Three SF Giants are Gold Glove finalists

Matt Chapman, Patrick Bailey, and Mike Yastrzemski are finalists at their positions for baseball’s highest defensive honor.

When Major League Baseball announced the finalists for the 2024 Gold Glove awards Tuesday morning, it should have been no surprise to see three San Francisco Giants on the list.

Four-time American League Gold Glover Matt Chapman may have been the most impactful defensive player in all of baseball in his first season with the Giants. Patrick Bailey is a Gold Glove finalist for the second straight year thanks to his elite pitch framing. Mike Yastrzemski is a finalist for the second time in right field, after another quietly solid season where he led all NL right fielders in Defensive Runs Saved.

There’s no general agreement on which defensive statistics are best in baseball, but let’s just say Chapman dominates a lot of them. The Willie Mac Award winner was fifth in all of baseball with 17 DRS, which is seven more than his closest competitor, Ryan McMahon of the Colorado Rockies. If you prefer Outs Above Average, Chapman was +11, best among MLB third basemen. If you would rather go with the eye test, perhaps you’d enjoy watching eight minutes of spectacular Chapman defense from this season.

Chapman is strong candidate to win his third Platinum Glove, awarded to the best overall defensive player in baseball. He won in 2018 and 2019 as a member of the Oakland Athletics, which makes his triumph in a fan vote all the more impressive. (Sell the team!) He does have fierce competition from McMahon and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Nolan Arenado, who won ten straight Gold Gloves from 2013-22. But our money is on Chapman taking home the hardware for his fifth time.

Bailey is an interesting case at catcher, where the advanced defensive numbers love him. By Fielding Run Value, a Statcast metric that gives a lot of credit for pitch framing and throwing, Bailey had the best numbers in baseball, a score of +22 runs above average, where the next closest player, Daulton Varsho, had 17. Only fellow finalist Will Smith matched Bailey’s six runs above average for throwing, and Stacast had Bailey’s pitch-framing skills as worth 16 runs above average.

Bailey was third in baseball with 20 DRS, behind only second basemen Brice Turang and Andres Gimenez. That’s again primarily due to pitch framing, where Bailey is credited with 15 runs worth of extra strike calls for Giants pitchers. He also saved more runs than any catcher besides Smith by throwing out 26 base stealers, while occasionally honoring the late Dikembe Mutombo with a finger wag afterward.

Along with Smith and Bailey, the catcher finalists include last year’s winner, Gabriel Moreno of the Arizona Diamondbacks. The 24-year-old Moreno was excellent again, but injuries limited him to just 93 games. Bailey played 115 games and 908 innings at catcher, compared to 732 innings for the Arizona backstop, while Smith played 121 games and 1,051 innings behind the plate. There’s a solid chance Bailey gets his first Gold Glove, but Smith may benefit from Gold Glove voters’ historical bias towards the best hitters at each position. After all, Derek Jeter won five Gold Gloves, and Rafael Palmeiro won a Gold Glove in 1999 after playing just 28 games at first base.

Yastrzemski probably won’t win against Sal Frelick of the Milwaukee Brewers, the leader among right fielders in both DRS and OAA, where he tied with Jackson Chourio and Wilyer Abreu. Frelick also robbed two home runs, in a season where Milwaukee outfielders took away ten potential homers. Yaz played steady defense in right field and threw out five runners, but it’s hard to compete with game-saving home run robberies.

Still, it’s nice to see Yaz recognized for his skill in playing well in front of one of the more challenging right field walls in baseball.

Gold Glove winners will be announced November 3.