Fool's Gold

The Gold Glove winners were announced this week.  The big headline was Mike Trout losing to Adam Jones.  To see how questionable of a choice that was, I decided to look up some stats (Defensive Runs Saved, Ultimate Zone Rating, Fielding Percentage, Range Factor, and Defensive Wins Above Replacement) and compare the two.  Here's what I found:

	DRS	UZR	FPCT	RF	dWAR
Jones	-16	-6.7	.982	2.75	-1.3
Trout	23	10.6	.993	2.70	2.2

Trout had such a big statistical advantage it's laughable.  The one knock I read against Trout came from a comment on an ESPN article, which brought up Trout shifting to LF when they would bring in Peter Bourjos for defensive purposes.  The problem with that point is that it doesn't take into account how good Bourjos is defensively.  Being not as good as Bourjos automatically means he's not as good as Jones?  That would be like saying Jordan wasn't as good of a defender as Dumars, because he wasn't the best defensive player on his team.  You wouldn't fault Jordan for playing with Pippen, so why would you fault Trout for playing with Bourjos (who, by the way, did have the highest UZR of anyone with a minimum of 500 innings played)?

Even if you held that against Trout, that doesn't mean Jones was the right choice.  Denard Span had 20 DRS, an 8.5 UZR, a .989 FPCT, a .289 RF, and 2.4 dWAR.  Not only did Jones have the lowest DRS of any qualified center fielder and negative defensive wins, he also committed the most errors.  Yes, he had 439 putouts, but he still only had 54.9 putouts per error.  By comparison, Trout had 132 putouts per error and Span had 84.8.  So regardless of whether you thought it should or shouldn't go to Trout, it clearly shouldn't have gone to Jones.  Here are some other questionable choices:

Carlos Gonzalez over Martin Prado:

	DRS	UZR	FPCT	RF	dWAR
Gonzalez	-13	-8.5	.982	1.71	-1.9
Prado	12	10.7	.984	1.72	1.7

Chase Headley over David Wright:

	DRS	UZR	FPCT	RF	dWAR
Headley	-3	6.0	.976	2.67	0
Wright	16	15.4	.974	2.50	2.1

Jimmy Rollins over Clint Barmes:

	DRS	UZR	FPCT	RF	dWAR
Rollins	-8	4.4	.978	3.83	0
Barmes	13	14.4	.972	4.24	2.1

Finally, the biggest travesty of all, Andrew McCutchen over Michael Bourn:

	DRS	UZR	FPCT	RF	dWAR
McCutchen	-5	-6.9	.997	2.44	-0.2
Bourn	24	22.4	.995	2.59	3.0

McCutchen over Bourn?  Bourn is statistically the best defensive outfielder in baseball.  How did he lose to someone with subpar stats?  Even if you don't think advanced metrics are 100% conclusive, you can't ignore significant gaps.  If Bourn had 24 DRS and McCutchen had 19, you might be able to make an argument that stats don't tell a complete story.  But a 29-run difference?  That's hard to write-off.  All of these questionable decisions involved at least a 19-run difference.  Is it really reasonable to expect a margin of error of 20?  These players chosen were questionable at best and preposterous at worst.  I hope these perplexing Gold Glove selections don't carry over to the AL MVP, and that the rightful winner prevails.