2025 Bill James Awards

The piece below is not endorsed by Bill James, writer and sabermetrician, or, for that matter, anyone else named Bill James. Mr. James did not contribute to this piece and I make no claim that it expresses his views.

It's award season in MLB. Gold Gloves, Silver Sluggers, MVPs ... it's a lot of fun, so let's review some other, less official awards that should be recognized. Some of these were inspired by The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract or The Politics of Glory, while others are just off-the-wall trivia. For this season, we'll distribute:

• The George Grantham Award, for above-average performance in every offensive statistic.
• The other George Grantham Award, for errors at a key defensive position.
• The George Brett Citation, for exceptionally balanced offensive skills. Related awards include the Barry Bonds Distinction and the Ben Revere Demerit.
• The Joe Morgan Award. This honors the best percentage player in baseball, not poor announcing.
• The Ichiro Suzuki Award, for putting the most balls in play. The Adam Dunn Trophy recognizes the opposite.
• The Craig Biggio "little stats" award.
• The Billy Hamilton Award, for ideal leadoff hitter.
• The Ernie Lombardi Award, for great hitting despite slowness afoot.
• The other Ernie Lombardi award, for worst GDP rate.
• The Jim Palmer Award, for outperforming one's FIP, and its opposite (for being underrated by ERA), the Nolan Ryan Trophy.
• The Ned Garvin Trophy, recognizing valorous performance by a pitcher on a bad team.
• The Sandy Koufax Award and the Milt Gaston Award, for most and fewest Fibonacci Win Points, respectively.
• The Ozzie Guillen Trophy for fewest walks per plate appearance.
• Also some quick ones: the Tris Speaker Medal, the Sam Crawford Medal, the Mulcahy Award, and the Roger Maris Decoration (for the best hitter without an IBB).

GEORGE GRANTHAM AWARD

Bill James has written about this on several occasions ... he searched for players who played a minimum number of games, played a key defensive position, and were above-average in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, doubles per at-bat, triples per at-bat, home runs per at-bat, runs per at-bat, RBI per at-bat, stolen bases per at-bat, walks per at-bat, and strikeouts per at-bat. The only two players in history who met such a standard were Willie Mays and George Grantham (or Jackie Robinson and Grantham, depending on where you set the minimum number of games).

Each year, I like to look whether there was anyone in the Major Leagues that season who met that same standard, except that I use per plate appearance instead of per at-bat for runs, steals, walks, and strikeouts. Conveniently, this season there was exactly one player who qualified. The 2025 winner of the George Grantham Award is Guardians third baseman José Ramírez. Among 145 qualified batters, Ramirez rated above average in every stat. I also looked at GDP/AB and SB%, and Ramirez was better than average in those categories, as well.

If you don't consider third base a "key defensive position", then no one qualifies in every category. Kyle Tucker also would qualify if we don't care about defense. I don't think we can count Shohei Ohtani as playing a key defensive position , but he had more strikeouts (as a batter) than average, missing in just that one category. Arizona shortstop Geraldo Perdomo also came close, but he was short on home runs. By the spirit of the award, I think Ramirez and Perdomo are the top two this year.

THE OTHER GEORGE GRANTHAM AWARD

Grantham was a good hitter, but he was a notoriously bad fielder, nicknamed "Boots" because of his tendency to boot the ball. In about 850 games at second base, he was charged with 250 errors and compiled a .949 fielding percentage. He led NL second basemen in errors three times, and finished in the "top" four in four other years, including 1931, when he played only 51 games at second base but committed 23 errors, third-most in the league.

In 2025, no one had more errors than Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz. He rated as a below-average but essentially viable shortstop (and thus, as a defensive asset), but he made 26 errors and put up a .955 fielding percentage, so De La Cruz wins the bad George Grantham Award. While Grantham was certainly a poor fielder, this award does not necessarily reflect defensive value. It's just about errors, or boots, as it were. Other contenders included CJ Abrams (22, .962), Anthony Volpe (19, .963), and Junior Caminero (18, .945).

GEORGE BRETT CITATION

Batting average has long been the holy grail of offensive stats. "He's a .300 hitter." Say no more, that's all we need to know.

This is, of course, inadequate to judge the best players ... but there's an element of truth in it. Bill James noticed that batters will normally match their hit total in two other categories: secondary bases, and runs plus RBI. Secondary bases include walks, extra bases, and stolen bases minus caught stealing. When we talk about that .300 hitter, we're assuming he has a secondary average close to .300, and that he scores or drives in about 1 run per hit. When that assumption holds, batting average delivers a fairly accurate picture of the player's offensive production.

In the history of the game, George Brett — and this is from James' New Historical Abstract — "has the most balanced offensive skills—that is, he is the one who most nearly matches his hit total in the other two columns ... Brett is the one player whose career hit total or batting average most accurately reflects his overall offensive contribution."

Who was this year's George Brett, the player whose hit total or batting average most accurately describes his offensive contribution? It was Ryan O'Hearn. He ended the season with 133 hits, 134 secondary bases, and 130 runs scored or driven in. O'Hearn's .281 BA gives us a very accurate sense for his performance this season. Other contenders for the the Brett Citation include Brenton Doyle (117 hits, 118 secondary bases, 114 runs + RBI), Ozzie Albies (145, 141, 148), Jose Altuve (156, 163, 157), and Trevor Larnach (126, 130, 122).

On the other side, unbalanced offensive players, we find those who are better than their batting average implies, and those who are worse. The latter category is led by Luis Arráez (181 hits, 103 secondary bases, 127 R+RBI). Other "worse than batting average" performers included Xavier Edwards (159, 108, 118), Chase Meidroth (114, 85, 77), Jacob Wilson (151, 95, 125), Nico Hoerner (178, 120, 150), and Ernie Clement (154, 91, 133). Let's give Arraez the Ben Revere Demerit for being significantly less productive than his .292 batting average implies.

On the other side, players who out-performed their BA, we find Kyle Schwarber (145 H, 311 SecB, 243 R+RBI), Cal Raleigh (147, 311, 235), Juan Soto (152, 312, 225), Shohei Ohtani (172, 331, 248), and Eugenio Suárez (134, 224, 209). Schwarber, who batted .240 but pounded 56 HR and led the majors in RBI, earns the Barry Bonds Distinction. Raleigh, who hit .247, had the third-highest OPS+ (169) and wRC+ (161) in the majors, trailing only Aaron Judge and Ohtani.

BEST PERCENTAGE PLAYER

What began as Bill James' quest for a sort of "baseball IQ" eventually identified Joe Morgan as the best "percentage player" in history. James' formula was 30% fielding percentage, 30% stolen base percentage, 30% walk-to-strikeout ratio, and 10% walks per at-bat. It's a rough system, but it produces intuitive results. James looked for the best percentage players in history, but who was the best in 2025?

HBT's John Walsh did something like this in 2006, but he still looked at career numbers. I'm just looking at this one season, so there's some small-sample noise and you shouldn't draw any sweeping conclusions from the results. Neither Walsh nor I could tell how James scaled his results, and I will not pretend my methodology was rigorous, but the 2025 Joe Morgan Award goes to Juan Soto.

Soto's fielding percentage this year was .996, his stolen base percentage was 90.5% (38 SB, 4 CS), he walked 0.93 times for every strikeout (127 BB, 137 SO), and he walked in 17.8% of his plate appearances. Other than the fielding percentage, those are all top-10 in MLB. Other exceptional percentage players included Cody Bellinger and Bryce Harper (and Kyle Tucker and George Springer if you don't care about fielding). At key defensive positions, you'd probably go with Nico Hoerner. He fielded .994, averaged 83% on stolen base attempts (29 SB, 6 CS), and ranked 12th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (39 BB, 49 SO). Obviously, the raw walk rate is low (6%), but just putting that many balls in play, in 2025, seems like it deserves some kind of award.

The worst percentage players this season included Eugenio Suarez, Hunter Goodman, and Yainer Díaz, but the Dr. Strangeglove Award goes to Royals utility player Jonathan India. India fielded just .966, he was 0/4 on stolen base attempts, and he walked only half as often as he struck out (54 BB, 106 SO), which actually isn't a terrible percentage these days, but also isn't good enough to rescue him from his fielding and stolen base percentages.

ICHIRO SUZUKI AWARD

New award. I joked about this for Nico Hoerner above, but I think there really should be an award for putting the most balls in play. This year it goes to Padres first baseman Luis Arraez (610). Arraez had 675 PA, but only 8 HR, 34 BB, 21 SO, and 2 HBP, while leading the NL in hits (181). Runners-up were Steven Kwan (564 BIP) and Hoerner (547). As a percentage of plate appearances, the highest rate of balls in play is still Arraez (90.4%) — by far — followed by Hoerner (84.3%) and Jacob Wilson (83.6%).

At the other end of the spectrum, the Adam Dunn Trophy is awarded to Mike Trout, who had only 556 PA, but 26 HR, 87 BB, 178 SO, and 6 HBP (297 total). Trout only put the ball in play on 46.4% of his plate appearances this season. The other Dunn Trophy contenders were Kyle Schwarber (48.6%) and Aaron Judge (49.3%).

KING OF LITTLE STATS

One of the fun things that happens when you study stats is you occasionally find players who are underrated because we tend to ignore little stats. In baseball, there are lots of "little stats" we don't usually pay attention to, because individually they are seldom an important part of a player's profile. In 2014 I wrote a whole article applying this to Nolan Ryan, and I still think that's a really interesting read. Taken together, these little things can add up, and players with these almost invisible skills can end up on the short end of traditional evaluations. I looked at BB, HBP, SB, CS, SF, SH, 2B, 3B, and GIDP to find this year's Craig Biggio, the King of Little Stats. There's no obvious standout right now, like Biggio was in the 1990s, or Mike Trout in the early 2010s. But this year's Little Thing King is Geraldo Perdomo.

Consider that Perdomo:

• Walked 94 times (tied for 7th)
• Got hit by 10 pitches, one of only 22 batters with double-digit plunks
• Stole 27 bases (tied for 19th) at 82% efficiency
• Had 11 sac flies and 8 sacrifice bunts, tied for the highest combined total in the majors
• Hit 33 doubles and 5 triples (tied for 16th in non-HR extra-base hits in MLB)
• Grounded into 11 double plays in 597 at-bats, which is not elite but is better than average

He's in the top 25 for almost everything, literally number one for sacrifices.

Corbin Carroll, Jarren Duran, and Bobby Witt Jr. — the kings of doubles and triples — were very close. If you don't consider BB a little stat, you could go with Pete Crow-Armstrong or CJ Abrams, or Witt.

BILLY HAMILTON AWARD

In 2014, I created a formula to find the ideal leadoff hitter. The idea was that players who would make the best leadoff hitters are normally too valuable to use in the leadoff position. Bill James wrote in his New Historical Abstract, “All of the greatest leadoff men … would be guys who aren’t leadoff men, starting with Ted Williams … if you had two Ted Williamses, and could afford to use one of them as a leadoff man, he would be the greatest leadoff man who ever lived.”

Every method I’ve seen to determine great leadoff batters produces names like Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Mickey Mantle … players who are probably better suited to the second through fourth spots in the batting order. You can read more about this over at FanGraphs, but I devised a formula that I think really works, and it suggests that Sliding Billy Hamilton, who starred for the Phillies and Braves in the 1890s, is the one player in history that, no matter who else was on the team, he would be the optimal leadoff man. Hamilton hit .344/.455/.432 and stole over 900 bases. He led the majors in OBP four times, had three times as many walks as extra-base hits, and was the greatest base stealer of his generation.

So who is this year's Hamilton Award winner? It's Nico Hoerner, with a .363 leadoff rating. Hoerner had a .345 OBP but only 7 HR. Runners-up include TJ Friedl (.355 LOR), Sal Frelick (.347), and Trea Turner (.340).

This year's lowest leadoff rating, by far, belongs to Eugenio Suarez (.084), who had a .298 OBP but slugged .526. Cal Raleigh (.105) was the only player close to him. Suarez wins the Tony Armas Award.

ERNIE LOMBARDI AWARD

I have always been fascinated by Ernie Lombardi. Many people have written eloquent and/or humorous stories about the man and his career, and I won't re-hash them here. Something you probably know is that Lombardi was slow. There are dozens, probably hundreds, of stories about his slowness. He would hit apparent doubles and barely beat the throw to first. Bill James wrote that Lombardi was "surely the slowest player ever to play major league baseball well."

And that's what we're looking for, this year's slowest player to play major league baseball well. There are about half a dozen ways I thought of to measure this, but I decided on a simple formula: BA - BABIP. This year that produces a slightly unsatisfying answer: the Lombardi Award winner is Junior Caminero, with a modest score of +.004. He actually tied with Jose Ramirez, who is ineligible because he stole 44 bases. The only other player with a positive score was Luis Arraez.

The Nick Punto Award this year goes to Jordan Beck, who hit .093 lower than his BABIP. Actually, James Wood hit .094 lower, but he's a little too good a hitter to win an award named after Nick Punto.

THE OTHER ERNIE LOMBARDI AWARD

Lombardi grounded into the most double plays per at-bat of any player in major league history, by far. This year's GDP/AB leader was ... Junior Caminero, who led the majors in GDP (31). No one else had more than 20.

However, Chase Meidroth had by far the most appalling GDP/RBI. Given that opportunities for both tend to overlap, this is perhaps more fair than GDP/AB. The five worst ratios:

5. Ben Rice: 65 RBI, 18 GDP

4. Junior Caminero: 110 RBI, 31 GDP

3. Trevor Larnach: 60 RBI, 19 GDP

2. Carlos Correa: 52 RBI, 19 GDP

1. Chase Meidroth: 23 RBI, 14 GDP

That has to be one of the worst rates in history.

At the opposite end of the spectrum (the good end) are Byron Buxton, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch, and Kyle Schwarber. They combined for 400 RBI and 7 GDP. That's 35 times better than Meidroth.

Buxton (83 RBI, 0 GDP) wins the Johnny Mize Medal. Mize retired with 1,337 RBI and just 99 GDP, the best ratio (13.5-to-1) in history.

JIM PALMER AWARD

Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) is based on strikeouts, walks, and home runs. FIP focuses on what a pitcher can control and tries to strip out his fielders' performances. It is scaled to ERA, so a pitcher with average luck should have a very similar ERA and FIP. This is the basis for pitchers' fWAR, but in addition to fWAR, FanGraphs also calculates RA9-WAR, which does the opposite: it assumes a pitcher is responsible for everything that happens while he's on the mound, and charges him with all runs, not accounting for fielding errors.

This prize goes to the pitcher who most outperformed his FIP, the one with the biggest positive gap between RA9-WAR and fWAR. The winner this year is Gavin Williams, whose ERA (3.06) was more than a run below his FIP (4.39), leading to an RA9-WAR/fWAR differential of 4.2 to 1.4. Other candidates included Noah Cameron and Freddy Peralta.

The opposite distinction, the Nolan Ryan Trophy, this year goes to the Padres' Dylan Cease, who finished the season with a 4.55 ERA but a 3.56 FIP. Cease, who led the majors in K/9 (11.5), had 3.4 fWAR but only 1.1 RA9-WAR. Tyler Alexander and Devin Williams were the other contenders.

I also considered naming this award after Voros McCracken. Thanks, Voros.

NED GARVIN TROPHY

Ned Garvin played from 1899-1904, plus two games in 1896. In just six seasons, Garvin compiled 18.7 bWAR and 18.9 fWAR. He was a good pitcher. Garvin retired with a 2.72 ERA (79 ERA-) and a 57-97 record (.370). He pitched well, but on terrible teams.

This year's Garvin Trophy, for a good pitcher on a bad team, goes to the Nats' MacKenzie Gore. He went 5-15, a .250 winning percentage, despite having a slightly above-average year (90 FIP- and 99 ERA-). The Nationals averaged 3.83 runs in Gore's starts, compared to 4.64 when he wasn't on the mound. Gore earned 3.0 bWAR and 2.9 fWAR.

Gore got no decision in the season opener, when he pitched 6 scoreless innings, with 13 strikeouts, 1 hit, and no walks or hit batsmen. He also got no decision in late May, when he pitched six scoreless innings, allowing 4 singles and no walks, with 8 strikeouts. He lost his previous start, when he allowed one run in six innings but the Nats got shut out. In five starts with a Game Score of at least 70, Gore went 2-1 with two no decisions.

SANDY KOUFAX AWARD

In 1994's The Politics of Glory (later republished as Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?), Bill James introduced a method he called Fibonacci Win Points, for evaluating pitcher won-lost records. "The formula is simple: the pitcher's wins times his winning percentage, plus his games over .500. If a pitcher's winning percentage is close to Fibonacci's number (.618), then his win points will be about the same as his [actual number of] wins." This formula allowed James, who placed more emphasis on wins than most modern analysts, to boost great pitchers with short careers (like Sandy Koufax and Dizzy Dean) up the career rankings while still keeping wins at the center of his analysis.

By this method, of course, the top-ranked pitcher of 2025 was the Yankees' Max Fried, who led the AL in both wins (19-5) and winning percentage (.792). That earns him 29 win points. Other high scorers were Garrett Crochet (18-5, 27 win points) and Freddy Peralta (17-6, 24 win points).

MILT GASTON AWARD

The flip side of the Koufax Award is Milt Gaston. James found that Gaston, with a lifetime record of 97-164, had the lowest career mark, -31 win points. Gaston, a right-handed pitcher who bounced around the American League from 1924-34, led the majors in losses twice (1926 and 1930), once gave up the most home runs and the most earned runs (1927), and led MLB in wild pitches in 1929. He received MVP votes in 1929 and 1930 and retired with 16.2 bWAR and 19.4 fWAR. Gaston lived to be 100 and died in 1996.

This year's Gaston Award Winner is Germán Márquez, who went 3-16 (.158) and ended up with -13 win points (actually -12.53, but I'm rounding to whole numbers). The next-lowest scorers were his Rockies teammates Kyle Freeland (5-17, -11 win points) and Antonio Senzatela (4-15, -10 win points). Outside of Colorado, this year's lowest scorers were MacKenzie Gore (5-15, -9 win points) and Erick Fedde (4-13, -8 win points), who had a losing record with three different teams this season.

And now some quick ones...

OZZIE GUILLEN TROPHY

No one walked less this season than Michael Harris II. In 2025, Harris made 641 plate appearances yet walked only 16 times, once every 40 PA. The runners-up are Lenyn Sosa (18 BB, 544 PA) and Yainer Diaz (20 BB, 567 PA). The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract includes an Ozzie Guillén Trophy for each decade of organized baseball through the 1990s.

James did not award a Ted Williams Trophy for plate discipline, but this year Aaron Judge walked in 18.3% of his plate appearances (124 BB, 679 PA). Runners-up included Juan Soto (127 BB, 715 PA) and Marcell Ozuna (94 BB, 592 PA). Soto and Ozuna might actually be more deserving because so many of Judge's walks were intentional.

TRIS SPEAKER MEDAL

Bobby Witt led the majors in doubles this season, 47, edging Bo Bichette, 44.

SAM CRAWFORD MEDAL

No one pays much attention to the annual triples leader, but this season it was Corbin Carroll, 17. Jarren Duran (13), Jung Hoo Lee (12), Zach McKinstry (11), and Daylen Lile (11) were the only other players in double-digits. Carroll won this award last year, as well, tied with Duran (14). The last player to hit at least 17 triples in a season was Jose Reyes in 2008 (19).

ROGER MARIS DECORATION

In 1961, Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's single-season home run record and tallied a 167 OPS+ and 162 wRC+, but he was not intentionally walked all season. This season's Maris Decoration goes to Ben Rice of the Yankees. Rice earned a 131 OPS+ and 133 wRC+, making him a top-25 batter, but he had zero intentional walks. Rice hit in front of Aaron Judge for 51 games, but Maris hit before Mickey Mantle in 138 games. Geraldo Perdomo, who hit even better than Rice and was only intentionally walked once, was a close second.

MULCAHY AWARD

Named for Hugh "Losing Pitcher" Mulcahy, this is given to the pitcher with the most losses in the season. This year, that's Kyle Freeland, who finished 5-17. I feel bad for pitchers in Colorado even when the team doesn't lose 119 games, but this year was rough. Tanner Gordon led the team with six wins (6-8), and four different Rockies pitchers lost double-digit games. Freeland led the Rockies' starters with a 4.98 ERA. Tanner's ERA was 6.33, and all the other starters were over 6.50. The only Rockie to start a game this year and finish the season with a winning record was rookie Ryan Rolison, who in June pitched a scoreless first inning against the Mets and got no decision (the Mets won 4-2), but got a win in relief in August and finished 1-0.

George Grantham Award — Jose Ramirez, CLE

George Brett Citation — Ryan O'Hearn, BAL-SD

Barry Bonds Distinction — Kyle Schwarber, PHI

Joe Morgan Award — Juan Soto, NYM

Ichiro Suzuki Award — Luis Arraez, SD

Adam Dunn Trophy — Mike Trout, LAA

Craig Biggio Crown — Geraldo Perdomo, ARI

Billy Hamilton Award — Nico Hoerner, CHC

Ernie Lombardi Award — Junior Caminero, TB

Johnny Mize Medal — Byron Buxton, MIN

Jim Palmer Award — Gavin Williams, CLE

Nolan Ryan Trophy — Dylan Cease, SD

Ned Garvin Trophy — MacKenzie Gore, WAS

Sandy Koufax Award — Max Fried, NYY

Ozzie Guillen Trophy — Michael Harris, ATL

Ted Williams Trophy — Aaron Judge, NYY

Tris Speaker Medal — Bobby Witt, KC

Sam Crawford Medal — Corbin Carroll, ARI

Roger Maris Decoration — Ben Rice, NYY

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