UPDATED: Wilson Ramos & Bryce Harper are Gold Glove Finalists

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Stephen G. "Ghost" Mears

Rawlings announced the Gold Glove finalists today and Wilson Ramos and Bryce Harper were both finalists, and the winners will be announced on November 4th.

The finalists for NL Catcher and NL Rightfielder are:

NL Catcher

  • Yadier Molina – St Louis
  • Buster Posey – San Francisco
  • Wilson Ramos – Washington

NL Rightfielder

  • Curtis Granderson – New York
  • Bryce Harper – Washington
  • Jason Heyward – St. Louis

Wilson Ramos ended the 2015 season #1 in NL Catcher defense.  He beat out Yadier Molina who he admires greatly, and well ahead of Buster Posey.  Here is the final 2015 ratings from FanGraphs: FANGRAPHS CATCHER’S RATINGS for 2O15 Ramos led the league in Caught Stealing % at just under 45% but also had the fewest steal attempts per inning of any catcher. We often use the word “deterrent” when referring to defenders great arms and Ramos deterred baserunners from thinking about stealing which allows your pitchers to concentrate more on the batters than the baserunners.  Ramos finished the season with an ERA at 3.43 well below the team ERA of 3.62.  If all that wasn’t enough, Ramos caught 2 no-hitters from Max Scherzer in 2015!

Speaking of the deterrent factor which is a great intangible, look no further than Bryce Harper who has a howitzer for an arm and threw out 9 baserunners in 2015, and also kept dozens of baserunners from stretching singles into doubles and also runners thinking about testing his arm at the plate.  Bryce’s final ranking in 2015 for UZR was 6th in the NL  FANGRAPHS NL RF UZR RATINGS

https://twitter.com/statcast/status/645105612548804608

Both Nats players go into the Gold Glove as underdogs, but just being considered as a finalist is an honor.

UPDATED: 10/29/15 9:45PM:  

In March 2013, Rawlings announced that the Gold Glove voting system would change from a straight vote of managers and coaches to a system that would incorporate defensive stats. Rawlings would be consulting with the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) to add a Sabermetric component to the Gold Glove awards process called the SABR Defensive Index™ (SDI™) which is a conglomeration of the following 5 defensive stats that will account for 25% of the total voting:
  1. Defensive Regression Analysis (DRA)
  2. Total Zone Rating (TZ)
  3. Defensive Runs Saved (DRS)
  4. Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR)
  5. Runs Effectively Defended (RED)

The ballots of the managers and coaches account for the other 75% of the Gold Glove vote, and when managers and coaches get their ballots, Rawlings and SABR give them a “statistical resource guide” that includes the SDI™.

The top 3 in the tabulations become finalists and the highest vote total gets awarded the Gold Glove.
We hope this helps clear up some misconceptions about how the Gold Glove finalists and awards are determined, although some fans and players seem to have an issue with that, and what’s interesting if you applied the SDI™ to the AL centerfield Gold Glove the last 3 years, Adam Jones wouldn’t even make it as a CF finalist which shows that’s it’s still largely a popularity vote if you believe in SABR stats.

Again, the MLB awards system is far from perfect, but SDI™ is a step in the right direction.

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