MLB Monday is taking a little detour in the month of November to look at some new ideas here. First up? The 2024 Gold Glove winners, which were announced over the weekend. Just a quick glance here at both leagues’ winners—and the league’s respective leader in defensive WAR, as sabermetrically calculated. It’s not the end-all, be-all measurement, but it’s somewhere to start, as we know these awards have been iffy.

American League Winners—and Actual dWAR Leaders

  • Catcher: Cal Raleigh, Seattle (1.4 dWAR)—Freddy Fermin, Kansas City (2.2 dWAR)
  • First Base: Carlos Santana, Minnesota (0.1)—Ryan Mountcastle, Baltimore (0.2)
  • Second Base: Andrés Giménez, Cleveland (2.7)
  • Shortstop: Bobby Witt, Jr., Kansas City (1.2)—Zach Neto, Los Angeles (2.1)
  • Third Base: Alex Bregman, Houston (1.0)—Ernie Clement, Toronto (2.2)
  • Left Field: Steven Kwan, Cleveland (0.5)—Riley Greene, Detroit (1.0)
  • Center Field: Daulton Varsho, Toronto (3.1)
  • Right Field: Wilyer Abreu, Boston (1.4)
  • Utility: Dylan Moore, Seattle (-0.1)
  • Pitcher: Seth Lugo, Kansas City (1.000 FP, 43 chances, 1.90 RF)—Tanner Houck, Boston (1.000, 51, 2.60)

Note: For pitchers, there isn’t enough data for dWAR, so we looked at fielding percentage, total chances, and range factor data instead.

Okay, so what we see here is interesting. In some cases, the winner of the award did play in more games than the dWAR champ, but the inherent problem there is that it merely means the winner in those cases was clearly not as good a fielder. It’s one thing if the winner plays in all 162 games, while the dWAR guy only plays in 81 games. There are different ways to interpret this, so there are some qualifications for the award.

They’re a little convoluted, unfortunately, and give us a headache just reading them. However, in many cases above, common sense has to win out. Take catcher, for example: Raleigh played in 135 games behind the plate, while Fermin only played in 91 games. But to post such a significantly higher dWAR mark has to count for something. We don’t care that Santana was barely behind Mountcastle, but other winners? Uh …

Witt (160 games) had no business winning this award over Neto (155), for example. That’s just ridiculous. In fact, Witt finished just ninth in the league for positional dWAR. Why did he win this vote? We have no idea: Name recognition? Team quality? Popularity contest? All of the above, maybe. There is a lot of data to consider here, and perhaps therein lies the answer, but Neto seems to be the biggest shaft job this year here.

We also think Houck was more deserving for the pitcher’s award. We know this process isn’t perfect, and it never has been. Heck, why else would we have reviewed all the hardware given out over the last century-plus in this sport? But the Gold Gloves seem to be the most subjective awards out there these days. Weird. The last thing to say is clearly Moore had no business winning any award, even if the UTL player pool is murky.

National League Winners—and Actual dWAR Leaders

  • Catcher: Patrick Bailey, San Francisco (1.3)—Miguel Amaya, Chicago & Gabriel Moreno, Arizona (1.4)
  • First Base: Christian Walker, Arizona (0.1)—Matt Olson, Atlanta (0.7)
  • Second Base: Brice Turang, Milwaukee (2.7)
  • Shortstop: Ezequiel Tovar, Colorado (1.9)—Masyn Winn, St. Louis (2.4)
  • Third Base: Matt Chapman, San Francisco (2.2)
  • Left Field: Ian Happ, Chicago (0.3)—Jackson Chourio, Milwaukee (0.7)
  • Center Field: Brenton Doyle, Colorado (1.6)—Pete Crow-Armstrong, Chicago & Jacob Young, Washington (1.6)
  • Right Field: Sal Frelick, Milwaukee (1.2)
  • Utility: Jared Triolo, Pittsburgh (1.1)
  • Pitcher: Chris Sale, Atlanta (1.000 FP, 31 chances, 1.60 RF)—Zack Wheeler (1.000, 38, 1.70) & Jose Quintana, New York (1.000, 35, 1.80)

What stands out to us here? The numerous potential ties, for starters, at catcher, center field, and pitcher. Picking the winner could be splitting hairs, so whatever. But how did Walker win at first base over Olson? That makes no sense. Same with Tovar over Winn: are they kidding? It does seem that team success factors in here, in the case of Walker over Olson, but not with Tovar over Winn. That just makes no sense.

So, we see three terrible choices here (shafting Neto, Olson, and Winn) and many more dubious ones, at best. Again, this is not a perfect science, as there are 17 different random defensive measurements these days, and none of them really work well independently. Therefore, we stick to the aggregate dWAR sabermetric for now, and that’s revealing enough to us to make wonder what drugs the voters are taking.