Gold Gloves

I don't have the enthusiasm for this topic to do much more than post an abbreviated "Congratulations" to Johan Santana and Torii Hunter, the Twins two newly-minted Gold Glovers for 2007. The full list can be found here, in case you haven't yet seen it.

Frankly I was a little surprised by Santana picking up the Gold Glove -- guess the voters felt that they couldn't go a year without giving him hardware of some kind. As for Torii -- well, why even bother analyzing it anymore? He's reached the point where he's going to continue winning the award whether he has a good year or not defensively, based on reputation alone. Kind of like Andruw Jones of the Braves, who was 7th out of the 8 players who qualified as center fielders in zone rating but still picked up another Gold Glove (hey, at least he fields the balls he actually gets to, as evidenced by his fielding percentage).

Perhaps you can tell from the tone of this post that I don't ultimately put that much stock in Gold Glove awards. I don't think anyone has a good grasp on how to measure defense (I'm not particularly enamored of any of the stats that attempt to measure it), and as I mentioned earlier this, more than any other MLB award, is based heavily on reputation. But hey, I'll stop being grumpy and just rejoice that a couple of Twins won something for 2007 -- lord knows, there aren't going to be any MVP or Cy Young awards this time around!