Advanced Stat Shows Just How Silly The Gold Glove Voting Actually Is

Three cheers for Lookout Landing, which lists all of the AL Gold Glove winners’ UZR ratings — an advanced (if imperfect) metric that measures defense far more accurately than any before it — relative to qualifying players at their position. The result? Yet another reminder of how silly the Gold Glove voting really is:

P – Mark Buehrle
C – Joe Mauer
1B – Mark Teixeira (7th of 9)
2B – Placido Polanco (1st of 9)
3B – Evan Longoria (1st of 8)
SS – Derek Jeter (5th of 10)
OF – Adam Jones (17th of 34)
OF – Torii Hunter (13th of 34)
OF – Ichiro Suzuki (12th of 34)

You see, many of the players on the list were not even close to being the best at their position. This happens every single year. The only solace baseball fans can take from it is that the Gold Gloves are literally meaningless. The only problem with this solace is that plenty of old sportswriter types still factor Gold Gloves into Hall of Fame voting. Sigh. Every silver lining has a cloud.