[Dodoubled]

The Gold Glove standard


posted: Friday, November 3, 2006 | |

-Buster Olney

Years ago, I worked as a correspondent for The Sporting News, and part of my responsibility was to distribute the Gold Glove Award ballots to the coaching staff of the team I covered.

There were some coaches who really had a strong sense of who the best and worst fielders around baseball really were -- the third-base coaches, in particular, because it was their responsibility to know the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing players as they made decisions on whether to wave runners home. Other coaches also took the Gold Glove voting very seriously and would tell me they wanted to put some thought into their decisions and would need a couple of days to think about their final choices.
Just as often, however, this is kind of how the Gold Glove voting played out, in a roomful of coaches (I'm keeping names out of it, to protect the innocent and guilty):
Coach 1: "First base … hmmm … who are the best guys at first base?"
Coach 2: "That guy for the team we just played is pretty good."

Coach 1: "Yeah, you're right. Can't throw worth a damn, but he can pick it."
Coach 2: "What about [Candidate X]?"
Multiple coaches, all at once: "Yeah, he's a great choice."
And then, many times, the coaches on the same team would all vote for the same guy, in a block vote, without considering other players. I thought it was kind of bizarre. (But probably in keeping with our political process, under which a good slogan is everything and the fates of candidates can rest largely on how voters are affected by a 30-second television advertisement.) This is how a Rafael Palmeiro can win a Gold Glove at first base while playing a few dozen games at the position.
But pure statistical analysis is almost as flawed. From 2001 to 2003, Derek Jeter's range factor ([putouts+assists]*9/innings played) averaged a 3.79, then the last three years, his RF has climbed suddenly, to 4.46, 4.76 and 4.14. Has he gotten a whole lot better? Or was the spike because, after years of loading up with power pitchers, the Yankees have had pitchers who threw a few more ground balls (in the past two seasons, most notably, Chien-Ming Wang has averaged 2.96 and 3.06 ground balls for every fly ball, a trait that will increase the range factor of every infielder behind him).
The top four pitchers in the majors in generating ground balls this year were Arizona's Brandon Webb, the Dodgers' Derek Lowe, Wang and Jake Westbrook of the Indians. This was the RF ranking for major league shortstops who played a minimum of 80 games: first, Arizona's Craig Counsell; second, the Dodgers' Rafael Furcal; fourth, Jhonny Peralta of the Indians; and 21st, Jeter.
Coincidence? Ah, no. If you're an infielder who wants to have a great range factor, just lobby your front office to acquire ground ball pitchers.
Other statistical measures depend on an evaluator sitting in the press box effectively gauging whether a fielder might have/should have reached a ball, and there are many problems with this system, as well.
Among those:
1. There is no way one pair of eyes can track the prepitch movements of seven fielders (exclude the pitcher and catcher), movements that are all made in the split second before the pitcher throws the ball.
2. There is no way for the evaluator to know how the command of the pitcher is affecting the fielders, and, more to the point, no way 30 different evaluators in 30 different parks work with the same standards. Jose Reyes could cheat to his right just a little if he sees that Tom Glavine is going to throw a changeup to a right-handed hitter, then miss a grounder a few steps to his left because Glavine missed his spot and his changeup drifted over the outside corner.
3. You might see a ground ball to Jeter's left, his weak side, and 15 evaluators might tell you he should've gotten the ball and 15 might tell you he couldn't reach the ball. It's just as subjective a measure as a coach watching from a dugout or a scout watching from the stands -- or an official scorer. All the official scorers supposedly work from the same set of standards, too, but anybody who has seen games in more than one place knows the interpretations of hits or errors seem to vary widely from park to park, from scorer to scorer.
The only way you would have a chance at solid statistical evaluation would be if a wide-angle camera were placed from a fixed point behind home plate and the prepitch movements of all the fielders were recorded, then evaluated after the game, as they do with NFL players (in my year of covering the New York Giants, in 2002, I learned that when coaches say, "I'll have to look at the videotape first before I can tell you who made the mistake," they really mean it).
So how do we rate the best fielders? Well, this is among the AL players.
I've talked to a lot of scouts and executives around baseball who think Kenny Rogers is still the best-fielding pitcher, in part because of how well he holds runners. Pudge Rodriguez won another Gold Glove; living in New York, I see the Yankees a lot, and I think Jorge Posada had arguably the best year of his career defensively. Scouts love how Joe Mauer catches, how he calls a game.
I watched the Red Sox a lot and thought Mike Lowell's consistency was spectacular, but a lot of folks I talk with still think Eric Chavez is the best third baseman because he can get to balls Lowell doesn't get to; he told Susan Slusser this year. Brandon Inge was tremendous (before the World Series, of course).
My sense from watching the Twins was that Torii Hunter had his worst year defensively in the majors, because of his bad ankle, but he won. Grady Sizemore, like Lowell, played with remarkable consistency in the games I saw; Oakland's Mark Kotsay is very underrated; Vernon Wells seems markedly better than he was two years ago. Gary Matthews had the best season of his career, it seems, . I still think Ichiro is better at his position than any fielder in the American League, considering how well he runs down balls, how well he throws.
And Jeter? I probably have watched 80 percent of the innings he's played since the start of the 1998 season, either on television or in person, and I never thought he was nearly as bad as some would say. His range to his left is poor; he has good but not great hands; he charges grounders in front of him better than just about any shortstop this side of Omar Vizquel; he's among the best at pursuing pop-ups; and you know this: He wants the ball hit to him with runners on base in the ninth inning, and not a lot of fielders do.
Is he the best? I don't know. Alex Gonzalez of the Red Sox was the best I saw this year, but I don't think a choice of Jeter is an egregious decision. There is much more work to be done before we have a better system than getting block votes from coaches. It's very rare to see like this player getting the award so late in his career.