Normally, I do not keep track of season-end awards handed out in baseball, having turned my attention elsewhere after the World Series ends. But a friend alerted me of one such award that has us both with raised eyebrows.
The 2021 Rawlings Gold Glove Award® for catcher in the National League was bestowed upon Jacob Stallings of the Pittsburgh Pirates. We both had figured it would be Yadier Molina, of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Thus, I set out to probe into their respective statistics, keeping in mind that this is strictly a defensive award. Batting statistics are not considered.
I looked at the catcher defensive statistics I’m most familiar with, and would mostly consider.
- “Caught Stealing Percentage” (Molina – 0.409, Stallings – 0.211)
- “Fielding Percentage” (Molina – 0.997, Stallings – 0.995)
- “Errors” (Molina – 3, Stallings – 5)
- “Full Innings Played” (Molina – 1,001, Stallings – 892)
- “Double Plays Turned as Catcher” (Molina – 10, Stallings – 2)
Naturally, the selection of Stallings puzzled me, until I saw the defensive statistic called “Defensive Wins Above Replacement” (DWAR). Stallings had a 2.3, while Molina had a 1.5.
Your question might be… what exactly is DWAR and how is it calculated? Good question!
As far as I can tell, the equation to calculate DWAR looks something like this:
In all seriousness, if you have problems stating how DWAR is calculated, you are not alone. It would take an MIT graduate with a PhD in Statistics to figure that one out.
I found an article that attempts to explain WAR and all of its offshoots (dWAR, oWAR, bWAR, fWAR… I kid you not). A few choice tidbits from the article:
Though the output is a clean, shiny number, the work that goes into WAR is a complex maze. There are dozens of components that go into the formula, and there are multiple official leaderboards that calculate WAR differently.
“Differently”… oh my! We’re in trouble already. In addition to that, there is this:
The math behind each component is full of complex formulas, which makes WAR hard to calculate by hand. However, understanding what goes into the components is much more important than memorizing the formulas themselves, which is near impossible.
“Near impossible”… there you have it. Hence, the need for the MIT statistics major.
Not to belabor the point, but you go into any number of articles about baseball statistics, and you’ll come away with a list that includes stats like: wOBA, UBR, wSB, UZR, FIP, and a glossary-full of other acronyms that would put NASA to shame.
But the point of this blog article is to say that Yadier Molina was unfairly snubbed for this year’s NL Golden Glove award. Why? In my opinion, it goes back to last year, when Molina was not included in the list of Gold Glove finalists.
Molina was outspoken about his perceived snub last year, even going so far as to theorizing that Gold Glove voters did not want him to tie former great Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench with ten (10) career Gold Gloves.
Voters apparently have long memories and hold grudges… because it is painfully obvious to this observer that Yadier Molina was the most deserving catcher for the 2021 NL Gold Glove. This year’s snub smacks of punishment.
Which goes back to my initial statement about my not keeping track of “after-the-season” individual awards. Regardless of the snub, Molina’s place in baseball’s Hall of Fame would seem to be 100 percent secure.