Never fear, MLB Monday continues to pursue its miniseries on bad Gold Glove votes, this time for the American League in the 2010s decade. By this time, many experts were using better data and methodologies for voting in various modes. Not all of them, of course, as we still had some ridiculous voting going on by people who should have known better. As this miniseries winds down, the award errors were less egregious.

Here are the “worst” AL GG winners of the most-recent full decade, in reverse order, and once again, we see the voting improvements, as we have a mere seven players to isolate here—although their misgiven awards encompass 11 different seasons … so that is kind of a Top 10 of sorts, we assert:

7. Derek Jeter, SS, 2010 (0.0 dWAR): He always a below-average glove man at short, but his legendary ability is just something we can only laugh at now. This was the last GG vote he somehow won with an even-zero dWAR mark. We have covered all his sins prior to this, so we don’t want to waste your time—or ours—recounting his many shortcomings. It’s just amazing to us how some players escape all mediot criticism.

6. Mark Teixeira, 1B, 2010 (-0.2 dWAR): To his credit, he won a legit GG vote in 2012 with 1.0 dWAR, but we know from our 2000s AL piece that he was a mediocre defender, at best. But hey, it must be that Yankees uniform that just fools voters into thinking they’re seeing something great when in reality what they’re witnessing is mediocrity dressed up all prettily. It’s a pattern, of course, so there’s no point arguing it, folks.

5. Nick Markakis, RF, 2011/2014 (-0.1/-0.4 dWAR): Our first multiple offender of the decade, he won three undeserved Gold Gloves—the third one coming with an NL team, so look for him again next week in this same space, again. His career dWAR mark (-7.1) isn’t overwhelmingly bad, but he never should have won any of these awards. Considering his bat peaked in 2008, it’s very strange as to why he kept winning these votes.

4. Alex Gordon, LF, 2019 (-0.5 dWAR): His career began at third base, but the Kansas City Royals moved him to left field where he won eight GG votes in his 14-year career. This was the only one where he was not in position dWAR territory. He was also in his age-35 season, so we can forgive the voters for maybe going with some sentiment here in voting him his seventh piece of hardware. We’ve seen this happen before, too.

3. Ichiro Suzuki, RF, 2010 (-0.7 dWAR): He discussed him in the 2000s AL column as well. This was the tenth-straight GG vote he won, and of those awards, three of them came in seasons where he struggled in the field. This matched his worst vote-winning season in terms of dWAR, yet we can see how the voters were emotionally swayed by many things in making this decision. It’s bad, but it’s also comprehensible.

2. Adam Jones, CF, 2012 (-1.0 dWAR): No vote can ever be justified, however, when the dWAR is this bad. In his 14 MLB seasons, he compiled -0.7 dWAR overall, so you know he was a hit-or-miss fielder. He did win three other GG awards (2009, 2013-2014) with a combined 1.9 dWAR, so this was just a season where the voters whiffed hard. Why? Because he posted a career-best oWAR in this specific year, that’s why. Got it.

1. Eric Hosmer, 1B, 2013-2015/2017 (-0.6/-0.3/-0.1/-1.3 dWAR): A four-time offender, this guy posted -10.9 dWAR combined in his MLB existence. In fact, he never posted positive dWAR in any single season, only breaking even at 0.0 dWAR once (2020). Three of these four vote wins came in seasons where he posted the best oWAR marks of his career (2013, 2015, 2017). That explains a lot, of course. He should return them all.