Ichiro Wins GG, Gutierrez Does Not
Dave · November 10, 2009 at 12:32 pm · Filed Under Mariners
The Gold Gloves have been announced, and predictably, Ichiro won one and Franklin Gutierrez did not.
You should not care. These are about as meaningful as the teen choice awards. The people who vote on them don’t really put much thought into it, nor do they really know what they’re doing. They don’t represent defensive ability in any real way, shape, or form.
It’s a broken system. You should feel worse for Rawlings that they attach their name to this than for Death To Flying Things, who most people recognize as a superb defensive player.
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27 Responses to “Ichiro Wins GG, Gutierrez Does Not”
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It’s still a terrible thing that less intelligent fans who put stock into this will never know how good Guti actually was.
Oh well I guess he’ll be out little secret. I find myself more and more disappointed with “Baseball People” everyday.
How stupid.
I actually like that these awards exist. It helps bad players to be overvalued and good players to be undervalued, and smart GMs can take advantage of that.
I discovered today: Carl Crawford has never won a Gold Glove. Unbelievable.
Anyway, Guti and Ichiro both won Fielding Bible awards so….
You keep telling us not to care. I want to not care.
Maybe it’s the AJ aspect of it, I don’t know. But, I indeed had a 20 second period of anger.
I received a Gold Glove award when I was 12 as a catcher. It’s only purpose to me is sometimes when someone throws something to me like another beer and I make a good catch I say,”Gold Glove. 12-years-old.” Maybe Ichiro will give Guti his award since he has so many or better yet Hunter can give his since he only played in 119 games, and while he’s at it he can go ahead and send back his 2005 award where he only played in 98 games.
Given the AL results at shortstop this year, it’s obvious that Guti’s failure was an insufficiency of smug. Maybe he can hire a coach for that this offseason?
I think now is the time to buy out all of Guti’s arbitration years.
It doesn’t help when broadcasters reflexively add “Gold Glove Winner” to a players name …
Well that’s obnoxious.
What’s the odds on Kanye West interrupting the acceptance speech? I mean Guti did have one of the best seasons “OF ALL TIME”…
Derek Jeter won for shortstop. If I were Ichiro, I’d turn down my award on that basis more than Franklin worrying over not winning.
So I’m assuming Manny Ramirez is a lock for the GG in the NL.
Hate to be the one to say it. But after the Bedard trade this is like throwing more salt on to the wound.
Great quote from Rob Neyer
Neyer Link.
Since the Gold Glove is voted on by managers & coaches, isn’t this is a perfect example of how flawed (and overrated) they are at evaluating the game?
Like I’ve said before, I stopped believing in the credibility of the GG back in 1998 when David Segui got screwed out of it in favor of Rafael Palmeiro, largely based on: (1) the fact that Palmeiro had a monster year offensively, & (2) they liked Palmeiro better because he was apparently considered more “media-friendly.”
Of course, I loved it when Segui told the GG committee in so many words where they could insert their precious award. 🙂
I’m no expert on fielding and who should win a gold glove, but in my opinion, if you were to pick three outfielder seasons in the last ten to award a gold glove… Gutierrez would have to win one for last year. I hope Gutierrez is even better next year.
Jeter’s eye-popping defensive work wasn’t accidental. He committed eight errors in 554 chances — the league’s eight other shortstops with 500-plus chances averaged 17 errors — the season after his reputation was stung by various sabermetrics indexes that had him as the lowest-ranked shortstop in the Major Leagues.
From the MLB.com article.
I love how this is written to give the reader the impression that “sabermetrics indexes” are somehow not valid… like they are a fringe science…
Particularly since the article doesn’t give any reference to any range based defensive evaluation for 2009’s performance – simply errors committed (fielding percentage).
“Be aware of those crazy sabermetrics indexes!”
My apologies for the messed up hyperlink… (Edit button please)
I wonder if any of the teams or player agents use the crazy sabertmetric indexes when arguing their arbitration cases, ’cause ya know it’s all made up just like that global warming thing.
It is worth pointing out that Jeter did an amazing turnaround in posting a 6.6UZR and 8.4UZR/150 this last season which is a tiny bit better than his -15.3UZR and -16.7UZR/150 in 2007. If his fielding increase stands over the next season or two (instead of in hindsight being cherry-picked low and high numbers out of his career) then teams/players/agents should really look at his off-season and how he targeted skills to allow him to be equally well to the left and right. I never much cared for Jeter but if he did work hard and intelligently to improve this late in his career, good for him.
Arb cases are advancing quite quickly in recent years, but they’re certainly not using UZR (etc) yet. Power Point’s a pretty new innovation in the world of arbitration cases.
Argh.
ESPN actually just spoke about UZR (huzzah, fangraphs plug!).
Unfortunately, they used it to show how Jeter compared to other short stops.
Jack Wilson left off the list (I guess I can understand why), but if someone at ESPN is looking at UZR and puts it on the air, how do their eyes not pop out when they see Gutierrez’s number?
Sorry to ask, but, what other position should they compare him to? He is a SS after all…
Instead of repeating the obvious, I’d just like to thank Franklin Gutierrez for the best season of OF defense I have ever seen. I’ll be watching his highlights all winter.
And in retrospect, you should take a moment to read Dave’s post from Dec. 10, 2008 about how good Franklin Gutierrez would be for the Ms at defense. Absolute money.
Posnanski has a great blog post up about this. Needless to say, he wrote that Gutierrez was robbed.
From Poz’s great article (and you really should read the whole thing because it’s funny all the way through):
Thanks, Joe. Come to the next USSM event, we’ll buy you a beer. Even two.