A brief musing on the Silver Slugger awards
ByYesterday afternoon, to nearly no fanfare, Major League Baseball announced the winners of the 2009 Silver Slugger awards. Among the American League winners were Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter, and the rest were your typical mix of good hitters, popular players and Torii Hunter. No one wrote a 900-word rant on Baseball Prospectus about the inanities of the awards; no one on The Book Blog wrote a sarcastic press release about the awards. They were simply ignored.
So my question is this: Why do so many get up in arms over Gold Gloves and not just ignore them as we do the Silver Sluggers? Both awards are fatally flawed; the winners are chosen by the coaches and managers in each league and not by people who are either more neutral or exposed to more games by the simple fact that they’re not on the field. The selection process doesn’t make sense, and the awards are basically industry recognition of popularity and a job decently well done. It’s hardly a coincidence that six players in the AL won both Silver Sluggers and Gold Gloves. These aren’t objective awards; they aren’t meant to be; and everyone should just come to grips with that reality.
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Most of the statistics used to choose the Silver Slugger Award have been around for years and years and are still highly respected and used.
The Gold Glove has been around for years and despite new sabermetrics that pinpoint the littlest detailed flaw…they still seem to use the same philosophy when choosing, as they did since it started regardless.
Plus, the common baseball fan understands the hitting statistics pretty well while they don’t really understand, or care for the defensive ones…until a sports writer uses it to bash one of their most hated rivals…then they pretend to care about it a lot.
the [Gold Gloves] still seem to use the same philosophy when choosing
Which is to say, no philosophy. It’s a popularity contest.
…and the rest were your typical mix of good hitters, popular players and Torii Hunter.
(golf clap) I like how you listed Hunter separately, as if he has his own class.
Seriously, though, here’s my take on it:
The Gold Gloves are much older (1958 vs. 1980) and have a bigger/more active corporate sponsor (Rawlings v. Louisville Slugger). Rawlings also had the good sense to include their name in the official award; Louisville Slugger did not. But perhaps most importantly, the GG’s are the only real defensive awards; Silver Sluggers are just one of three offensive awards (MVP and Hank Aaron). GG’s have both a historical cache and a role-filling relevance (as the only award of its kind) that the Silver Sluggers do not.
The rough equation is:
Play good defense = win a Gold Glove
Play good offense = win the MVP
Shouldnt it just be given to the player with the highest OPS at each position?
What are, you, a robot? GO BACK TO RUSSIA, YOU COMMIE!!!
Damn you caught me; just give it to the players with the highest RBI total
And the Cy Young to the Pitcher with the most wins!!!!
I find it interesting that the SS differentiates positions and the GG doesn’t. Perhaps the GG could take a lesson from its cousin.
Does it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Slugger_Award
Oh. Hmm, I just figured since Bay/Hunter/Ichiro won it, they broke it down.
/lazy and not looking it up.
/RobinsonCano’d
Heh, good call.
/continues eating emapanadas and not doing baseball-related leg work.
PA LA TUMBA!!!!!
If you keep eating all those empanadas you’re going to fall off a cliff and get
/Baerga’d
Shhh… Youkilis had a higher OPS than Tex.
By your method (which has merit):
Mauer 1.031
Youkilis .961
Zobrist (got screwed because he plays so many positions) .948
Bartlett .879
ARod .933
Bay .921
Hunter .873
Drew .914
Lind .932
Can’t really argue too much against Tex, Hill, Jeter, Longoria, and Ichiro (OK, maybe Ichiro).
Yeah just a thought, going by OPS is much better than voting by coaches or writers.
Most anything is better than what the coaches and writers think.
I have no problem with Jeter, because he played in way more games and accrued more batting runs. And had slightly better raw power numbers. And a slightly better wOBA.
And J.D. Drew is exempt from awards, I believe, until he gets way grittier.
Youkilis only played around half of the season at 1B.
How about we just ignore all of the awards?
That’s what Tangotiger tried to do with that press release, but by writing it, he gives the stupid awards process more attention.
Yeah, I’m guilty of the same thing, having written about them relatively recently.
We can’t ignore it, it’s important news, so we cover it, because people are interested in it, because it’s important news, so we cover it.
Sincerely,
The Mainstream Media
I’m with TSJC on this one. Great hitters get all the love, adoration, steaks, and etc. they could desire. Great defenders get very little excepting the appreciation of the pitchers they work behind a few posts by bloggers and statheads whom, as we all know, are gross and sexless.
So more people would like Gold Gloves to go to those who actually performed best on the field. I sometimes dream of a day when GGs are awarded to the most worthy and people flock to the internets to look up the names of players they don’t recognize and then all fans are united in information and peace.
I sometimes dream of a day when GGs are awarded to the most worthy and people flock to the internets to look up the names of players they don’t recognize and then all fans are united in information and peace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mOEU87SBTU (safe)
Great hitters get all the love, adoration, steaks, and etc. they could desire. Great defenders get very little excepting the appreciation of the pitchers they work behind a few posts by bloggers and statheads
A lot of that is because it’s a lot more obvious who the great hitters are.
Home runs, hits, walks, etc are all unmistakable. If a player gets a lot of them, he’s good. If he doesn’t, he’s bad. People’s preferences for which stats they prioritize varies, but the stats work out well enough that people tend to agree on who the great hitters are and who the terrible hitters are, even if people can’t agree on how to rank the guys in the middle.
When you get to defense, you have a limited view when watching on tv. You don’t know how the defense was set up, and you have a limited field of view while the ball is in play. It can be hard to accurately judge distance and trajectory due to the camera angles chosen. If a player makes a lot of diving catches, does that mean he has amazing range? Or does it mean he has terrible range and has to dive to make plays other players would make easily? Players with exceptional range are often deceptive, as they make most plays look easy and rarely need to make impressive looking catches. A running catch will always stand out more than a catch while standing still, making the fielder with poor range more memorable.
Poll:
What do you care more about?
A.) Silver Slugger Awards
B.) The Pro Bowl
C.) I love them both more than my parents and/or children
I like the Silver Slugger Awards and the Pro Bowl more than I like hockey.
There, I said something nice about the Silver Slugger Awards and the Pro Bowl.
D.) Luis Castillo dropping the pop up.
there is one award that matters. world series champ-een
http://store.theonion.com/prod.....ior-to,39/ (safe)
Yea, I was kinda disappointed about the award and wanted to ignore it but Jeter and Tex won so that’s good. A-Rod got robbed.
Speaking of A-Rod, do you guys think he’ll win another award anytime soon (even though some are dumb) or will people/players/managers not vote for him because of past PED use?
MVP next year hopefully.
I’m not too angry about Longo over A-Rod, but it could’ve gone either way.
Yea true. I guess its my bias and it would have awesome if he would have won despite coming off hip surgery and a month long slump and many calling him finished (Olney!). In his down year, he still wins a SS.
If he played all season, at the same pace, he would’ve won the SS by far, and could’ve competed for MVP. With the same amount of ABs as Longo, Rodriguez would’ve hit ~40 homers.
Unless Jeter and Mo get busted selling steriods outside an elementary school gymnasium, I truly think the whole PED issue is over. I don’t think anyone cares. It’s done. I would not be suprised if A-Rod is the leading vote-getter for next year’s ASG.
Unless Jeter and Mo get busted selling steriods outside an elementary school gymnasium,
And so begins Jayson Stark’s next column.
I don’t think he’ll really get snubbed for an award more because of the PED use. Ff it’s close he won’t get it, but more because MSM loves the underdog & didn’t like A-Rod before PED use.
There’s still something perverse about Carlos Zambrano being “awarded” for hitting .217/.225/.464.
The only thing dumber than giving out the Silver Slugger awards… is giving the Silver Slugger award to a pitcher.
Kinda like giving a GG to a pitcher
Micah Owings wuz robbed
What is so bad about the winners of SS?
How can anyone quibble with these choices?
Not like they gave a 1b award to someone who DH’d all yr or anything
You’re like f*cking clockwork, you’re Joe Morgan’s wet dream. I’m convinced you’re not even human, I think you’re some algorithm or something that just spews the same ‘why would anyone write about [insert term from post here]‘ comment into every thread.
Yet you respond to this alleged robot.
Eh, I liked the joke and let it fly. It’s not like I’m some crazy person who can’t help but respond to Bo constantly. Tell me what percentage of his posts I’ve replied to – I can’t have replied to him more than a handful of times, ever. I know you can do it with your mystical RABbi powers.
Robots need love too
I think people cry more about gold gloves because it is the only defensive award for position players. MVP, Rookie of the Year are all solely looked at due to offensive. I do not know why but they are. Also Rawlings spends some money promoting Gold Gloves for many years.
I think Torii Hunter gets awards due to being well liked. I never thought he was that good in the OF. Side note that “home run” he saved in the all star game was no homer.
I like Hunter too, especially when he is over running balls against us like in game 1 ALCS this year, and when with Minni when he threw that ball over the fence in what i think was the ALDS one year… Anybody remember that one?
I agree with all these points.
(I agreed with them back when I first said them… earlier in this post and over the past couple of days.)
It doesn’t take much baseball knowledge to see who is a really good offensive player. Stats are everywhere and easy to understand.
As for defense, there is so little statistical evidence to tell us who is a real good defensive player. UZR has it’s downfalls. Is Teixy really that bad? He had a -4.1 UZR/150. Getting that GG tells fans he’s a pretty damn good defender.