17 gold gloves!

[bird watcher]

I was just looking to see if the GG had been awarded and came across a list of all of the winners from years past.

Greg Maddux has won it 17 times! I had no idea.

Has anybody in baseball history ever won more than 17?

[RShack]

I was just looking to see if the GG had been awarded and came across a list of all of the winners from years past.

Greg Maddux has won it 17 times! I had no idea.

Has anybody in baseball history ever won more than 17?

Nah. For non-P's, Brooks has the most with 16. He also has the most in a row, tied with P Jim Kaat. Two of Kaat's were in the NL, so Brooks is not tied with him for the AL record. Maddux's string of them was interrupted one year by somebody else.

They only started them in 1957, one for each position in the two leagues combined. The next year, they started giving them out separately for each league.

[frsh90tsi]

One for each infield position and three for outfield. They dont give one for center, left, and right. Any three outfielders can win a glove.It could be three right fielders.Unless i was miss-informed.

[bird watcher]

Nah. For non-P's, Brooks has the most with 16. He also has the most in a row, tied with P Jim Kaat. Two of Kaat's were in the NL, so Brooks is not tied with him for the AL record. Maddux's string of them was interrupted one year by somebody else.

They only started them in 1957, one for each position in the two leagues combined. The next year, they started giving them out separately for each league.

Hampton won it two years in a row to break the Maddux streak.

Still pretty incredible to have been THAT good of a pitcher and defender.

[DrungoHazewood]

Hampton won it two years in a row to break the Maddux streak.

Still pretty incredible to have been THAT good of a pitcher and defender.

I have no doubt that Maddux was a good defender. But the 17 Gold Gloves are basically just the voters way of acknowledging that they have no idea who's the best defender at pitcher every year and a small plurality defaulting to whoever won last year.

Pitching Gold Gloves are a nearly perfect storm of bad award design.

[RShack]

Hampton won it two years in a row to break the Maddux streak.

Which 2 years would those be?

I assume you're referring to 2003 and 2003 ;-)

[O's84]

I have no doubt that Maddux was a good defender. But the 17 Gold Gloves are basically just the voters way of acknowledging that they have no idea who's the best defender at pitcher every year and a small plurality defaulting to whoever won last year.

Pitching Gold Gloves are a nearly perfect storm of bad award design.

NL Gold Gloves, gotta love this quite from Wainwright

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4645309

"I would have thought if there was one award that I would never win, or never have a chance to win, that would be a Gold Glove Award," Wainwright said. "There's probably a ton of guys that are better fielders than me."

[DrungoHazewood]

NL Gold Gloves' date=' gotta love this quite from Wainwright

[url']http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4645309[/url]

"I would have thought if there was one award that I would never win, or never have a chance to win, that would be a Gold Glove Award," Wainwright said. "There's probably a ton of guys that are better fielders than me."

That's awesome.

Think about the process for voting on pitching GGs. There are about 180 candidates in the majors, about 90 per league or so, if you only focus on starters. A few less considering you can't vote for your own players. None of them will make more than 3-4 starts against any one team. On average they'll each field a half-dozen chances a year that you'll see as a manager or coach, and that's if you didn't turn your head to pick up your sunflower seeds at the wrong moment. They're really asking the voters to pick names out of a hat. It's no wonder the same guys often win every year - as bad as it is, previous GGs may be the only information the voters have. I wouldn't be surprised if the voting went something like this:

Name/Votes

1. Wainwright/6

2. 11 tied at 5

3. 12 tied at 4

[DrungoHazewood]

Apparently it's even worse than we thought. It looks like the voting is essentially some guy going up to each coach and manager and asking them to throw out some names.

If you came up to me in the middle the locker room on a random day in September, and asked me to throw out nine names for the best fielders in the league, excluding Orioles, I'd bet I'd get most of them wrong. There'd probably be positions I'd completely whiff on. Since I quit playing fantasy ball I'd probably vote for one or two guys who'd been traded to the other league.

Would it be that hard for Rawlings or MLB to come up with a little one-page ballot they mail/email out to everybody in September? Even if they just listed everyone who played 80+ games that would improve the system vastly. If they narrowed it down to the top 5 or 10 at each position from Tango's fan survey most of my complaints would probably go away.

It all comes back to if you don't care, you'll get crappy results.