(photo: Getty)The Gold Glove is a rather strange award. Despite all the prestige surrounding it, it rarely rewards the best pure defensive players. Jeter's defense has been criticized, but his brilliant, flashy, clutch plays like the flip play and into the stands dive, earn him the awards. He's got 5 to his name. Yet there's not been a single year in which he was statistically the best defensive shortstop in the league.
Enter Brett Gardner. Last year everyone was talking about two things in regards to Brett; his team leading on-base percentage and his speed with which he swiped 47 bases. No one really noticed his exceptional defense. In a time when it's all about the diving catch or stealing a home run, Gardner looked rather dull out there. He just kinda ran around, caught the pop flies, and showed a pretty good arm.
So while no one really criticized Gardner's defense, he wasn't the kind of guy making plays you'd hear everyone talking about the next day. So far it probably sounds like I'm saying Gardner is an average to pretty good fielder. Well yeah, that's what he looks like. But stats speak more than words, so let's pull out the sabermetrics.
Brett Gardner's dWAR (defensive wins above replacement) for the 2010 season was 1.9.
Would you like to take a guess at how many outfielders had a higher dWAR than 1.9 in 2010? Take a few seconds to conjure up a guess. If you guessed 2, you're wrong. If you guessed 1, you're close. If you guessed 0, you've got it right.
(photo: Getty)Let's take it a step further, how many players, regardless of position, had a higher dWAR than Gardner? I'll skip the BS guessing game this time. The answer is zero. That's right, of every single player in the MLB, Gardner's defense alone won more games than any other player's did.
So if he's statistically the single best defensive player in all of baseball, why does he looks so average like I said? It all goes back to his inhuman speed. When Melky Cabrera was still with the Yankees, everyone praised him for how hard he worked in the outfield. He was diving all over the place and making crazy leaping catches. But the thing is, those sliding, over-the-shoulder, and jumping catches he loved to make are all lazy pop-flies to the speedy Gardner. He makes it look effortless, and ironically his own effectiveness is what keeps him from looking like a superstar in left field.
Hell, just take a look back at the first 30 games of the season and try to make a Brett Gardner highlight reel in your head. Just think about how many brilliant plays he's made. That over the shoulder running catch to preserve the save for Mo is the most notable, but when you really stop and think he's made some huge catches charging in or going back to the track that the average fielder could never make.
(photo: Getty)His defensive prowess has not gone unrewarded, in 2010 he won the Gold Glove's significantly less prestigious, but considerably more accurate (according to statistics), counterpart, the Fielding Bible Award. However, I wholeheartedly believe that Brett Gardner will absolutely be a front runner to win the Gold Glove this year. He's already incredibly effective statistically, best defensive player in the majors. If he has just a few highlight reel worthy plays, a few jumping extra-base steals and a diving catch or two, it'll be very difficult to make a case against him.
--Grant Cederquist, BYB Staff Writer
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