Silver Slugger voters just proved they prefer new blood to Blue Jays icon

A third Silver Slugger award wasn't in the cards for Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Despite an impressive regular season for the home grown star, Guerrero didn't get the votes he needed to beat out Nick Kurtz of the Athletics.

As announced live and exclusively on The Baseball Insiders YouTube channel, the Athletics young slugger picked up his first piece of hardware in a memorable rookie season. Kurtz had a 5.4 bWAR with 36 home runs, and slashed .290/.383/.619 with a 1.002 OPS.

Silver Slugger voters just proved they prefer new blood to Blue Jays icon

While Guerrero didn't have the best year in terms of power, he was extremely effective in all the other aspects. He slashed .292/381/.467 with an .848 OPS and also hit 23 home runs. It was also a second straight year with under 100 strikeouts (94) and he accumulated the second most walks in a single season in his career with 81. He drove in 84 RBIs, and had 172 hits overall. He also had a hard hit percentage of 51% and an average exit velocity of 92.0.

Kurtz was marginally better in some of these areas. He had a hard hit percentage of 51.3% and an average exit velocity of 92.7, but his 36 home runs were the second most among all first baseman in MLB. Kurtz is certainly a deserving candidate as the 22-year-old could seemingly do no wrong in his first year in the big leagues.

He also had a signature moment to put his stamp on his Silver Slugger season, hitting four home runs in a game against the Astros in July, going 6-for-6 with eight RBIs. Guerrero didn't really have a signature game this season during the regular season, although he had several big moments in the postseason - but this award doesn't factor in those games as part of the voting process.

That voting is done by a combination of MLB coaches and managers. They are asked to use a combination of offensive statistics and their own professional opinions of the best hitters at each position to determine the award winners. This year the voters decided to go with the young gun instead of the perennial candidate.

But if Guerrero has proven anything this season it's that the investment the Blue Jays made to keep him around is an investment that is going to pay off. He'll likely spend his entire career with the Blue Jays as he'll be around for another 14-years, thanks to a $500 million extension signed in April.