Witnesses described the suspect as a turtleneck-wearing smurf with no last name.

Not Papa Smurf!!!

Posted this in another thread...

AL Gold Glove Winners:
C Molina Ana
1B Olerud Sea
2B Boone Sea
SS Rodriguez Tex
3B Chavez Oak
OF Cameron Sea
OF Hunter Min
OF Ichiro Sea
P Mussina NYY

Hard to argue with these choices, though I might have given a slight nod to Tampa's Travis Lee at first. I still think they should have a LF/CF/RF designation for both Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers among the outfield, though.

For what it's worth, I'd give the CF Gold Glove to Cameron and the LF Gold Glove to Garret Anderson.

Here's hoping that Cameron signs with an NL team so that Vernon can get some well deserved love next year.

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I still think they should have a LF/CF/RF designation for both Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers among the outfield, though.

No kidding. Why don't they just give all four infield gold gloves to shortstops? Does anyone really think that John Olerud is a better defensive player than Miguel Tejada or Mike Bordick?

Mike

With the history of the award, the only thing we should be surprised about is that Josh Phelps didn't win one this year.

No kidding. Wasn't Rafael Palmeiro awarded the prestigious DH Golden Glove awhile back?

FWIW, the top ten defensive outfielders ranked by Win Shares:

Player          Team    Pos     INN       Field   Rank    WS/1000 INN	
-------		-----	----	------	  -----	  ----	  -------
M Cameron       SEA     OF      1284      7.73    1       6.02	
C Beltran       KC      OF      1123      6.50    2       5.78	
T Hunter        MIN     OF      1299 1/3  6.14    3       4.73	
R Baldelli      TB      OF      1322 2/3  5.33    4       4.03	
J Damon         BOS     OF      1265      5.23    5       4.13	
V Wells         TOR     OF      1416      4.52    6       3.19	
I Suzuki        SEA     OF      1367      4.16    7       3.04	
R Winn          SEA     OF      1366      3.99    8       2.92	
G Anderson      ANA     OF      1241 1/3  3.75    9       3.02	
E Byrnes        OAK     OF      958 1/3   3.39    10      3.53	

At least from these rankings, Beltran is the one who was really screwed. Suzuki, as usual, was overrated by voters, but is not a terrible recipient.

win shares

I'm against giving 3 (or 2) centrefielders gold gloves. A first baseman gets a gold glove, so a leftfielder and a rightfielder should to.

I think Wells is one of the better centerfielders around but I wouldn't put him in league with Cameron or Hunter at this point. I would have been very surprised to see him win one this year. I also didn't realize Beltran was that good.

If anyone's upset I think it should be Doug Mientkiewicz.

Oh wow:

"I didn't vote for Boone this year. I voted for Adam Kennedy, because he made some great plays against us and I happened to catch Bret when he made a couple of errors." -- AL coach

Yet more evidence that the whole process is B.S. No wonder we end up with some dumb choices every year if this is how the voters think.

The whole process wouldn't be much of a problem if arbitration hearings didn't use Gold Gloves as an evidence of a player's worth, now is it?

For statheads interested in defence, a new way of quantifying defensive performance and pitching (Defensive Regression Analysis) is introduced on baseballprimer.com. It should be worth reading.

Further proof, as if more was needed, of my lack of intelligence: when I read this headline, my first thought was, "David Wells didn't win a Gold Glove? So what?"

Sigh.

OK, speaking of defense...

What happened to Eric Hinske's metamorphosis in 2002 into a solid, average-to-plus fielder? Should we expect him (with an assist from Butterfield & co.) to get him back on track in 2004?