevtiable wave of replacements needed to be made.

Garcia was among the names who weren’t initially named All-Stars but held a great shot at receiving one of those coveted replacement nods.

However, time-after-time, Garcia found himself overlooked for his maiden All-Star nod, before eventually getting his time in the limelight in the 11th hour.

While some names favored over Garcia were more egregious than others, one of the names picked that was selected before him was McKinstry. It’s not that he wasn’t deserving of an All-Star spot, but it stung just the same knowing a division rival got his flowers first when it easily could’ve been Garcia.

Fast forward to Friday, and Royals fans everywhere found themselves their stuck on the same nightmare rollercoaster once again, but this time there’s no chance at redemption like there was in July.

Shocking might be an understatement, as Garcia seemed to clearly have the statistical edge over McKinstry. And to be entirely transparent and eliminate complete bias here, it seemed like Yankees’ slugger Ben Rice had a better shot over McKinstry as well.

To put things in it’s simplest form, Garcia had the better AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, he hit more home runs, drove in more RBI, stole more bases, struck out less and walked more than McKinstry.

At least if it were Rice winning it over Garcia, there was arguments to be made in certain statistical categories where Rice was superior to him.

But it’s borderline impossible to see why the coaches who voted on this award viewed McKinstry as the more worthy recipient over Garcia.

Almost every honor will have it’s snub arguments, but this one might take the cake this award season as the biggest blunder.