Mariners Insider - If you were king - or queen - who would wear a golden glove?

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

If you were king - or queen - who would wear a golden glove?

Posted by Larry LaRue @ 12:04:32 pm

National League Gold Glove winners will be announced a bit later today, and on Thursday the American League winners will come out.

Voted upon by Major League managers and coaches - don't blame the writers for this one! - Gold Gloves are not based on statistics.

Nor, as some folks think, does it matter whether the recipients happen to use Rawlings equipment, the company that sponsors the awards.

The likeliest Mariners candidates are Adrian Beltre and Ichiro.
But why wait?

If you were in charge, who would win the AL Gold Glove awards - position by position.

Once you get to the outfield, you can choose three center fielders if you like - there's no left field, right field, center field designation.

Vote now. Vote often. Use whatever criteria you want.

Categories: General • 5 comments

COMMENTS:

Comment by wabubba68 @ 07:42 - Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Noooo....on Ichiro. He takes consistently bad angles to fly balls and is unwilling to ever put his body on the line (ie. diving) in order to make a great play.

The smartest thing to do would be to use his over-inflated reputation and trade him for 3-4 prospects. I'm sure that we would all greatly miss a slap-hitting outfielder who runs reluctantly...oh yeah, he is also at an age where his productivity will begin to diminish.

Comment by shawnypickle @ 09:15 - Friday, November 7th, 2008

National League
1B Pujols
2B Utley (Hudson didn't play enough games)
3B?
SS Rollins (I think we see why the Phils are World CHamps)
P Sabathia (yeah, I know...Zambrano?)
OF Beltran
Victorino
Mike Cameron

AL
1B Youkilis
2B Ellis
3B Beltre
SS Jason Bartlett
P Rogers
OF Carlos Gomez
Nick Markakis
Grady Sizemore

Comment by SharkHawk @ 17:39 - Friday, November 7th, 2008

I love those baseball "experts" who think that diving makes a great outfielder. Lenny Dykstra and Jim Edmonds are two classic divers. They also have (or had) zero range and got horrible jumps on the ball.

I'll take a healthy Ichiro who doesn't dive EVER over an Ichiro who dives 10 times a year and his hitting suffers and he struggles with minor injuries all year. Ichiro still gets to more balls than anybody out there because of his speed and because of that speed he doesn't need to dive.

It amazes me that there are those who can't figure out that the balls Ichiro would have to dive for are balls that a guy like Vernon Wells wouldn't even be within ten feet of to MAKE a dive and would drop in for an extra base hit. The guy can never do enough for some people.

Comment by wabubba68 @ 15:22 - Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Shark,

Just think of the balls Ichiro could get to if he did dive or take good angles. The fact that his speed might make up for some of his defensive deficiencies, does not eliminate those deficiencies.

Ichiro will soon be a passionless, aging, .280 slap hitter making $20 million a year. Can this team afford that? Trade him now while he still has perceived value around the league.

Comment by SharkHawk @ 23:02 - Saturday, November 8th, 2008

But the point I'm making wabubba is that he still gets to probably 3 more balls per game easily without diving than your average fielder. A guy like Manny Ramirez probably gets to 10% of the balls that Ichiro gets to.

I figure that just because he could get to a few more diving doesn't make it worth it. How much different would Ken Griffey's career have been if he hadn't slammed into the wall so many times? It is better to lose a battle and win a war sometimes.

It would be nice to get 3 or 4 great prospects for anybody, but no way the M's give him up, and they'd find a way to screw the trade anyway.

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Mariners Insider

You will find news, observations, anecdotes, analysis and photographs on this blog. The purpose is to keep readers informed, but also give them a feel for the team and its players, and a place to go to read about baseball.

Contributors:

Ryan Divish has been with Tacoma News Tribune since 2006, covering the Tacoma Rainiers and high school sports. Divish played baseball at Dickinson State University and also earned a journalism degree from the University of Montana.
E-mail Ryan.

Larry LaRue has covered the Seattle Mariners and Major League Baseball for The News Tribune since 1988. E-mail Larry.