December 17, 2011

Asdrubal’s Glove

Even a Cleveland Indians fan doesn’t believe Asdrubal Cabrera is the best fielder in baseball:

I’m not saying Cabrera’s that bad of a fielder. You shouldn’t take his -19.1 FRAA at face value, and even his -11.8 UZR should be taken with a grain of salt. But even if you don’t put any stock in any of the five most popular sabermetric defensive stats—all of which put Cabrera at least five runs below average on defense this year—does anyone really think he’s the best fielder in all of baseball?

Yes, he makes some great web gems, but he also makes his share of errors (for those who prefer to judge fielders that way). And despite his great athleticism he really doesn’t have very good range compared to his peers. I realize much of fielding analysis is just subjective, but there’s a difference between good defense and flashy defense, and that shouldn’t be too controversial a concept for fans to grasp.

The award uses voting from various sectors:

The GIBBY Award winners are calculated based on four segments of voters that each account for 25 percent of the total vote (millions of fans at MLB.com, media, front-office personnel and MLB alumni too part in the balloting).

I like that, as different sectors have different views of the game. Does anyone know how the votes are combined?

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