Johnny Mac for Gold Glove
John McDonald should win this year’s Gold Glove award and this is why:
Let me preface this article first by stating that by no means is my claim that Johnny Mac should win a gold glove empirically sound, as the nature of defensive statistics is subjective. the problem with statistical analysis on defense is that it is, by and large, as subjective as official scoring. You have 30 different statistical analysts in 30 different parks, just as you have 30 different official scorers — and you can rest assured that they don’t all have equal talents of observation, and wouldn’t all agree on how to describe every ball hit in play. This is in part because the placement of their seats can be dramatically different from park to park. A statistical analyst sitting in Camden Yards, where the press box is low, is going to have a completely different read on a line drive than the analyst in the Fenway Park pressbox, where you get a bird’s eye view.
Besides that, here is why Johnny Mac should win the Gold Glove.
1. He ranks #1 in MLB with total chances per 9 innings at 5.22. This is almost half a chance per game more than the closest player to him, Jason Bartlett, at 4.88. This is no big deal except for….
2. He leads the AL with a .987 with only 5 errors. By comparison, perennial Gold Glove favourite Derek Jeter has 16 errors and a .970 fielding percentage.
3. For all you SABR nerds out there who I am bound to hear from, let’s talk range factor. Johnny Mac leads all shortstops with a range factor of 5.13. Derek Jeter’s is a full point behind him at 4.10.
4. I have the pleasure of watching him play almost every day and see spectacular highlight reel plays made on a regular basis from him. Since Toronto gets hardly any media coverage outside the bubble that is the Golden Horseshoe, American fans outside of Cleveland probably don’t even know who this guy is (which is an atrocity). To remedy that situation, point your browsers to http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/team/player_media.jsp?player_id=150348 and click on all of the multimedia links to see the defensive artistry and panache Johnny Mac brings to the game.
*Update* Here is footage as to why he is a stud.
[youtube T9UNx7ei1xk]
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