Torii Hunter missed 64 of 162 games this year, 40% of the season................
 

................and still won the Gold Glove for Centerfielders. Way to many season awards are handed out nowadays based on reputation and past achievement. :rolleyes:

Sure he is awesome in the field, but he barely played in 60% of the season! Especially when you have two very good candidates in Johnny Damon and Aaron Rowand, both of whose defense contributed to their teams making it to the playoffs. I'm biased towards Rowand because I watched him the most and saw him consistently rob batters of extra-bases, make phenomenal catches on balls in the gap, sacrifice his body by going into the wall time and time again, etc, but I'd rather have seen even Damon win it before someone who missed 2/5ths of the season. :|

Damon's only average in the field. Hunter's 98 games at CF were better than anyone else's 162.

Damon had the second highest fielding percentage of all Centerfielders, and the most put-outs (a good sign of range in the field). Aaron Rowand was the highest in fielding percentage and was constantly on Web Gems on ESPN for his amazing (and body sacrificing) plays.

Maybe I am biased as a Sox fan, but I felt Rowand deserved. I especially have an issue when a player who barely played over half the season wins an award intended for a full season's achievement. Don't get me wrong, Hunter is awesome, but he just simply didn't play enough this year IMO.

Digging in a little deeper to this........(and worse for Hunter's case, IMO).........of the 98 games he played, several he either pinch hit or DH'd, because it only shows 93 games in the field.

In his 93 games, Hunter made 3 errors in 230 chances. Rowand played 157 games and had 394 defensive chances, he only had 3 errors. So the argument could be made that Rowand was better even if they played the same amount of games, let alone the fact that Rowand only took 5 days off all year, Hunter missed more than two months.

Gold Gloves haven't been about defense for a long time. It's all rep and media.

That is unfortunate, but obviously true when you examine this case. :(

It was very apparent in the case of Omar Vizquel throughout the 90's and early 00's when A-Rod was winning it over and over and over. Yet, Omar had far better range (making unbelievable plays look ordinary and effortless), fielding pct. and was probably the most respected SS in his day as far a pure fielding went.

I was able to see Omar in his heyday and I have seen Larkin, Ozzie Smith, A-Rod, Jeter and other highly touted SS, and I'm sorry but Omar was the greatest SS I have ever seen and there were many a writer, player and fan who said the same. I can't think of 1 other player that made everyone else around him look better than they were, almost every single game for a decade.

He's no Ozzie Smith, but I'd agree that he's a better fielder than the others you named. Especially A-Rod and Jeter. Hopefully HoF voters won't forget about him when Visquel comes up for eligibility.

Gold Gloves come mostly from reputation or offensive production.

Rafeal Palmeiro won at first base once playing the majority of his games as a DH.

Johnny Damon is not that good. Nor is Jeter. Most "webgem"-type plays come off of either poor range or player screwups.

I did like how Orlando Hudson seemed completely shocked he beat out Brian Roberts.

One thing on shortstop defense. It seems that in most cases they fall into one of two catagories. On one end are those with great range and arms, but who tend to have a problem getting the glove on the ball: guys like Renteria, Cabrera, Fucal, and even Tejada (;)). At the other are guys who don't have the same range and arms, but get their glove on just about everything they get to: guys like Jeter, Eckstein, and Cal Ripken Jr.

Sometimes you have to decide what is most important.

What about the rookie Jeremy Reed in Seattle? He had the same fielding percentage as Rowand in nearly as many chances (he did play several fewer innings) and he had the highest range factor and zone rating of all center fielders in MLB. Not to mention, he had more assists than Rowand (however fewer than Hunter). While Reed was a disappointment with the bat, he shined on the field.

As for Hunter, I agree that he shoudln't have been considered. There should be minimum requirements. You may hit .500 in 2 at bats, but you sure won't win the batting title when its all said and done.

Very true but Vizquel had both man. I truly am blessed as a lover of baseball to say I watched him play for 10+ years, and I seriously doubt I will ever see another SS like him. NOT 1 in that list or off AL or NL, over the same time period could hold a candle to Omar.

I never saw a guy at short be able to dive catch the ball and throw to first in one motion. Much like the perfect swing of JR or Manny, Omar was sheer magic on the diamond. I mean look at like 1998 when he made an unheard of 5 FIVE errors ALL season long..... 149 games started at SS 720 chances and only 5 errors...... or the year 2000 154 games started at SS and 3 THREE freaking errors all season. Only 7 of his seasons did he have double digits in errors and 3 were in his first 5 seasons, only 2 (his first year and 1996) did he have over 15. ONLY IN HIS ROOKIE YEAR DID HE HAVE 20 (HIS MOST IN A SEASON) ERRORS.

The very best Ozzie (who everyone claims was the "gold standard") could manage was 1 ONE year over 100 games started where he had single digits in errors (8 in 1991 with 151 games). Ozzie had 5 years (his first 3 and in '83 and '88) where he had over 20 errors, and he had 5 season of 15-20 errors.

Ozzie Smith was great, and he could do great backflips running out there, but he was no Omar. Granted I didn't see Ozzie on a daily basis like I did Omar.

Even career Fielding pct. show it. Omar is at .983 with 16 years (The highest career average EVER for a SS) and Ozzie is at .978 over 19 years and sits behind Larry Bowa in the NL highest career average.

Also having done research on this there were a few surprises.... Ripken has the highest season fielding percentage with ony 3 THREE errors all season, in 1990, yet lost the gold glove to Ozzie Guillen. Ripken did win it in '91 and '92.

And I was wrong I thought Omar lost to A-Rod a couple times but he didn't between 1993 and 2001 Omar DID win every year.

Anyway, I appologize for the threadjack but it gave me the chance to talk about IMHO the most underrated player between 1990 and present day.

Maybe there should be a "minimum chances" decided for each position (somewhere reasonable, maybe what is average for someone in playing 120-ish games in that position), and no one under that is eligible. :)

I thought there was a minimum number of games played in order to get considered.

I know of no such minimum for the Gold Glove award. As mentioned, Torii Hunter only played like 92-93 games in the field, but still won.

That is pretty sad. It's either a statement that the voters didn't have much of a choice or Hunter kissed major ass.

Isn't he going to be a FA this winter? I'm sure that GG will help improve salary offers somewhat.

My bad it's Jacque Jones that's the F/A.

I know Ozzie Guillen said that he thought Torii should be out of the running due to missing that much time. I tend to agree, but we're both biased.
Gold Gloves have always been subjective since defensive stats can't tell you as much as offensive stats do.