Gold Glovin' Mets (Split from 2007 Awards)

[TransMonk]

Carlos Beltran and David Wright are NL Gold Glove Winners.

http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071106&content_id=2293542&vkey=news_nym&fext=.jsp&c_id=nym

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Oh my. Wright?

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'd say Reyes before Wright. Not a lot of candidates at third.

[G-Fafif]

David makes some marvelous plays, but does one usually brace and cringe when a Gold Glover prepares to throw? I can remember lots of spectacular DW grabs, but mostly from '05 and '06. These things take time to register, I guess.

Then again, he's David Wright. That's should be good enough for me.

Thrilled that Beltran continues to be recognized (note four OFs won this year). Slightly surprised Reyes fell out after he was mentioned as the favorite so often. Wonder if it was a batting thing. The defense didn't really suffer. I'm also surprised they don't just give it to Omar Vizquel.

[metsmarathon]

the best i could say in that regard is that wright does have a knack for turning in a spectacular, flashy play, and gets to more balls outside his "zone" than any other thirdbaseman, 88 to zimmerman's 71.

however, i cannot construct a numerical argument whereby he is more deserving of hte award than pedro feliz.

[TransMonk]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Oh my. Wright?

Right.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Now let's see which Mets (if any) get a Silver Slugger Award.

[metsmarathon]

rollins?

with 11 fielding errors and no throwing errors, i'd give him a gold arm award before i handed him a gold glove. tulo shoulda won it.

i wonder if i agree with any of these?

lee over a helton/pujols pickem? nope.
hudson over brandon phillips? nope.
rollins over tulo? nope.
wright over feliz? nope.
martin? 14 errors? over brad ausmus? nope.
in the outfield, i'd give a nod to byrnes, jones, and kearns. beltran gets in as my 4th, since i'm inclined to award to each OF position. elsewise, i'm going with 1) jones 2) beltran 3) kearns 4) francoeur or byrnes. and no aaron rowand whose numbers point to a lack of range relative to his peers.

pitchers? who cares.

and of course, fielding win shares disagree with me.

[nymr83]

metsmarathon wrote: rollins? with 11 fielding errors and no throwing errors, i'd give him a gold arm award before i handed him a gold glove. tulo shoulda won it. i wonder if i agree with any of these? lee over a helton/pujols pickem? nope. hudson over brandon phillips? nope. rollins over tulo? nope. wright over feliz? nope. martin? 14 errors? over brad ausmus? nope. in the outfield, i'd give a nod to byrnes, jones, and kearns. beltran gets in as my 4th, since i'm inclined to award to each OF position. elsewise, i'm going with 1) jones 2) beltran 3) kearns 4) francoeur or byrnes. and no aaron rowand whose numbers point to a lack of range relative to his peers. pitchers? who cares. and of course, fielding win shares disagree with me.

i'm not checking so correct me if i'm wrong but didn't Ausmus miss a significant amount of time?

[Valadius]

No way. No way. Holy crap.

I'm incredulous.

I'm happy for David and for Carlos, especially David, but what the hell? How in the WORLD does Jimmy Rollins beat Troy Tulowitski? How the HELL does Colorado not get a SINGLE Gold Glover?!?!?!?!?

[Guest Edgy DC]

Minds were made up before Colorado came on and the Mets crashed and burned?

[Valadius]

Except knowledgeable minds around baseball knew, even before the Rockies started winning consistently, that they were having an incredible year defensively, especially in Tulowitski's case. The guy had an unassisted triple play for God's sake.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Well, (1) nobody ever credited the Gold Glove jury with a broad and deep array of knowledge on the nuances of fielding performances in the year they are judging, and (2) a knowledgeable voter doesn't skew his vote much based on one play.

[metirish]

Congrats to both David and Carlos, Minaya must be thrilled now with his gold glove third baseman, for today at least.

[seawolf17]

No wonder they're so good defensively, if they're allowed four outfielders. Much easier to get to balls that way.

[Valadius]

The reason there are four outfielders this year for the NL is that Rowand and Francoeur were tied for third.

[seawolf17]

Ah. Thanks, Val.

I don't know that David Wright's the best defensive 3B in the league, but I'm sure he's honored to be recognized. Hey, they kept giving the award to Jeter, and he sucked too.

[MFS62]

seawolf17 wrote: Ah. Thanks, Val. Hey, they kept giving the award to Jeter, and he sucked too.

And IIRC one year an AL second baseman (Harold Reynolds?) got the award in a year in which he made 18 errors (a LOT for a second baseman) while playing on an artificial turf infield.

Later

[G-Fafif]

In his press release quote, Wright thanked Sandy Alomar for hitting him so many grounders. That's David being David, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Beltran neglected to thank Luke Scott for hitting that ball to Tal's Hill.

[Valadius]

I'm reminded of the stupidity that was Ivan Rodriguez winning the Gold Glove in 2000 and 2001 despite only playing 87 and 106 games, respectively, those two seasons at catcher.

[Fman99]

Valadius wrote: I'm reminded of the stupidity that was Ivan Rodriguez winning the Gold Glove in 2000 and 2001 despite only playing 87 and 106 games, respectively, those two seasons at catcher.

What's worse was Palmiero winning the GG in 1999, where he played less than 30 games in the field! Just silly.

[nymr83]

Valadius wrote: I'm reminded of the stupidity that was Ivan Rodriguez winning the Gold Glove in 2000 and 2001 despite only playing 87 and 106 games, respectively, those two seasons at catcher.

Palmiero. 1st base. End of story.

[Frayed Knot]

Wright's not even the best fielding NL 3rd baseman from eastern Virginia.

[soupcan]

When I was coming of age as a Mets fan in the mid to late '70s there wasn't a whole lot to cheer about.

They'd win on Opening Day and I'd cut out the standings from the newspaper and tape them to my wall so as the season progressed and they rapidly sunk to last place I could always look at those standings and see what it looked like to have the Mets in first place.

During those lean years one other thing that I took great pride in was Doug Flynn winning a Gold Glove at 2B. It wasn't much but it was all I had. A Met in the national news - if only just a blurb - for a day.

So while Wright didn't really deserve it, as a Met fan I'll take it. If nothing else it makes me think of ole #23 for a day and how happy he made me when he won his.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Flynn had lost out to Lopes the year before, probably unjustly.

[willpie]

I actually don't think this is all that ridiculous. Feliz probably should have won, but he can't hit his way out of a paper bag and Wright's definitely not the first player to get bonus GG points with his bat. David does a lot of things very, very well at 3rd. It's easy to get down on a guy when you watch him every day and his excellence underscores his failures (I hesitate to compare Wright to Benitez, but you get the idea). His range is really good, he reacts quickly, he catches what he gets his glove on, and he excels at charging bunts.
Of his 21 errors (in 200 more innings at the position than Feliz played), 11 were throwing errors--that's ridiculously good glovework at 3rd.

[Guest Edgy DC]

No doubt we put him under a microscope that we spare others, but, when attempting to look objectively, Feliz and Zimmerman each seemed to have the better season.

[metsmarathon]

yeah, i've got feliz as both the best 3b glove and the best 3b arm in the nl (among the 15 guys with the most playing time).

my determinings were based on (plays on balls in zone + plays on balls out of zone - fielding errors) / (plays on balls in zone + plays on balls out of zone) for glovework and assists / (asists + throwing errors) for armwork.

i'm fairly pleased with how glovework should work, but armwork really is a measure of arm accuracy, and cannot gauge arm strength.

maybe assists / plays on balls in and out of zone would work for that... odd... the average third baseman has more assists than plays on balls both in and out of his zone...

where the heck are all those extra assists coming from?

wright made 215 plays on 312 balls hit into his "zone", and made 88 plays on balls outside his "zone". wright has 107 putouts to his credit and 324 assists, and only one double play turned. assuming that plays + ooz should equal all the batted balls he put his glove on, what gives?

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I imagine that Wright getting this trophy he didn't necessarily deserve could lead to another.

[Guest holychicken]

Valadius wrote: I'm reminded of the stupidity that was Ivan Rodriguez winning the Gold Glove in 2000 and 2001 despite only playing 87 and 106 games, respectively, those two seasons at catcher.

Wright had exactly ZERO errors at catcher this year, he should have gotten the GG for that position too!