The Gold Glove awards are given each year to the best defensive player by position in each league. The Silver Slugger awards are also given each year by position with the difference being that they are given to the best offensive players. There is some overlap. For example, this year Ivan Rodriguez received both awards at catcher this year in the American League. Jim Edmonds received both in the National League outfield.

But if you can't have both, what's more important, a great offense or a great defense? We took the players who won the 2003 awards and placed them on teams. There were four teams in all, AL Gold Glovers, NL Gold Glovers, AL Sliver Sluggers and NL Silver Sluggers. We gave them the exact same pitching staffs, comprised mostly of slightly above average pitchers for 2003 (like John Garland, Randy Wolf, Jorge Julio, etc.). We then played four simulated seasons using the Strat-O-Matic computer baseball game. (Strat-O-Matic is the most sophistocated simulation game with in-depth offensive and defensive ratings for each player). Here are the results:

• A Silver Slugger team won the pennant all four times (three by the NL).
• The other Silver Slugger team came in second three times.
• AL Gold Glovers came in last every time.

The answer then is: great hitting beats great defense. While we did only use one season of awards, after seeing the results, it makes sense. The difference between an average hitter and the best hitters is larger than the difference between an average fielder and the best fielders.