Towards the end of the regular season, you couldn’t mention Jacob Stallings to Derek Shelton without him saying that he thought his catcher should win the Gold Glove.
Well, he just might.
Last week, Rawlings announced the nominees for the most prestigious fielding award, and Stallings and second baseman Adam Frazier were given a nod. It is Frazier’s second straight nomination. It’s Stallings’ first, coming in his first complete season in the majors.
Stallings will be up against Tucker Barnhart of the Reds, who won in 2017, and Willson Contreras of the Cubs. Frazier’s fellow nominees are the Cubs' Nico Hoerner and 2019 winner Kolten Wong. All six candidates are from the Central division, so Pirates fans have an idea of how their two players compare to the rest of the field.
So, what are their odds of winning?
Unlike most accolades during baseball awards season, Gold Gloves are not determined by the BBWAA. Starting in 2013, coaches would vote for winners, which counted for 75% of the final results. The other 25% is determined through statistics.
It’s a good compromise. The experts get the final say, but the data makes sure that it’s more than just a popularity contest. Back in the day, the Gold Glove would usually go to the guy who had the best reputation rather than to the guy who actually fielded the position the best that season. Those days are over.
This year, however, there is no coach vote. Since teams only played the other clubs in their division and the division in the other league, they didn’t see the players for the 10 other clubs in person during the regular season, or even scout them intensively. It would be a popularity contest again.
Instead, this year will be based solely off of statistics, more specifically the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) defensive index. That information won’t be released to the public until after the awards ceremony on Nov. 3. We have the 2019 index at our disposal, but without knowing how coaches voted, it’s incomplete data.
Defense is the toughest part of the game to assess accurately. Offense is a lot easier. A player’s wRC+ on FanGraphs and their OPS+ on Baseball Reference will be within a few points 99% of the time.
Defense is a different story. Good defenders almost always grade out well, regardless if you are using FanGraphs, Statcast, Baseball Reference or Baseball Prospectus data. The problem is one system may consider a player to be great, while another just says he’s above average.
It all comes down to the formulas. Baseball Reference doesn’t factor in pitch framing into catcher defense. Statcast, Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs calculate framing differently. FanGraphs uses ultimate zone rating (UZR) to value defenders. That’s ok for a general idea, but it can’t compare to Baseball Savant and Statcast, which can factor in hit and catch probabilities.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The SABR defensive index doesn’t directly correlate with any other way of measuring defense anyway.
So let’s look at every way to value defense and see how Stallings and Frazier stack up to the nominees.
Back in 2018, I wrote for The Point of Pittsburgh how the Gold Glove usually goes to the player with the most defensive runs saved (The Fielding Bible version), though a player’s total innings in the field is a factor that could help predict upsets. (Some of the article has been lost to time, but you can still read most of it here.) We can’t say for sure if innings played is a statistical edge or one that led to more coach votes, but let’s take it into consideration too.
Let’s take a look at each player’s defensive runs saved (DRS), innings played, errors, FanGraphs’ DEF, Baseball Reference’s dWAR, Baseball Savant’s Outs Above Average (only for the infielders, as they do not measure it for catchers) and Baseball Prospectus’ fielding runs (CDA, just for catchers). It’s a wide net. Can anyone run away with it?
We’ll start with the catchers:
Barnhart: 272 ⅓ innings, 0 errors, 9 DRS, 5.9 DEF, 0.9 dWAR, 2.8 CDA,
Contreras: 324 ⅓ innings, 2 errors, 1 DRS, 6.5 DEF, 0.2 dWAR, 2.9 CDA
Stallings: 345 ⅓ innings, 4 errors, 7 DRS, 6.3 DEF, 0.8 dWAR, 3.6 CDA
And now second base:
Frazier: 343 innings, 1 error, 4 DRS, 2.4 DEF, 0.7 dWAR, 6 OAA
Hoerner: 208 innings, 2 errors, 5 DRS, 1.0 DEF, 0.8 dWAR, 4 OAA
Wong: 397 innings, 2 errors, 6 DRS, 4.5 DEF, 0.8 dWAR, 2 OAA
I’ll be honest, I don’t see a clear frontrunner for either position.
Who expected coming into the year Stallings to lead the National League in innings caught? I didn’t. Yes, he made a few more errors, but that’s the only category that he didn’t win or finish in a very close second. His profile is the most balanced when compared to his fellow nominees.
For second base, while Hoerner’s defense was exemplary, I can’t help but feel he didn’t play enough innings. Wong and Frazier are neck and neck, and it’s really going to come down to which metrics correlate a little more to SABR’s index. It’s a shame to think like this, but Frazier took one for the team and played some outfield this year since that was a banged up unit. Those innings away from second might be a factor.
This is going to be a mostly quiet award season for the Pirates, with these two Gold Glove nominations and Ke'Bryan Hayes seeming like the only possibilities for a player receiving any accolades. That said, it looks like they at least have a decent chance of winning something, and in someone like Frazier's case, it could only boost his potential trade value. If nothing else, it is a bit of a morale boost going into 2021.