The Great Gold Glove Debate

Brett Gardner is quite possibly the best left fielder in the American League, if not all of baseball.  It's a shame that he has little to no chance of winning a Gold Glove.  Why?  Because for some reason, they award Gold Gloves to three outfielders regardless of position, and more often than not, they all go to center fielders.  This is completely absurd and needs to be changed.  The three outfield positions are completely different and all involve separate skill sets.

If they want to give Gold Gloves to three generic outfielders, they might as well award them to four generic infielders while they're at it.  Especially since playing shortstop is exactly the same as playing first base.  That, of course, is a ridiculous notion.  If they were to award the infield Gold Gloves the same way they did the ones in the outfield, middle infielders would have absolutely no chance of ever winning one.  Shortstops and second basemen make the most errors.  It's the nature of the two positions.  Everyone understands that.  That's why the four infield positions are given separate Gold Gloves, and rightfully so.

So why isn't that same principle applied to the outfield?  Left field, center field and right field are completely different positions, from the angles you need to play to the ground you need to cover to the way you should play caroms to where you're supposed to throw.  That's why giving Gold Gloves to three center fielders makes absolutely no sense.

Torii Hunter of the Angels won nine straight Gold Gloves, as a center fielder, from 2001-09.  But the Angels decided he lost some of his range and moved him to right this season.  Basically, they told him he's not good enough to play center field anymore.  Maybe that's the problem.  The managers as a whole seem to have such a low opinion of corner outfielders.  The corner outfield spots are the "easiest" positions to play, so it's harder to appreciate good ones.  That's where you stick the guys that you can't find anyplace else for.  During interleague play, the Red Sox stuck Adrian Gonzalez in right field just so David Ortiz could be in the lineup at first base.  They sacrificed their defense at two positions just to get a slow, fat guy's bat in the lineup.  Meanwhile, a two-time Gold Glove first baseman was stuck playing a completely foreign position.

Need further proof that the positions are entirely different?  Ichiro is the best right fielder in baseball.  He's won a Gold Glove every year since his 2001 rookie season.  The Mariners tried to move him to center field one year, and it was a terrible idea.  Ichiro was still good defensively, but he wasn't great.  Then Franklin Gutierrez arrived in Seattle, and Ichiro was promptly moved back where he belongs.  Right field.  Both of them ended up winning Gold Gloves last season.

I'm not saying that teams shouldn't put their best defensive outfielder in center field.  Quite the opposite actually.  Your best defensive outfielder should be in center field.  It's one of the most important positions on the field, and one of the hardest to play.  But it's completely different than playing the other two.  The center fielder doesn't have to play balls off the Green Monster in Boston (it's no coincidence that three successive Red Sox left fielders are residents of Cooperstown).  Or deal with bullpens.  Or worry about fans reaching over for balls near the line (ask Moises Alou about that one).  Center fielders are expected to hit the cutoff man.  Not throw out runners trying to score at the plate.  Left and right fielders have to do all of those things.  It would be nice if they could be rewarded with something.

Last year was unique in that a pair of left fielders actually won Gold Gloves, Carl Crawford, then with the Rays, in the American League, and Colorado's Carlos Gonzalez in the National League.  Ichiro, a right fielder, also won a Gold Glove (his 10th straight) last season.  Other than Ichiro, the last non-center fielder to win a Gold Glove was Atlanta's Jeff Francoeur, who got one as a right fielder in 2007.  But that year, there was a tie, so four NL outfielders got Gold Gloves.  And the other three were center fielders.  Prior to last season, the last non-Ichiro corner outfielder to win a Gold Glove in the AL was Angels left fielder Darin Erstad in 2002.

I'm not the only one who thinks they should award separate Gold Gloves for left field, center field and right field.  A discussion of Gardner led to Michael Kay and Al Leiter having this exact conversation during last night's Yankees-Mariners game.  Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez, who knows a little something about winning Gold Gloves, did the same thing on SNY earlier this year.  And I'm sure it's come up at one point or another in each of the other 28 TV booths, as well as all 30 radio booths, and not to mention how many national broadcasts.  The opinion seems to be pretty unanimous.  So what's it going to take for Major League Baseball to finally make a change?

I'm not that crazy about "outfield" being one position on the All-Star ballot either, but there's at least a remedy for that.  Unfortunately, there's nothing that can be done if the managers decide that the second- and third-best center fielders in their respective leagues are better defensively than the best right and left fielders.  They might be.  But they play a different position!  It's time to acknowledge that.

Brett Gardner's not going to win a Gold Glove this season.  But he should.