Lefko: Mariners snub reveals what’s wrong with Gold Glove process
Oct 17, 2024, 10:09 AM
No sport does more to alienate its own fans than baseball. There are plenty of reasons to love the game, but this sport can never seem to get out of its own way. The Gold Glove process is the latest example.
Two Seattle Mariners named Gold Glove Award finalists
The concept of the award is great, but the process itself is fundamentally flawed and in need of a complete overhaul. It’s a mockery to fans, people who cover the sport, and the players themselves when undeserving candidates are named finalists due to a voting process rife with bias and in desperate need of transparency.
When two of the most prominent voices in baseball question the process, as FOX announcer Joe Davis did on a broadcast watched by millions and ESPN insider Jeff Passan tweeted out to his more than one million followers, you might have a problem. Frankly, that is an embarrassment to MLB. For a sport that puts such weight on milestones and awards, to have some of the most esteemed people in the game publicly question the validity of how these are determined should warrant an audit and discussion about the need to find a better process for recognizing the best defensive players.
Locally, it was felt when Seattle Mariners third baseman Josh Rojas was blatantly snubbed, not even being named one of the three finalists at his position in the American League. There is no defensive category in which he is not a top-three player, and in fact he is the best in a number of them.
Rawlings doesn’t provide any transparency on which defensive metrics they actually use, so here let’s just take a look at a handful of them.
Top 3 among AL third basemen
• Fielding Run Value: Josh Rojas (7), Alex Bregman (5), Ernie Clement (5)
• Outs Above Average: Josh Rojas (6), Alex Bregman (6), Jazz Chisholm (6)
• Defensive Runs Saved: Ernie Clement (10), Josh Rojas (7), Oswaldo Cabrera (7)
Here’s where I note as well that Ernie Clement, one of the three finalists, played vastly less at third base (661 innings) than his counterparts at that position. Compare that to the innings that Alex Bregman (1,234.2), Jose Ramirez (1,108), and Josh Rojas (952.1) played at third this season.
The 2024 Rawlings Gold Glove Finalists – AL Third Base – Ernie Clement, José Ramírez, Alex Bregman#RawlingsGoldGloveAwards pic.twitter.com/msuRTvTwnB
— Rawlings Baseball (@RawlingsSports) October 15, 2024
With that context, this write up of the third base finalists is comical for the careful way it presents those categories we outlined above, while omitting any mention of the player who has the strongest case to be a finalist.
A closer look at the Gold Glove process
The Gold Glove process has been a running joke for years. Simply search “Rafael Palmeiro 1999 Gold Glove” if you want a good laugh. Yet when you look at the criteria for the way Gold Glove finalists are actually determined, it might not come as a surprise – but it will leave you more incredulous that this is an actual idea a sport is using to accurately find out the best at each position.
First of all, MLB doesn’t even run this award. Rawlings created it in 1957. The main issue here, and one that probably won’t change, is that MLB has affixed so much weight to this award in the first place when it isn’t in charge of regulating the process. Look up any player’s bio, and high on the list will be the number of Gold Gloves won. It’s an important distinction and can have a wide-ranging impact on a player’s career. Yet here are the only two criteria listed for how Gold Glove finalists are selected: 75% manager and up to six coaches voting from each team, and 25% from the SABR Defensive Index.
75 percent? 75 PERCENT?!? This is insanity and truly absurd. Three-quarters are determined not by people who cover the game and have an understanding of how players compare in relation to their counterparts, nor by stats that have been carefully tested and cultivated to quantify defensive performance. No, 75% of a purely defensive award relies on managers and coaches. That is one of the most absurd things I have ever heard. I had to read it multiple times to make sure I wasn’t reading it incorrectly. There is also no transparency behind the process. Are these votes for just one player? Do you vote for the top three or top five?
There are so many things implicitly wrong with that formula, but the obvious one is that managers and coaches have a limited idea of what is going on with every single player at every single position around the league, especially from a defensive standpoint. That in itself is fine, I wouldn’t want them to know what a guy from a team they played two months ago is doing because you focus on your own team and the teams that are still on the schedule.
Coaching staffs are naturally going to have more familiarity with teams in their own division, who they play 13 times a season. Or, because it’s human nature, they’ll be inclined to remember good defensive performances from players who they saw closer to when the ballot is passed out.
We broke down the amount of innings Rojas played at third compared to Clement, but here is a pretty easy way to illustrate these fundamental flaws in the process. Let’s take the Guardians coaching staff, for example. Rojas played in just one game against them when Cleveland was in Seattle back in April, and he committed an error. The only other time they saw him was in mid-June (he played in two games). He’s probably not going to be a memorable player in their minds. I’m confident in saying that a manager and coaching staff, in the midst of everything they have to do to get ready for their own game, is not going to take the time to say, “hmm, let me sort through a variety of metrics to make sure I truly represent who the best defensive third basemen in baseball is this season.”
OK, so what is the fix for this issue? I hate when people complain without offering a solution. Luckily, I have one which I think adds some checks and balances to what is an inherently subjective process and puts less weight on one individual component: 30% writers and broadcasters, 30% managers and coaches, 30% the SABR Defensive Index, and 10% fan vote. We can quibble on the fan portion of that, but this system would provide a bigger sample size and more accurate representation across all of baseball. We’re voting for the top three at each position, as well. Rawlings doesn’t explicitly state whether they do that or not, but we strive for a higher level of transparency with this new and improved award.
It isn’t easy to gauge a purely defensive award, and change in baseball comes at a glacial pace, but the time is now to fundamentally overhaul and fix a broken Gold Glove process.
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