We continue our MLB Monday look at Gold Glove winners, looking at the National League in the 1960s after examining the American League in the same decade last week. We’re using dWAR data to isolate the Gold Glove vote winners who pretty much had no business winning the vote, while we also try to rationalize how and why the voters possibly could have been duped into abusing their ballot privileges. It’s quite the mess!

Editorial Note: Some pitcher defensive data is incomplete for this initial time period, so we may not be including those positional winners in these initial analyses; eventually, this will be remedied.

Here are the “worst” National League GG winners of the Sixties, in reverse order, and there are multiple repeat offenders in this column:

10. Roberto Clemente, RF, 1967 (-0.1 dWAR): It is surprising to see him on this list, since his overall defensive reputation and statistics (12.2 dWAR career) are good. But even good defenders have bad seasons, and this was one of them for Clemente. In fact, six of his 18 seasons produced negative dWAR, although, again, his career mark was very much in the positive. He clearly won this vote on reputation, which is okay.

9. Joe Torre, C, 1965 (-0.2 dWAR): This is the only Gold Glove he won in his career, which ended up very average at -0.3 dWAR total. He had two seasons where he posted more than 1.0 dWAR (1961, 1967) despite not winning the GG vote in those years. This was his first season, actually, of his career with negative glove value, so we can’t fault the voters too much here for giving it to him, especially with his bat consistency.

8. Curt Flood, RF, 1965/1968 (-0.2/-0.3 dWAR): We’re combining these two seasons, because like Clemente, Flood was generally considered a good fielder (10.6 dWAR combined). He just had some rougher seasons among the six straight vote wins (1963-1968). He had excellent dWAR seasons in 1958, 1961, and 1962 without winning GG votes, so this makes up for that, we guess? These seasons weren’t really that bad, either.

7. Bill White, 1B, 1961/1963 (-0.4/-0.4 dWAR): This position is one of the hardest, as there was little premium at the time on glove work there. It was all about the bat, really. Either way, he was -3.1 dWAR overall for his career, which isn’t too bad, all things considered. Still, these were “undeserved” GG vote wins. He won seven consecutive GGs for some reason, despite a combined -1.0 dWAR in those seven years overall.

6. Wes Parker, 1B, 1968 (-0.4 dWAR): He’s on this list three times for GG-winning seasons of increasingly bad judgment. He actually won six straight Gold Gloves from 1967-1972, and none of them featured positive dWAR value. Again, maybe it’s the position expectations of the era, but … egads! His career dWAR (-3.0) isn’t that bad, yet he only played nine MLB seasons. Was he really just the lesser of all evils on the diamond?

5. Roberto Clemente, RF, 1961/1963 (-0.6/-0.6 dWAR): See above. From 1957-1959, he totaled 5.2 dWAR without winning a GG vote. But he earned a reputation there that would last, usually with merit, throughout the rest of his career. His final 12 seasons all earned him GGs, and his combined dWAR in those 12 years was 8.5 dWAR. He really deserve only seven of those GG vote wins, but he also deserved earlier ones.

4. Wes Parker, 1B, 1969 (-0.7 dWAR): Here we go again. From 1965-1971, though, Parker put up 16.8 oWAR combined, so that must have helped him win these votes. He was a .267 hitter for his career overall, which doesn’t jump off the page, but the Los Angeles Dodgers were popular and had a pretty decent decade, too. We’re not bothering to see what better options existed for these seasons, like we did before, but … come on.

3. Wes Parker, 1B, 1967 (-1.0 dWAR): We are out of things to say about Parker. Yet every 162 games for his career, he averaged -0.4 dWAR. That would be fine and acceptable—except for the fact he won ˆGG votes. This is pretty egregious, in the sense that he has a defensive reputation due to these votes that just isn’t supported by the data. It’s situations like these that inspired us to explore this topical miniseries, right?

2. Pete Rose, RF, 1969 (-1.1 dWAR): At -13.2 dWAR overall for his career, he was rarely a good fielder. Oddly, his best two seasons with the glove did not win him GG votes, while two negative dWAR seasons did—including this one, his first GG win ever. It was his second consecutive season with -1.1 dWAR, in truth, so he shouldn’t have had a reputation for excellence at all. In fact, five of his six seasons prior were all negative.

1. Bill White, 1B, 1960 (-1.2 dWAR): The first of his seven straight GG vote wins, it was the most violating, really. He had posted -1.4 dWAR the year before, so it’s not like he was building a reputation here. His rookie year in 1956 produced the best dWAR of his career (0.4), but it’s hard to see that memory lingering after he missed 1957 due to military service and played just 36 games in 1958 before being a butcher with the glove.