It says Mike Aviles in the article, but I assume its Yastrzemski.

Just give it to the first guy listed within each grouping

No Justin Turner?

Joey Gallo - Silver Slugger finalist at DH, Gold Glove finalist in RF in the same year. That has to be a first!

Finalist? Hell, Rafael Palmeiro WON the Silver Slugger at DH and Gold Glove at 1B in 1999 based on 128 games at DH and 28 apparently transcendent games at 1B at age 34.

Joey Gallo - Silver Slugger finalist at DH, Gold Glove finalist in RF in the same year.

And bronze medal winner in synchronized swimming. And Miss Congeniality in tri-state area beauty pageant. It's been a hell of a year.

Sadly, Gallo won't win best dressed.

Mookie played only 751 innings in RF; Bradley only 722 in CF. Seems very low, right?

Mookie played only 751 innings in RF; Bradley only 722 in CF. Seems very low, right?

Apparently the rule is that you have to have played 713 total innings in the field by your team's 142nd game to be eligible. Which is why no Ke'Bryan Hayes. By the Pirates 142nd game he had played 596 innings in the field. He ended up with 766-1/3 innings at third base.

I wonder why they picked an arbitrary cutoff like the 142nd game, rather than something based on the whole season? It's not like they awarded this the day after the season ended so they needed people to vote before then.

And, again, not a Tiger in the bunch. (Then again, Detroit had a team dWAR of -7.0, with WCastro, Schoop, Grossman and Carbrea at a combined -4.3 dWAR. Ouch!)

WCastro, Schoop, Grossman and Carbrea at a combined -4.3 dWAR. Ouch!)

This is not a good use of dWAR. Approximately half of that -4.3 dWAR is just the positional adjustment (mainly for 1B, LF and DH). So every (AL) team has that among the 4 positions covered here where only Castro (mostly 2B) is expected to be an average-ish defender. That is, if each of thsoe guys was an average defender at their position(s), they would still total -2.1 dWAR. The problem is that those 4 players were -24 Rfield relative to their positional average defender when they were in the field ... but even there, the only real problem was Castro's -12. Grossman -5 and Schoop -3 are maybe below-average.

dWAR is only useful (if ever) if you are trying to compare the defensive abilities of individual players who play different positions ... something we almost never want to do. In theory it will also tell you how well a player will handle a new position but that's really just an assumption that a player's dWAR is constant across positioins (i.e. what they lose in Rpos they gain in Rfield).

For team comparisons (or groups of positions), the only thing that makes sense is to compare Rfield totals. For comparing players that play the same position, it really doesn't matter if you use Rfield or dWAR -- there are some small era differences in Rpos and ideally the players have the exact same number of innings at the exact same positions so arguably dWAR is slightly better then.

All of that leaving aside whether DRS is a good way to measure defense relative to positional average but if it's not, dWAR does us no good whatsoever.

I hadn't realized Miggy had 44 starts, 367 innings at 1B this year. Seems a bad idea for a guy that old if he's also gonna give you lousy defense.

How was Bryce Harper defensively in 2021?

Lots of cardinals on this list. It’s shocking to me that Molina can even be seriously considered. He’s so slow and immobile behind the plate now. We must have had 25 wild pitches called which were clearly passed balls.

A typical night on mlb.tv would start with the away team announcer extolling the defensive virtues of Molina… this would be followed by “well, look at that. The great Molina missed one”… followed by “wow, he really should have had that.”….. followed by silence about the third time he missed a pitch. He’s still got a good arm and is pretty good at fielding balls in front of plate but his catching of routine pitches is terrible now.

I know Lourdes Gurriel Jr was nominated last year in LF as well, but despite his Nuke Laloosh-cannon-for-an-arm, anyone who ever watched "La Pina" try to track a ball hit over his head would never accuse him of being the 3rd best LFer in the AL.

100% agree with Walt in #11. I’m of the opinion that dWar does more harm than good. Too many people either don’t understand it or intentionally mis-use it.

I’m of the opinion that dWar does more harm than good.

I've been saying this for years. It's anti-information. You put noise in one end and get crap out the other.

I used to like dWAR for Hall of Fame comps. It is a quick way to explain why Johnny Bench is in the HOF but George Foster is not, though they were teammates with identical OPS+ in careers of similar length.

But as Walt says, that's the rare occasion where one is comparing players at different positions.

Another occasion would be trades. Front offices have done something like dWAR estimates since the dawn of time, I'd imagine; if you trade George Foster for Frank Duffy, your theory must be that Duffy is going to make up the value on defense (you may be wrong in that case, but the principle is valid). But of course I don't know if dWAR itself is the best metric to use there, or much-consulted by GMs at the moment.

But yes, dWAR has the problems that it is calculated from average, not replacement; and that it doesn't add up with oWAR to produce WAR. The names of the metrics suggest otherwise and maybe it is hard for people using BRef to see that (despite many caveats in the Glossary there).

We must have had 25 wild pitches called which were clearly passed balls.

Looking at the stats, it seems like the official scorers always give the benefit of the doubt to the catcher while presuming blame on the pitcher. The ratio of the two seems to be close to 10:1 [WP:PB], which doesn't really pass the smell test, does it?

The Cards specifically did have an above-average number of WP (66), and Yadier did only get charged with 6 PB (about average for his career). Checking 2009-2012 for comparison, the Cards were below average for all years, often well below average.

I would think a major league catcher could catch most things thrown at him so I would assume most missed pitches are because of the pitcher.

I know Lourdes Gurriel Jr was nominated last year in LF as well, but despite his Nuke Laloosh-cannon-for-an-arm, anyone who ever watched "La Pina" try to track a ball hit over his head would never accuse him of being the 3rd best LFer in the AL.,

Andrew Benintendi had some mystifying gaffes out in LF this year, but tied with Gurriel for most DRS and was nominated. Hunter Renfroe made 12 errors and was nominated. Idk, I think there just usually aren't great candidates in the COF positions, there's a reason why CF would dominate when they didn't make that positional distinction.

Looking at the stats, it seems like the official scorers always give the benefit of the doubt to the catcher while presuming blame on the pitcher. The ratio of the two seems to be close to 10:1 [WP:PB], which doesn't really pass the smell test, does it?

I would guess that a very high percentage of WP/PB are thrown in the dirt. If I were a score keeper, a ball in the dirt is an automatic WP. Add the times that the pitcher hits the Bull. Smells good to me.

Gallo over Judge in RF? Wrong.

#22

I didn't even notice that. I only see a few Yankees games a year, but Judge is great in the field. He might not be as fleet of foot as some, but he's never looked bad (and does track down a lot of fly balls I thought for sure were hits) and his arm is a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

He got snubbed.

Gallo did play 83 games in RF for Texas this year, so if he wins the GG for RF it shouldn't be with a Yankee cap on :)

I’m of the opinion that dWar does more harm than good.

I've been saying this for years. It's anti-information. You put noise in one end and get crap out the other.

Branch Rickey was right.

I wonder why they picked an arbitrary cutoff like the 142nd game

One possibility: so you're not penalized if you sit for a bit to let September callups in.

#22

I didn't even notice that. I only see a few Yankees games a year, but Judge is great in the field. He might not be as fleet of foot as some, but he's never looked bad (and does track down a lot of fly balls I thought for sure were hits) and his arm is a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

He got snubbed.

On Twitter right now, Judge and Stroman are discussing ditching Rawlings and starting their own baseball glove company.

Good point RoyalsRetro. Everyday starters in LF in the AL this year were surprisingly nonexistent.

(Credit to prolific poster Magpie over at Battersbox.ca for originally pointing it out)

It turns out, despite my snarkiness, Lourdes Gurriel Jr probably IS a Top 3 defensive AL LFer. Because in 2021, there were only TWO everyday starters

2021 Top 15 Leaders for AL LF GS

Benintendi 129 KC
Gurriel Jr 115 TOR
Canha 93 OAK
Upton 86 LAA
Vaughn 86 CWS
Brantley 80 HOU
Verdugo 79 BOS
Grossman 76 DET
Hays 75 BAL
Meadows 72 TB
Rosario 72 CLE
Arozarena 69 TB
Larnach 51 MIN
Baddoo 46 DET
Gallo 46 TEX/NYY

I wonder why they picked an arbitrary cutoff like the 142nd game

More than likely simply to get any ballots out in time so that it can be turned in before the first post season game. MLB awards have a history of making it a point that all votes took place before the post season began. At that point in time you need to give your voters multiple days to fill in their ballot, so you have to be early on setting up the ballot.

Cardinals have six players among finalists, based upon just my eyes this season and not comparing it to anyone else at their position, Bader and O'Neil are obvious to me. They at least played to what I consider a gold glove quality level of play. Edman was solid and very good but I don't think he was probably the best, Arenado started slow got better, but he really wasn't "Rolen esque" which is the standard I think of for third, but I don't know how others played this year, same with Goldy, much better in the second half of the season than the first.

With Yadier, I don't have as much negativity as Duke does with Yadier, but agree that he gets the benefit of the call on passed balls more than he should, and that he was at best average at receiving the ball this year (and probably last year) Still led the NL in caught stealing(as a team) and fewest stolen bases allowed, so that is one thing. But if someone else beats him for the award, I don't think an honest observer of the Cardinals would say that was a bad pick and that Yadier deserved it. I do think that overall he's still above average to good, but there are definitely rust to his game, especially as he plays consecutive games. Honestly if he took ten more games off this year, he might have added about .5 to his war/waa. He needs to stop playing more than 5 games a week, and it's obvious to everyone watching the team.

You might think that the AL starting cf in the all star game might get some consideration for this award. Cedric Mullins says, hey!

#28: That may be pretty common these days at any position (maybe particularly bad at LF).

I don't think stathead allows a look at games started for position players but it's easy enough to look at total games. I put the cutoff at 120. For LF from 2000-2010, the standard season had 11 such players in all of MLB with a high of 16. (Oops 2008 had just 7.) For 2011-21, the range has been 4 (this year) to 11. For 2019, it was only 5. For 2021 for the main positions:

1B 16
2B 13
3B 10
SS 19
LF 4
CF 6
RF 8

So big difference between OF and IF. Makes sense in that OF are pretty interchangeable defensively, especially between LF and RF. And always have been. I mean, for sure, you had 27 OFs who played at least 120 at one position but that's still just an average of 1 per team. (You had 15 SS in 1972 so about the same.) Still, intriguing that you have just 18 OFs who started at least 120 at one position -- probably half the teams had none.

LF in particular has been a bit of a wasteland for some time now. The average MLB LF this year had -0.6 WAA but they haven't been above average since 2004!! (That might mean there's something screwy with Rpos but it would need to come up by 4-5 runs to bring LF to average over the last 15 years or so. It's become something of a dumping ground -- lots of platoons, lots of DH rotations, some of the IF/OF guys.

And my personal pet theory that with all the Ks, the FBs and the working out, they're more likely to keep the big guys on the IF these days (i.e. good power with average+ range is more common). We haven't so much lost the Brian Downings and Gary Matthews as we've lost the Felix Fermins and maybe Tim Raines stays on the IF today (or does a 2B/LF thing). Maybe that's also partly responsible for all the shifting ... if your IFs have less range because they're bigger then maybe you need to do more bunching where the ball's more likely to be hit. (Or causality works the other way -- shifting means you need less range on the IF so you can play bigger guys.)

Some more exploration of LFs ... they just don't hit much anymore (or other positions hit a lot more, take your pick). By Rbat, they have been outhit by 3B over the last 5 full seasons, barely outhit SS the last two, were actually below-average hitters in 2016. An impressive chunk (about 3 runs) of it was Bonds alone but still in 2002, they outhit SS by about 19 runs, 3B by about 12 runs. Even without Bonds from 2005-10, LF outhit SS by 10-14 runs but usually only outhit 3B by 2-3 runs. (2B are generally all over the place.)

EDIT: Further, through the 2000s and early 2010s, the top non-Bonds LF (by team) would usually put up 40-50 Rbat. From 2015 or so, we're lucky if a team breaks 30 Rbat in LF. Those big bats are mostly playing elsewhere now. (Of course we need some era adjustments.)