Carlos Santana and Willi Castro could bring home another big award for the Twins

While the Minnesota Twins might not have done a lot winning down the stretch of the season, Carlos Santana is doing his best to try and make up for is now. After winning his first-ever Gold Glove over the weekend, Santana is up for yet another award after MLB announced this year's finalists for the Silver Slugger Award.

Santana is a finalist for at first base, and is joined by illustrious company in Vladimir Guerreruo Jr. and Josh Naylor. His competition is a little stiffer than what it was for his Gold Glove, but that doesn't mean it's not awesome to see him getting honored for one of his best seasons in recent years.

He's also not the only Twins player up for the award.

Willi Castro's breakout season continues to be honored, as he was also named a Silver Slugger Award finalist. He's up against Baltimore's Jordan Westburg and Rangers utility man Josh Smith, and it would be his first award of the year after he missed out on winning a Gold Glove.

Carlos Santana and Willi Castro are both Silver Slugger Award finalists

Here's the complete list of Silver Slugger Award finalists this year:

Santana won his first-ever Gold Glove this year, becoming the oldest position player in baseball history to win the award. If he follows that with a Silver Slugger Award, it would be the second time he's earned the honor in his career having last won the award back in 2019.

The way Minnesota's season ended has colored so much of how we're remembering the year as a whole, but this serves as another reminder that things weren't as bad as they seemed. There's no defending the last month of the season, but what made the historic collapse so hard to stomach was how good the Twins looked right up until that point.

So much has been made about the team's near-90 percent chance of making the playoffs and how they blew it, but lost in that is how they got there in the first place. Santana winning a Gold Glove and both he and Castro ending up as finalists for yet another award is a reminder of how nicely the offense was humming for most of the summer.

Knowing how good the team was playing makes the collapse sting even more, but it clearly doesn't erase the good stuff that was happening. With Santana, the nomination serves as further proof that the Twins were right to gamble on him last winter.

Santana was the team's annual aging veterean signing, and while it took a while for him to get going he's not ended up as a finalists for two awards while winning one of them. That's not a bad return for a $5.25 million deal, but it might end up pricing him out of Minnesota's future since he'll be looking to parlay his season into a nocer payday this winter.

That's a bridge we can cross later, as right now all that matters is Santana and Castro are giving Twins fans something to cheer about.

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