CINCINNATI -- If Felipe Lopez's mission as the Reds' shortstop was to follow in the footsteps of Barry Larkin, he's certainly off to a good start.

Lopez was named a winner of Louisville Slugger's National League Silver Slugger Award on Monday for offensive excellence at his position. He is the first Reds player to win the award since Larkin himself did so in 1999.

Lopez's breakout 2005 season -- in which he became an NL All-Star, hit .291 and became only the third shortstop in team history with at least 20 home runs (23) and 80 RBIs (85) in the same year -- came despite the fact that he wasn't the team's regular starter at the position until early May.

In fact, Lopez came into Spring Training in '05 without a guaranteed spot on the big-league roster. He was, at that point, a wayward prospect who had yet to prove himself in the Majors.

But he was confident.

"I knew, one day, I'd break through and figure it out," Lopez said earlier this year.

This was the season in which he did so. Lopez added stability and consistency to the top of the order, and his production rivaled that of just about any shortstop in baseball.

Not bad for a kid getting his first taste of an everyday job in the bigs.

The 25-year-old Puerto Rican prepared himself for that first taste with a grueling offseason conditioning program. He reported to camp looking fit, muscular and ready to compete with veteran Rich Aurilia for the starting job.

But when camp broke, it was Aurilia's name on the Opening Day lineup. And Lopez had to sit and wait for an opportunity.

Toward the end of April, with Aurilia and second baseman D'Angelo Jimenez struggling at the plate, those opportunities began to come for Lopez in the middle infield. And by May 11, when Aurilia went down with a hamstring injury, Lopez officially took over.

The numbers he put up from that point were nothing to scoff at.

2005 Silver Slugger Award winners
American League		National League
1B - Mark Teixeira, TEX 2B - Alfonso Soriano, TEX 3B - Alex Rodriguez, NYY SS - Miguel Tejada, BAL OF - Vladimir Guerrero, LAA OF - Manny Ramirez, BOS OF - Gary Sheffield, NYY C   - Jason Varitek, BOS DH - David Ortiz, BOS		1B - Derrek Lee, CHC 2B - Jeff Kent, LAD 3B - Morgan Ensberg, HOU SS - Felipe Lopez, CIN OF - Andruw Jones, ATL OF - Miguel Cabrera, FLA OF - Carlos Lee, MIL C   - Michael Barrett, CHC P   - Jason Marquis, STL
Complete 2005 coverage | All time winners >

Lopez led all NL shortstops in home runs and RBIs and tied Milwaukee's Bill Hall for the lead in extra-base hits (62). He ranked second among NL shortstops in slugging percentage (.486) and total bases (282), was third in hitting (.291), on-base percentage (.352) and doubles (34) and ranked fifth in hits (169) and runs scored (97).

Numbers like those could have Lopez, who is up for salary arbitration this offseason, on track to follow the path of the well-respected Larkin.

"That's a lot of pressure, big shoes to fill," Lopez said earlier this year. "That's one of the things he used to tell me a lot, 'You cannot try to be me. What I've done took me 19 years to do.'"

But in 2005, Lopez took the first big step toward filling his predecessor's shoes quite well.