A.L. Gold Glove Winners
 

For once, I think they did a really good job on this. Any thoughts?

Baseball-Ichiro heads list of AL Gold Glove winners

ST. LOUIS, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Seattle Mariners Japanese outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, a virtual lock to win American League (AL) Rookie of the Year, was awarded a Gold Glove for fielding excellence on Tuesday.

Ichiro, who is also a leading candidate for Most Valuable Player of the Year, was joined by Seattle team mate Mike Cameron and Torii Hunter of the Minnesota Twins as the AL outfielders cited for defensive prowess.

Ivan Rodriguez of the Texas Rangers won his 10th consecutive AL Gold Glove Award to tie the major league record for catchers set by former Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench.

Rodriguez was limited to 106 games by a knee injury but he committed just seven errors and posted a .990 fielding percentage.

The Cleveland Indians double play combination of second baseman Roberto Alomar and shortstop Omar Vizquel scooped up their customary fielding honours.

Alomar, who led second basemen with a .993 fielding percentage, won his 10th Gold Glove to break the mark for the position he had shared with Ryne Sandberg of the Chicago Cubs.

The slick fielding Vizquel has captured the last nine AL Gold Gloves at shortstop, tying fellow Venezuelan Luis Aparacio for second behind the 13 awarded to former Cardinals star Ozzie Smith.

The Cleveland pair were joined on the infield by Minnesota Twins first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz and Oakland Athletics third baseman Eric Chavez.

New York Yankees right-hander Mike Mussina won a Gold Glove Award as the American League's top fielding pitcher.

Gold Glove Award winners are selected by balloting among major league managers and coaches before the end of the regular season. They are not allowed to vote for players from their own clubs.

Minnesota's Hunter and Mientkiewicz claimed their individual honours on a day when their team was being prominently mentioned as one of the likely candidates to be voted out of existence in a downsizing move.

Baseball owners on Tuesday voted to eliminate two teams but have yet to name them. The Twins, Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins appear to be the leading candidates.

"I don't know what's going to happen," Hunter said. "We don't need to lose our team. We just got two guys with a Gold Glove."

For too long the Gold Glove has been confused with the Silver Slugger Award(see Palmeiro or McGwire for examples). Glad to see that baseball got it right this year. Thought Mientkiewicz was indeed deserving. The only 2 picks I quibble a little bit with are Edmonds and Pudge. I always have felt that Edmonds was overrated and only makes those great warning track catches because he plays so deep, therefore allowing too many balls too drop in for hits in front of him. I feel Pudge should play more than 106 games to win the award, 125 seems to be a low end number for a catcher & 140 games for a position player. At least his selection was not as bad as Palmeiro's.

I was happy to see that the N.L. did not automatically hand awards to J.T. Snow & Pokey Reese this year, as so often seems to happen.

I think the thing with Pudge is that there's no one else in the AL. Posada plays a lot. But, he's no way a GG catcher.

Think Varitek could've won it if he hadn't gotten injured?

Then again, half of these awards are reputation anyway.

But he did.

Tino Martinez was once again robbed at first.......

YR2000 - what exactly are the Yankees about to 4-peat?

AL Pennants.

Touche!

I think you're right about Pudge, Steve.

I honestly would like Posada to get his eyes checked after this season. He had many costly passed balls this season, but even worse were the many times he didn't catch the ball when it wasn't in the dirt or anything...and like I said, some of those cost us...the shoulder injury -- I'll excuse the throwing but he needs to catch the ball...I'm not buying the excuses he gave this year in Philly how it was hard to see -- doesn't their catcher have to see every home game? ugh...I'm also not buying when people say that Moose is tough to catch with the knuckle curves, etc, Clemens (high heat), and Mendoza (sinker) and Rivera (movement on pitch) -- I just can't buy it -- if you're a major league catcher, catch the dang ball...

I specifically remember the first home game after the tragedy on 9/11...the night Clemens moved up on the strikeout list even though Posada let that ball go and the guy still ended up on first. He had two bad throws into the outfield, a few passed balls and the worst part is he had Clemens all out of whack --- his timing/rhythm was all off...I was getting annoyed and as much as Clemens sings his praises, he didn't look too happy that night either...

Don't get me wrong here -- I still appreciate him as a player and the value he brings to the team... I think any time you can get offense from a position like Catcher or SS it's a bonus and he calls a decent game...but he needs to work on his defense over the winter...

I don't know -- I love Tino and I think he's a great fielding first baseman, one of the best for sure that I've seen as a right handed fielding first baseman...Tino had a great year, but I haven't seen enough of Mientkiewicz to say he wasn't deserving....I did see some awful nice plays that Doug made off the turf on Baseball Tonight but I saw a lot of nice ones by Tino too...

At least the stats were comparable and the people didn't vote by reputation as was done in the past with Palmeiro...that year I was about ready to smack someone!! :D

I spend way too much time thinking "what if"....
 

Tek is the real deal and I pray for a healthy '02. I think we can finally put to bed the theory that Scott Hatteburg would be an every day catcher for another club. The secret is out.........the guy is as bad of a catcher as I can remember. He can not catch and don't tell me it is tough to catch Tim Wakefield..........you will only make my head spin, smoke come out my ears, and make my eyes pop! Scott Hatteburg can not CATCH!


P.S. great draft pick.........any takers?

Ditto - - Todd Greene, Chris Turner and Joe Girardi never had any problems with the Yankee staff over the years.

I still think he needs a bigger glove. His mitt is pretty small.

I agree... The year Palmeiro won was just crazy....

And Buzz i forgot to change my sig......but A.L. Pennants :)

Rob Neyer has speculated the reason Posada always has so many passed balls was because he catches Rivera. You'd figure a guy who leads the league in PBs would be catching a knuckler, but Rivera's cutter moves so much and so hard, that it's a lot like trying to catch a knuckleball.

He probably only catches Mo in 3% of all the innings that he plays behind the dish. Neyer can do better that that.

Either he's bad defensively or he's trying too hard defensively, as in not letting the ball get away from him, turning into a WP. I wasn't looking for this specifically, but when I watched the tape from the WS, he didn't seem to do this when someone could've stolen a base or possibly home. Not ideal but not game-threatening either.

No Vizquel this year? I figured he'd have a lock on the award til he lost his right arm.

:rolleyes: It was Omar:

http://www.netshrine.com/vbulletin2/...&threadid=1056

:topic:

But for those of you who want to complain about voters, you get 10 times the crackpot selections for Gold Glove than you get for all the other awards combined.

This is an example -- Vizquel, while still a very good defensive SS, is clearly on the decline. ARod, conversely, is peaking -- he gets to everything and has a better arm than Omar ever did. ARod had a much higher Range Factor and more double plays. He had a few more errors, but he got to a lot more balls too. And, if maybe you're not just a stathead, but just like to watch the games, it's pretty clear that ARod's got more giddy-up and more gun than Omar does right now.

But since Omar has won it the last several years, no one pays attention to the games or the stats. If columnists devoted the amount of ink to the GG that they do the MVP and Cy, maybe things would be different.

And I think they could...everyone who's played the game understands fielding, and the most basic metrics are not hard to explain.

Thing about the GG is - it's the coaches and MGRs that vote. You would think they would know - seeing these guys every day. Maybe they're just lazy about the vote?

I don't have as much an issue with guys getting it on rep as I do the fact that you have to be a hitter before you start to get consideration. I think you all know what I mean about that.

BTW, I'm moving all this to the GG thread - for those seeing it after the fact.