Not Jeter Again, the Gold Glove Debate

Let's start right off here and put some things to rest. No, we don't think that Derek Jeter should be given a gold glove, but, as much as we think that's a mistake, we don't think he's the worst fielding shortstop in MLB as some others have stated and some statistics, i.e. UZR, seem to suggest. But, come on, folks who vote for the Gold Glove awards and witness game after game from the manager's bench, you had to have seen others in your league you think we better, even if you've never seen a UZR or even the more traditional, and one we favor, Range Factor stats.

Our Fielding Metric, Field Value, values Jeter as the 11th best shortstop in Major League Baseball in 2010. (For more discussion on this, you can visit the Bleacher Report article, which we thank them for mentioning us.) He's durable, he's reliable, he's sure-handed and accurate with his throws, but he just doesn't get to enough balls to justify the highest mark. We think #11 is a pretty good rank for this Yankee. There is a lot of value in having a shortstop that makes the plays he gets to; would you rather have Rafael Furcal and that cannon arm, plus all those errors. We wouldn't. But the fact that Jeter is amongst the worst in Range Factor, which calculates, with no interpretation, the amount of balls a player gets to that turn into outs (and you can interpret beyond that to ones he gets to, but don't). His Range Factor of 3.78 is amongst the lowest of those with enough innings to be ranked, #50 of 54. We agree, that's not good, and when you compare it to the Gold Glove winner in the National League, Troy Tulowitski, at 5.06, it really means that Jeter gets to 25.3% less balls that Tulowitski does. When compared to Alexie Ramirez of the White Sox, who we would have given the AL Gold Glove to, he gets to 22.7% less balls. That's too many for us to overlook, and while the numbers speak to not denigrating Jeter to the lowest of the low levels of shortstop fielding, it does yell out "Not Jeter Again."

Our Silver Mitt Awards pointed out a few other curious selections, although at least from the National League standpoint, there were very few that we have issue with. Six of the eight winners of our awards (we don't rank the pitchers) and the Gold Gloves are the same; Pujols, Phillips, Tulowitski, Victorino, Bourn, and Molina. We would have chosen Placido Polanco over Scott Rolen at third, but it's perfectly understandable why the voters didn't choose a first year thirdbaseman without a cannon arm for the Gold Glove. Still think his numbers say he deserved it. Polanco is more sure-handed and with better range at this point in Rolen's career. The main discrenpency on the NL side is with Carlos Gonzalez winning the third outfield spot. Look, Gonzalez is not bad, for a left fielder, but there's few major league managers, if they had the choice of selecting another outfielder for defense, who would choose Gonzalez over folks like Andres Torres, Drew Stubbs, or Marlon Byrd. For a left fielder, his 1.96 Range Factor is good, not Brett Gardner good, but good.

In the American League, it wasn't just the Jeter selection that had us perplexed, as our awards only agreed 37.5% of the time with Teixeira, Cano, and Franklin Gutierrez those three of eight. And we can live with selections such as Longoria and Mauer at their positions, even though we believe there were better candidates and think that those two profit from great offensive numbers when voters think of fielding. At #7 in our rankings, both are good defensive players, we just think A.J. Pierzynski and Matt Weiters were better in the AL catching ranks, and that Jose Lopez was the best third baseman in both leagues. Yes, he had a slightly worse fielding percentage, but was 12.8% better with range. But it's in the outfield where our biggest disagreement would come.

Brett Gardner is one of the best fielders in baseball, and that's even with the fact that he's relegated to playing left field, because Granderson is patrolling center. With a Range Factor of 2.22, a strong arm, and good hands, he's just a bit better fielder than his counterpart in left who won the award, Carl Crawford. But it's close. With Ichiro, we think the numbers show that he might have won his award this year on past performance. He's still good, maybe still great, and makes highlight plays, but Vernon Wells does this as well. Now, we have to admit, that with Ichiro playing predominantly in right field, this adds to his luster, and we have no Jeter problem with his selection, we just would have gone a different way. And maybe in that selection, would have been wrong. There's no way we would suggest No Ichiro Again as the title. That's reserved for Mr. Yankee, ... again.