We continue with our MLB Monday miniseries on poor Gold Glove voting, entering the current decade—which is obviously not complete yet. We only have half of it in the books, so we will grab whatever we see here as “bad” and present it. As we have seen in recent columns, there is more data available to judge the defensive value now than ever before, so the mistakes are fewer and lesser … we really see that here, huh?

Here are the worst AL GG winners of the last five seasons, in reverse order, and we only have a Top 4:

4. Dylan Moore, UTL, 2024 (-0.1 dWAR): He played so many positions, he probably earned the vote on that criterium alone. In playing every infield position and two outfield positions for a team that just missed the postseason by one game, voters definitely had a hard time figuring out which positions he was best at (3B, LF) and which he never should have been playing in the first place (1B, 2B, SS). Either way, it’s not a bad vote.

3. Yuli Gurriel, 1B, 2021 (-0.2 dWAR): To this point in his career, he’d never had a full season with positive defensive value, so did the voters just see his decent offensive production and pick him? Seems like it. First base is a hard position for voters, as we see more than ever in this piece. But to pick a guy that had never been a positive defender yet in his career is a poor choice, period. He still never has had a full, positive year.

2. Nathaniel Lowe, 1B, 2023 (-0.4 dWAR): This is another player who had never had a full season of positive defensive value when he won the GG vote—probably because his team made the playoffs for the first time since 2016? He had a career year at the plate in 2022, but that did not carry over to 2023. However, his -1.9 dWAR mark in 2022 was so bad, maybe voters saw “improvement” and decided to reward him for it.

1. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., 1B, 2022 (-0.7 dWAR): The first-base curse continues with a third straight guy who had never finished in positive dWAR territory over a full season in his career when he won the GG vote. His breakout offensive season in 2021 was not replicated in 2022, but somehow, voters thought he was worthy of this one. Again, this seems to be a pattern of sorts for first basemen, so we will see if it continues.