I have to give the edge to White/Alomar on defence. I think Hudson might be better than Alomar as an overall defender. But White was clearly better than Vernon in my mind.

Now that Hudson has officially won the award, do we sign him to a contract or go to arbitration with him? If someone comes calling for a trade we would have to ask for the sun and the moon I think.

Orlando Hudson winning the gold glove this year for the only the first time shows how out of touch MLB coaches really are. Fans know about Hudson, and knew about him way before the coaches. If coaches are such keen observers, why do fans proclaim Hudson the best before the trained observers?

Then we have Derek Jeter. In the Fans' Scouting Report, Betancourt was head and shoulders above all other AL SS. I guess his lack of games prevents him from winning (though I don't know why). Uribe, Cabrera, or Crosby would have been a fine winner. Tejada, Young, Lugo, Castro would have been better than Jeter. Renteria, Guillen, Peralta would have been just as worthy as Jeter. Berroa and Russ Adamas are the guys worse than Jeter. This isn't my opinion, but the opinion of 1000 hardcore fans.

Oh well...

All I can say for O-Dog is JUSTICE JUSTICE!!!!

Also congrats to V-Dub who finished the season w/o commiting one error.

The gold gloves are a combined offense/defense award, not officially, but in the minds of the voters. Would a great glove man who hit .220 ever get a gold glove? I don't think so.

I'd have to give the edge to White/Alomar because White was, no disrespect to Vernon, in a league of his own. Alomar and Hudson are very close in wow factor, but I think it's Hudson by a nose.

As for the rest of the gold gloves, the only one that really gets my nose out of joint is Jeter. I guess it's true that nobody was watching baseball after the Yankees went out. Too bad, because they missed an awesome display by the real 2005 gold glove winner at shortstop: Juan Uribe.

One day Joe Mauer will break through at catcher, but I don't begrudge Varitek. Maybe someday, Rowand and Sizemore will get their due. I just can't get the image of Sizemore's sun-dropped flyball against KC in the final week out of my head. Yeeessshhh!

Somebody ought to create a gold glove for utility players, because right now Figgins owns it.

Well, Betancourt only played 52 games at short. I know they've given the Gold Glove to players who played even less. But they shouldn't.

Smilarly, Crosby missed half the season.

On merit, Jeter's roughly middle of the pack, and Uribe probably deserved the award.

Pet peeve: Media articles discussing MVP, Cy Young, gold glove and silver slugger winners that force you to wade through endless yakkety yak just to determine the winners.

Why not just start the articles by clearly listing the winners, and then fill in all the blah blah blah that no one cares about (e.g., this is Joe Shlabotnick's 9th gold glove, his favourite colour is yellow).

Thank you.

In general, I agree with you that it plays a factor, but there are a few exceptions. Rey Ordonez won the first of his three GGs in 1997 with a hideous .216/.255/.256 line... for an OPS+ of 37.

"On the surface, Jeter had a modest season with the glove, his 15 errors and .979 fielding percentage ranking middle-of-the-pack. But like Varitek, the Red Sox captain, the Yankees captain's take-charge presence in the middle of New York's infield presented a compelling case for voters."

To me, this says all you need to know about Jeter winning the gold glove. It's good to know that top baseball minds consider presence more important than talent.

Although probably a bunch of guys split the vote, and the couple of votes Jeter got won it for him.

Semi-bold prediction: Hudson will win the gold glove every year for the rest of the decade.

I'm with Pistol on that. Oddly enough, I just posted almost the exact same thing on another site.

Does anyone know where I can find searchable, sortable defensive stats (ZR, RF) that are park adjusted? Apologies if it's painfully obvious.

It would have been a travesty of justice not to give O-Dog the Gold Glove.

As for V-Dub/O-Dog versus Devo/Robbie: it's about a wash, I think. In centre field, both men have shown an almost supernatural ability to calculate exactly where a fly ball will go. Neither man never seems to use more than an erg of energy more than he needs to. It's so much fun to watch. I'd give the edge to White, as he was significantly faster than Vernon is, which gave him a slight bit more range to call on.

Wells also can count on Sparky and Rios on either side much of the time, and they're both creditable outfielders; Devo had to live with Candy Maldonado and Derek Bell on one flank for much of his time in Toronto. This isn't taking anything away from Vernon: he's a great outfielder. But Devo is the best I've ever seen.

As for second base: Hudson is clearly much better than Alomar was. Alomar had amazing range to his left, was a very smart player, and was tremendous at charging slow rollers. But Hudson is just as smart, and Alomar didn't have the superior footwork that Hudson has around second. Alomar never ranged anywhere near as far into the outfield as the O-Dog does.

I think what I'd want is Devo in centre, the O-Dog at second, V-Dub in right, and the young Tony Fernandez at short. Okay, hitters - try hitting up the middle through THAT defense.

Congrats to Vernon and Orlando, but I can't help but feel that a few guys got robbed. In particular I'm talking about Orlando Cabrera/Juan Uribe (It could have gone either way with them, but OCab is more solid IMO), Aaron Rowand (How the heck can anyone defend Torii Hunter getting the award over Aaron Rowand? Rowand had an AMAZING season with the leather), and Bengie Molina.

I pray for the season where the voters FINALLY get it ALL right like their jobs require them to.

I don't know about that. Adam Kennedy is quite popular too. I could see him getting some GG's in the future. Maybe him and Hudson can alternate GG's like Rogers and Mussina. Magpie: Smilarly, Crosby missed half the season. Well, so did Torii Hunter...

In other award news Ryan Patterson was named the Player of the Year in the NY-Penn League.

FWIW, both Win Shares and BP's FR calculations show Juan Uribe and Jhonny Peralta as the best defensive shortstops in the AL, but Jeter was, according to these measures, above average and in the next group. It would take more than that to persuade me that Jeter is anywhere near Uribe.

The fans liked Hunter, Suzuki and Wells more than Rowand. The stats are a mixed bag, with only Hunter coming out clearly behind Rowand on both measures.

It's funny. The Sox just won a world championship. The most notable thing about the team was probably the defence, with Uribe and Rowand leading the way...

'Would a great glove man who hit .220 ever get a gold glove? '

How about Gold Gloves?

Belanger won 8 and he hit .228 for his career. In 1977 he hit .206 and in 1978 he hit .213 and slugged .250!

There's a line of thinking that goes "the player is so awful with the bat that he has to be there for his defence." Hence, perceived defensive value increases as hitting prowess decreases. If the player is a media favorite, the media will go and on about their defence and never mention the tepid bat.

Wait, I figured it out. Cristian is actually Cristian Guzman and is trying to get people to look away from his tepid bat to his defence.

I absolutely cannot wait to hear O Dog make his acceptance speech...

You can see a correlation between offense and gold gloves, but there are some guys who didn't hit at all that won - look at JT Snow when he was winning in 'California', one year he posted an OPS+ of 81 while winning the GG at 1st base.

O'Dog finally gets his reward :) Congrats to both Orlando and Vernon. As for comparisons, I'd take Devo in center and O'Dog at second.... by a hair ;) :)

Brian Butterfield's on the FAN right now talking about the latest Gold Glove winners.

Cabrera, Uribe, Tejada, Young are head and shoulders above Jeter in terms of Defense.

I'm all for honoring Jeter, but lets not keep giving him awards he clearly does not deserve and prop him up better than he actually is.

You know when it is all said and done, Jeter is going to get a lot more credit by the historians than he will ever deserve.

*a lot more credit as far as his Defense goes than he deserves is what I ment to say.

Agreed. I'm all for giving Jeter props, I mean, he's easily the smartest player in the game... and it's not even close. He's just a heads up player and his baserunning is second to none and again, it's not even close. The Oakland play says it all.

But... he still doesn't deserve the Gold Glove this season. Orlando Cabrera was spectacular, Juan Uribe was great, it's a shame that Jeter won.

As far as Gold Glove 2nd basemen's are concerned... don't forget Ronnie Belliard. I think I'd rank em 1) Hudson 1a) Belliard, he's that good.

And how can anyone defend Torii getting a Gold Glove over Aaron Rowand? That's a joke. Same goes for Varitek winning one.

"Cabrera, Uribe, Tejada, Young are head and shoulders above Jeter in terms of Defense."

Wait, what? Michael Young is easily worse than Jeter defensively.

You know when it is all said and done, Jeter is going to get a lot more credit by the historians than he will ever deserve.

Do you not think it will be the opposite? After the passage of time, his career will hopefully be assessed dispassionately.

As defensive metrics continue to improve, there may eventually be a de facto standard that, when used retroactively to assess Jeter's career, taints his defensive reputation.

This is hardly a terrific analogy, but just one that springs to mind. Sandy Koufax was a terrific pitcher, of course, but now that we better pay attention to park effects, we know how greatly his home park boosted his numbers. I'm too young to know if people were as objective when he was active, but I'd be betting not.

There's no natural place for this item, but Will Carroll gives his take on the Lawton situation in today's BP. Even the most ardent anti-performance enhancing drug advocate cannot help but smile at the ads that sit atop the article.

Now that's funny.....

I can't believe how many of you would take Orlando over Robbie (and I like O Dog as much as the next guy)... I'm going with the somewhat non sabrematic approach on this one, numbers be damned, no one can convince me other than what my eyes saw. Watching Robbie play defense left no question that he made plays that nobody else could imagine making, that he was possibly the greatest fielder of all time (at any position), and he provided with some of the greatest, most breathtaking moments I've ever seen in any sport.