Nov
10
Jeter, Teixeira take home Gold Gloves
ByAlthough the Gold Glove award is one of the least objective awards handed out in baseball, it’s still some postseason hardware, and considering the Yanks’ defensive woes in recent years, it’s nice to see some Bombers win. Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira have both taken home Gold Glove awards today for their respective decisions. Jeter, not known for his defense, some improved range at short this year and now owns four Gold Gloves. This is Teixeira’s third. The rest of the winners and, eventually, the voting results can be found here at MLB.com.
Bellhop: HEY, AN AWARDS STATUE!, I– oh, it’s a Grammy.
(throws Grammy off the balcony)
Bum in Dumpster (OC): Hey, don’t throw your garbage down here!
(throws Grammy back up onto balcony)
Pretty much. That’s why I don’t understand the Internet outrage over Gold Gloves. We know they’re not based on any sort of fielding reality. Who cares anymore?
Although having watched Teixeira all year, I’d say he definitely deserves one.
Or maybe it’s all relative. Giambi looked like a monkey f*cking a football out there, so the next guy – even if it was Swisher – was bound to be better.
Or maybe it’s all relative.
It’s all relative.
…having watched Teixeira all year…
Unless you also watched everyone else all year, whatever clause follows this one is totally irrelevant.
Who then, Youkilis? Konerko? All the numbers are pretty comparable, as far as I can tell….
I agree, 1B is pretty much a tossup. There’s not really a wrong answer.
I was just quibbling with your “I saw him all year long” line. The statement holds no water, because watching every game of Tex’s does not qualify you to say if he’s better than/worse than anyone else since you didn’t also watch every game of everyone else.
I agree somewhat, but I’m not so biased to say that *everyone* on the team deserves a GG because I “watched them all year”…
But Teixeira just didn’t miss ANYTHING – I dare say he deserves not only his own award, but half of Jeter’s as well.
Still moot.
Your girlfriend may love your cock and think it’s pretty big because she sees it all the time, but unless she’s also seen my huge cock, she can’t really know what a huge cock really looks like. She’s not an expert on huge cocks, she’s just an expert on YOUR cock.
Umm….
Pete cock : TSJC cock :: Teixeira : Youkilis :: Pete’s GF : GG Voters
what accounts for jeter’s improved defense at age 35? i keep hearing about “positioning”, as if mick kelleher invented the practice. could that be all? was jeter playing hurt the last few years? how much did teixiera impact jeter?
Because he played back more compared to earlier years?
That’s all I know.
Oh and I’m going to wait for a comment that will attack the validity of UZR saying it’s flawed because Teix with a below average UZR won the award. I can see it coming.
Not flawed so much as its incomplete when it comes to 1Bs. A big part of their defense is saving fielding errors and there’s really no way to account for that with currently available defensive metrics.
(Not to defend or contradict UZR, just stating the gaping flaw when it comes to measuring a single position.)
another thing it doesn’t take into account (necessarily) is throwing ability, as far as 1B goes, since it only covers balls hit into play. All that teix’s uzr says is he gets to fewer batted balls than the average 1B. It says less about how well he scoops the ball or holds the bag or throws home or to 2B. That said, there are still probably other guys out there who throw and scoop as well as tex and also have better UZRs. Just saying.
Jeter had employed a training regimen over the offseason too, one that focused on his explosiveness and lateral movement.
there was a rab post about this too i believe if memory serves
that makes sense. i’m surprised he didn’t try it earlier. his arm is strong enough
It’s been written about numerous times. Jeter started working with a new trainer over the past 2 off seasons. The goal was to improve his lateral movement and his first step going to his left. His D improved in 2008 and improved more in 2009.
It wasnt a one year, out of nowhere type of thing.
The recovery from injury surely helped, I’d bet.
this too
thanks, didn’t know that. i love that he chose to focus on one particular body movement and it totally seems to have paid off. i remember larry bowa as a “35 and over” shortstop. not pretty
yeah, there are some real good articles out there about this from a couple months ago.
apparently he did a lot of work in the offseason to improve his range, especially to his left. new workout regimen.
That’s a lovely paragraph… about offense.
Torii Hunter, 2009 CF UZR: -1.4
Franklin Gutierrez, 2009 CF UZR: +29.1
Come on. Clearly Torii Hunter took away at least 18 home runs this year, right? ….right…? Reality?
UZR is flawed obviously. Me eyes tell me Hunter is the better defensive CF’er.
Wow.
I mean, forget the UZR metric. Just use anecdotal evidence. What were we hearing all year long, narrative wise?
That the Mariners were getting great pitching results because they have a huge park and great defense? Stands to reason that Ichiro is probably not their only good defender. Maybe the voters should have looked over that roster in detail.
Gutierrez was possibly the single best defensive player in the AL last year. Dude is a freaking vacuum cleaner.
Easily. Gutierrez is unbelievable out there. He looks like Andruw Jones/Torii in their primes. Without him, Washburn has nowhere near the ERA he had while on the Mariners.
as evidenced by his object failure as a tiger
I do remember when a bunch of people were clamoring for Jarrod Washburn and were saying zomg look at his ERA and you were like nah kidddd, check out how ridiculous the defense is behind him
Ichiro in RF: +10.5
Gutierrez in CF: +29.1
Chavez/Saunders/Balentin/Langerhans in LF: all positive numbers (+5.8, +5.8, +4.8, +3.5 respectively)
Oh, and:
Adrian Beltre at 3B: +14.3
The only defensive position where the Mariners played a guy for at least 200 innings who had a negative UZR was Yuniesky Betancourt, and they quickly dumped him for a Jack Wilson/Josh Wilson/Ronny Cedeño rotation, and all three of them are plus defenders as well.
The Mariners defense was pimptastic in 2009.
So you’re telling me they’re going to sign Brad Hawpe?
They’re gonna move Ichiro to DH, bench Gutierrez because he doesn’t hit well, sign Hawpe to play CF, trade for Dunn to play RF, and bring back Ken Griffey Jr. and stick him in LF fulltime.
I love it. I hope MLB grants the outfielders an exemption and allows them patrol the OF with Segways.
team UZR/150 of 12.0. best in baseball. rays were 2nd at 10.6. yanks btw were 19th with a -4.9
make that 26th
Guti definitely deserved the GG. Maybe next year.
What do you know? Coaches and managers that actually watch games.
/PeteAbe’d
Credentials…where are yours?
adam jones and his -4.1 UZR/150 didn’t deserve one either
True.
Also, both Jones and Gutierrez are centerfielders. That’s not really fair to award two CF’s a Gold Glove.
You wouldn’t just have 4 IF gold gloves and give them all to shortstops, would you?
Who should have won:
LF – Carl Crawford
CF – Franklin Gutierrez
RF – Ichiro
Damnit Tommie, didn’t you realize that I was going to post this after you?
fg is incredible. every mariner’s game i watched this year he did something memorable
Looks like Andrus should have won, per UZR. Jeter’s not a terrible choice though, he has to be in the top 2 or 3 this season in the AL.
Jeter is cleaning house with the awards this year.
why do you think he had to build such a big house?
This is probably the closest Jeter has come to deserving the GG he received, right?
well, he’s never had a positive UZR, so i’d say, yeah
UZR isnt definitive and the be and end all about defense.
I KNOW, RIGHT? I saw the Twoinns with my own eyes too, and I for one believe Joe Mauer deserved that Gold Glove.
I just Bo’d Bo.
And you made it in small font. Damn you and your cool tricks that no one else can do.
I think everyone can do the small font thing. Just stick what you want to be small in < small > < / small > those tags without the spaces.
Tried it. Doesn’t work. Admin only.
It’s probably for the best; we don’t want everyone having the ability to make their comments BIG, which is worse.
I’m happy that Jeter and Tex received the GGs, even though they didn’t really deserve them.
Meh, Jeter shouldn’t have won (Elvis Andrus was much better), but I don’t have much beef with Tex winning. He’s pretty identical to Morales/Miggy/Overbay/etc.
1B is a tossup.
Youkilis had a 15.2 UZR/150 at 1B, but only played 78 games there. Does the lack of games played at the position disqualify him?
He has to cover up on his right.
Probably, yeah.
youkilis is one of if not the best 1B i’ve seen (of people who can actually hit well enough to start) at getting to balls, and his throwing is pretty solid as well (though tex is better). I watched him a lot this year, though, and he wasn’t the vacuum that tex was when it came to fielding throws.
Yea, I think that the Jeter and Tex choices are somewhat acceptable. The Hunter one is just ugly.
Yes, if by “tossup,” you mean that Mark Teixeira is the best first baseman ever because he’s so good that it’s impossible for anyone to be better than him.
/RAB horde’d
Except for Don Mattingly, of course. Those two guys are the greatest first basemen not only in the history of first base, but also in the history of second base to boot.
Mattingly had something that whippersnappers like Teixeira and Martinez can only dream of:
A nice, big stache.
http://baseball.dailyskew.com/.....711261.jpg
Ahh, when men where men and women were feminine men.
Quick, Tommie:
Your All-Star Stache infield?
1B: Keith Hernandez
2B: I dunno, some guy from the 1800s?
SS: Ditto (middle infielders seem not to rock the stache)
3B: Wade Boggs
C: Sal Fasano
Here you go, enjoy:
http://www.popcrunch.com/baseb.....mustaches/
I can see why you’d enjoy visiting popcrunch.com
Dorothy MantoothDon Mattingly is a saint.Honestly, the system of voting is so flawed as to make this meaningless. All I care about is that Jeter finishes 2nd in MVP voting.
Shouldn’t Zobrist be second (assuming Mauer is first)? In all honesty, he had a better year than Jeter.
That assumes you fully trust WAR in that case, which I dont. He gets a huge UZR push that is unlikely to be real. It is close, and Zobrist is up there, but I take Jeter.
I hate that 2 CF won gold gloves. Why can’t there be a winner from LF, a winner from CF and a winner from RF?
Because they are only in the corners because they can’t play CF. They should give it to 3 CF’ers, although maybe a RF’er with a killer arm can be justified.
We get it but arent they positions??
Its important. They should have a winner and not just 3 CF’s.
It takes dif skills to play them. Its not at all speed and jumps.
I’m fine with Ichiro winning. I think a standout at those positions can win, but I wouldn’t force them to vote for all 3 positions. I think OF is pretty interchangeable, and a decent CF can move over, but not vice versa.
But…but….UZR….
TEX ranked 7th in UZR amoung 1st basemen that qualified…obviously he didn’t deserve such an award
People have acknowledged multiple times that UZR is ill-suited for rating 1B defense.
I KNEW IT!
http://riveraveblues.com/2009/.....ent-682269
Is the GG for pitchers basically chosen randomly out of a hat?
He pitched a perfect game, you know?
Ever since Maddux retired…yes.
Oh, wait, that was in the NL.
The AL has had the Rogers/Mussina tandem running the show for quite a while. Both leagues are going to need to find someone new.
Woohoo. RAB comment of the day.
lol self annointed?
Twitter-anointed.
yeah i doint do the whole twitter thing
Jeter has been jobbed out of other awards he has deserved so getting one that is not crystal clear that he deserved is just karma giving him a pat on the back.
From Pete Abe in a DM to me:
“But I’m guessing they saw a lot more games than any of us did.”
Really? These coaches see their own team, and get skewed by a few plays.
I didn’t watch 162 games this year but probably in the high 130s. Coaches don’t see that many more games than most of us did. Plus, coaches don’t watch games on MLB Network that are on when their team is playing. That’s just a silly statement to make.
You know who saw more games than anyone else? More than you and me, more than coaches and scouts, more than beat reporters and columnists?
Net nerds. All those spreadsheet geeks at FanGraphs and BaseballProspectus and sites like that, they have teams of guys who watch every single play of every single game so they can record it for statistical posterity.
Yup. With my MLB.tv account, I am quite certain that I watched more baseball than every person who voted on these awards.
MLB.tv + dual monitors FTW!
People ask how I can watch two games at once. I tell them that I can’t find a screen to show a third.
So what you’re saying is that all of those net nerds watched it with their own eyes?
Basically, you’re just validating Bo.
Validating him by invalidating him, yes.
I can’t tell whether that’s noble in a pitiable sort of way, or pitiable in a noble sort of way.
I’m not going to lie to ya.
Voters bitch slapping UZR brings a smile to my face.
Yup. People who would never use UZR giving out an award that ignores UZR invalidates UZR. That makes plenty of sense. But I’m glad you are happy with this scientific method:
“They’d pretty much blurt out the name of a guy that they remembered as making some good plays against them (often asking a fellow coach what he thought, and coming to a consensus opinion that way), or pick the player that had the reputation as being the best at his position, even if that reputation was no longer deserved.”
Yup, that’s the way to get some accuracy.
Well UZR/150 doesn’t really meassure the value of a 1B, like it does for other positions. For 1B, I think ERROR Runs Above Average is a more important stat as it shows more about how they handle throws or not IMO.
Tex had a better year than Youk, there, but Morneau had a better UZR/150 and Error score, so he probably deserved it the most, although him missing time at the end of the year might have hurt him I guess in the eyes of the writers.
For SS, I think Izturis deserved it more than anyone, although Jeter was close. Izturis had the higher UZR/150 and had a positive error score as well. Andrus had a lower UZR score, but also had a negative Error score, while Jeter had the second highest behind Aybar (who had a lower UZR than Jeter).
So if we were going by metrics, I’d say Morneau and Izturis were the ones that deserved it, albeit, Izturis didn’t play as many games, but atleast these were close enough that there shouldn’t be THAT much of an outrage.
There is a possibility our 1b 2b SS and 3b could all win Silver Sluggers… giggity.
Dammit, why can’t they squeeze out a Gold Glove for Jorge. I mean, he obviously doesn’t “deserve” one, but that doesn’t seem to be part of the equation anyway. Just a little Gold Glove to say, “Ya know Jorge, you’ve hit like a solid first baseman for over a decade now, have a gold glove.”
Jackasses.
look, all i can say is this:
Arod, arguably (no, not arguably, factually WAS) the best shortstop in baseball, can’t even win a gold glove at third.
DEFINITIVE CONCRETE PROOF that the Yankees would be better off without him (think chone figgins) and will never win a title with that albatross of a contract around their colletive neck.
wait, what?
i think Robby Cano deserved a gold glove over Polanco, but its great for Tex and Jeter to win.
I think Robbie deserved a kick in the ass 4 times a day for never busting it out of the box, and for throwing away at bats by not using his head.
If you bat 7th or 8th and hit .320, you need to start asking what you are doing right and what your are doing wrong because you are doing a lot of both.
I really do not think Hunter is that great of a OF. Never did. While Tex is good, he is not as good as everybody is making him out to be. The first two or three weeks of the year he looked “scared and nervous” copyright Slick Rick aka MC Rickey Dee.
If you put anybody out there with a cereal box for a glove they would look great to Yanks fans, who have seen nobody passable there for a hot min outside of the games Dougie M got into a couple or few years back.
I do not like Tex’s body type for a 1st baseman or any non DH, but I do like that he is tall, and knows how the position is suppose to be played. He did a fine job there this year and I hope he will for the length of his contract.
Teixeira’s fielding in the ALDS was so good I didn’t even mind the fact that he was hardly hitting. Granted we’re a little spoiled now that someone has replaced Jason Giambi at first, but I did not see anyone play first base this season as well as Mark Teixeira.
It never ceases to amaze me that people are willing to put so much credence in a subjective fielding formula like UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating), developed by one guy, Mitchel Lichtman.
I don’t deny that there is some benefit to trying to rate a fielder’s range and factor that into his overall defensive performance. But like all defensive statistical measurements, UZR is highly subjective and therefore subject to many caveats and qualifications. (Fielding percentage is also very subjective, since it’s based on “errors,” a wildly subjective statistic if you pay attention to what some official scorers won’t call an error.)
This overblown UZR formula has led otherwise sensible people to actually suggest Derek Jeter is a poor fielder, since before this year he’s had a relatively low UZR rating.
How about just watching the player play? Every judgment on a fielder’s performance is somewhat subjective (well, except maybe for judgments about Jason Giambi). But I think Jeter is still an excellent defensive shortstop. Jeter rarely drops the balls he gets to, he throws accurately (and has gotten more accurate over time), and he’s a superb decision maker. And his range is a lot better than he’s given credit for in some circles.
While I might not see every game played by every shortstop in the American League, Jeter looks pretty damned deserving of the Gold Glove award from what I’ve seen. But don’t take my word for it. The Gold Glove is awarded by the votes of each league’s managers and coaches. The guys in the dugouts get to see everyone play, multiple times. I think they should have a pretty good idea who the best fielder is at each position.
And that’s without looking up the player’s “UZR.”
As we’ve said numerous times, most of us who have MLB.tv accounts/Extra Innings and cable probably watch more games than the coaches and managers. Therefore, based on your logic, we should have a “pretty good idea” who the best fielder is at each position. Hint: It’s not most of the people who won Gold Glove awards today.
And that’s without looking up the player’s “UZR.”
It’s clear that managers and coaches vote on reputation and not anything approaching reality.
hello arrib los yankees teixeira es super lindo ganadores yankes 2009
I love the Halosheaven guys saying how great Torii was and deserved it over FG, but Jeter didn’t deserve to get a GG.