Gold Glove Awards Are Officially A Joke
The fact that the Los Angeles Dodgers' Russell Martin won the Gold Glove award over St. Louis' Yadier Molina isn't just ridiculous - it's laughable. A joke. The Gold Glove awards have been lacking credibility for some time - anybody remember Rafael Palmeiro's award at first base after playing less than 30 games there? - but it's almost at the point where they should be scrapped altogether. Because really, they mean nothing.
Martin is an outstanding player, and he's a much better hitter than Molina. But defensively, they're not in the same stratosphere. And with catchers, it's about more than just errors. It's holding runners on, throwing them out, calling a game, etc. In fact, I won't even have to make the argument for Molina. I'll just go ahead and let others do it for me, from both local and national viewpoints:
- Bernie Miklasz, columnist, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Martin had the most errors (14) of any NL catcher. According to STATS LLC, Martin threw out only 28.7 percent of those who attempted to steal bases on him ... Only three catchers in MLB allowed more stolen bases than Martin (82) ... Molina: he led all MLB catchers in nailing base stealers, throwing out 23 of the 46 who challenged him (50 percent). He also led NL catchers in assists per nine innings. That only 46 steals were attempted on Molina tells us everything we need to know.
How does a manager go from “Boys, don’t even dare try to steal a bag on Yaddy Molina” to writing Martin’s name on the Gold Glove ballot when these same people exploited Martin for a 71.3 percent success rate in stolen bases?
- Rob Neyer, ESPN.com: Russell Martin benefited from the same (hitting) bias. He's not real strong against the running game, but otherwise he's solid. Still, if the evidence exists for his superiority to Yadier Molina, I've not yet seen it.
- BillJamesOnline, Fielding Bible Awards (best fielders in MLB at their positions): Move over, Pudge. Last year, Ivan Rodriguez and Yadier Molina were neck-and-neck in the battle for the Fielding Bible Award at catcher as they were named first or second on nearly every ballot. Molina maintained his incredible performance controlling the running game in 2007 throwing out 49% of would-be base stealers. Rodriguez’ drop from 46% last year to 26% this year convinced our voters to bestow the award on Molina.
- Jeff Gordon, StlToday.com: NL managers and coaches know if they give their runners the green light to run on Molina, bad things will happen. Runners get thrown out at second, runners get picked off first, potential big innings die . . . yes, it’s best not to run on Yadier. And yet these same NL managers and coaches decided that Russell Martin is the best defensive catcher in the NL. Interesting.
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