Will Brett Gardner Finally Take Home a Gold Glove in 2016?

New York Yankees left fielder Brett Gardner has a strong case for taking home his first career Gold Glove award for his defensive work in 2016.

The American League Gold Glove award for left field has three strong contenders this season. One of them is New York Yankees veteran Brett Gardner enjoyed a solid bounce-back campaign in the field after a disappointing 2015 that was the worst defensive performance of his career by most metrics.

Gardner’s two main competitors for the honor are Alex Gordon of the Kansas City Royals and Colby Rasmus of the Houston Astros. Gordon is probably the front-runner after taking home the award in four of the last five seasons. The Gold Glove is often rewarded based on reputation rather than actual numbers, so Gordon has a clear leg-up in that department.

Going by metrics alone, the winner is clearly Colby Rasmus. With 20 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and a 14.8 Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), the 30-year-old Rasmus has a healthy lead over both Gordon and Gardner.

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The primary argument against Rasmus for the award is that he only played 75 games in left field. He also played 21 in center and 11 in right, for a total of 107 games in the field. It’s difficult to give someone an award for fielding excellence when they only spend two third of a season out there, even if they were clearly the top of the class when they did play.

If we can safely eliminate Rasmus based on lack of playing time, the two most popular advanced metrics are basically split on Gardner vs. Gordon. KC’s left fielder leads Gardy in UZR (8.0 vs 2.2) while Gardner crushes Gordon by DRS (12 vs 4).

Gardner’s speed and flair for the dramatic catch may help his case. He made 86 Out of Zone plays (OOZ) to Gordon’s 62, although Gordon counters by having the better arm.

This may be biased, but it seems insane to me that Gardner hasn’t been recognized with a Gold Glove award yet in his career. At his peak, he was every bit the defensive star that Gordon was, but he was passed over for the Royal time and time again.

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Is this the year that he finally gets his recognition? It seems unlikely when you look at recent history, but as we saw from Gardner’s long-overdue All-Star nod in 2015, people around the game are starting to take notice of his accomplishments.