It's Awards Season In The MLB

Today marked the unveiling of the American League Gold Glove Winners. As is the case every year with these awards, there is always some sort of overlooking of deserving players by the voters. Reputation as a "good" fielder is a great way to win one of these fine mantle pieces, as is having an outstanding bat. Because we all know wthat success at the plate does, in fact, mask any defensive shortcomings when it comes to defensive awards.

So there are always some very good hitters with reputations as "good" defensive players who take home some hardware. Deserved or undeserved, this happens every year.

Rather than take the over the top hyperbolic approach of stating Player-X over Player-Y is a "travesty", "abomination", or "embarrassment" that most writers would do so to grab headlines; it is much simpler to just point out how very flawed the voting system is.

Today Derek Jeter was awarded the 4th Gold Glove of his career, receiving the nod over Elvis Andrus. Normally any self respecting writer would shout from the rooftops. "Voting was rigged!", they would exclaim. "Popularity should not reflect awards based on performance!", as a follow up. "Pasta Divingjeter is what Adam Everett eats for breakfast!" as the finisher.

But that won't happen here. I have long defended Jeter as a player (except his defense, it's always been pretty brutal) against the stat heads. The very same people who's sole existence is defined as basically trying to destroy all things Jeter.

However, this years voting is just too much to look away from. Past defensive shortcomings by Jeter will not be brought up here. ( -68 in +/- from 2006-2008. Dead last of all Short Stops. Can't forget negative ratings in all years from 2002-2008 via Fangraphs...err wait, what did I say about past defensive ratings...) Instead, credit will be given where credit is due. Jeter played an above average defense this year by any scouting or advanced metric. Spending all off-season working on his lateral agility certainly paid dividends to that cause.

But last time I checked, above average does not rate higher than Plus on the scouting scale. And in this case, "Plus" refers to Elvis Andrus of the Texas Rangers. (As an aside, had Jack Wilson played all year in the AL, all would be well, and we would be congratulating Captain Jack on his well deserved award.)

Unfortunately, the ever so unquantifiable "intangibles" will not be represented here. Since they are 80% made up dogma and 20% pure baseball intelligence, it's hard to say how much on player has and one player doesn't. Everybody knows that Jeter can do quantum physics while getting a full head of steam to throw out a speeding Gerald Laird, but what about Andrus? Can anyone quantify his "intangibles"? Nope? Ok, so let's just throw non-anecdotal evidence on the scrap heap.

Simple metrics will be used to show the differences between Mr. Jeter, and Mr. Andrus. Most of them will come from Fangraphs for easy comparison's sake. Feel free to look elsewhere, you'll find similar results all around.

UZR-
Jeter- 6.6
Andrus- 10.7

6.6 is nothing to scoff at. But 10.7, well that's just spectacular.

UZR/150-
Jeter- 8.4
Andrus- 11.7

The gap is smaller, but it still stands. Should be noted that of all the short stops to play 1,000 innings in one league (again, sorry Jack Wilson), Andrus is the only one to top double digits in both UZR and UZR/150.

RngR-
Jeter- 3.7
Andrus- 11.7

Small gaps, but gaps nonetheless (Ok, huge gaps in RngR. But at least now you have the reasoning for Andrus having more errors and the lower FP%. Andrus has almost 3X the range of Jeter). Almost every other metric comes up with similar findings.

As some of you may recall, there was some hub-bub in the 2009 offseason about Michael Young refusing to move to 3rd base per the Rangers request. They wanted to do so partly because they didn't have a consistent third basemen with Hank Blalock consistently being injured. But the main reason was to get Andrus' glove on the field and help shore up the Rangers infield defense.

Last time I checked, Michael Young was the 2008 Gold Glove winner at short stop. And yet, he got moved off the position in favor of a better fielder. Pretty simple math says Andrus is automatically the front runner for the Gold Glove in the AL. That simple math was eventually confirmed by more advanced math, I.E. all the metrics.

Young won it last year, Andrus bumped him off because he is the better defender, Andrus played the best defensive SS all year in the AL.... see where I'm going with this.

Is Jeter a terrible choice? Absolutely not. Reason to be outraged over? Not in the slightest. But in the interest of fair and rightful award distributing, yet another small market player was passed over by the big name superstar. Something that happens every year, and something that will continue to happen until all voters take metrics and scouting into their votes. Doing so brings clearer results than relying on batting average and reputation.

Now, not to continue piling on top of Jeter like yet another fine specimen from Maxim's Top 100 list, but it seems that contesting anything pro-Jeter is akin to slapping the Pope while taking a dump on a picture of Mother Teresa.

We're talking full on blasphemy here. No one can even imagine saying such a thing, like Jeter not deserving this award. Sorry everyone, stats and metrics back this up.

Instead of simply stating a rational and thoughtful case, saying anything that can be construed as Anti-Jeter (note*- Anti-Jeter is also in the same spectrum as Anti-Tim Tebow and Anti- Composite Chuck Norris/Jesus) is the equivalent of saying he is the worst player ever (Aaron Miles says hello). At this point, all rational goes flying out the window with a hint of Jeter's new cologne. Simply calling a spade a spade, like I am trying to do, is not a crime. But exaggerating a player's true worth because A) You don't know any better, B) You can't understand metrics, and C) He looks good in tight pants also does a disservice to the fandom of players.

Keep in mind, I am far from a Metric lover, and rely on my own two eyes more than anything. And yet here we are, breaking down quantified equations because the voters can't make good judgment decisions.

Instead of Aaron Hill representing 2B this year, we get Placido Polanco. A fine choice, but only if Aaron Hill and Dustin Pedroia played in the NL. In the outfield, Adam Jones, a fine young player with a superstar future, somehow gets the award over Carl Crawford despite Jones' negative defensive value. Franklin Gutierrez goes home empty handed, despite dominating pretty much every defensive stat you can find in the outfield. Does a 30.5 point advantage in UZR and 30.2 point lead in UZR/150 over Torii Hunter sound like domination? Does to me.

I'm sure the NL Gold Gloves will be no less interesting.

The real test will come for the AL Cy Young. Will the voters have the balls to vote Pro Greinke? Only time will tell.