Jackie Bradley Jr. Snubbed Gold Glove? Red Sox free agent frustrated as measures deny him CF finalist spot
Jackie Bradley won’t win a Golden Glove this year.
The finalists for Major League Baseball’s annual Defensive Excellence Honors were announced Thursday, and the free agent center whose Red Sox career has been largely defined by his excellence on the field was not among the players in the league. American League selected.
Finalists are determined by the SABR Defensive Index or SDI (a rare acronym within an acronym). The three players with the highest SDI rating – in this case, Ramon Laureano of Minnesota Byron Buxton Oakland and Luis Robert of Chicago – were chosen as finalists.
The Society for American Baseball Research defines SDI as:
“A measure of the number of points saved by a player’s defensive performance over the course of a season, relative to the average defensive player in that position. The SDI combines measurements from five (5) different defensive data sources and includes factors that rate the strength and accuracy of the defender’s arm, its reach and confidence, as well as the number of “excellent” and “field plays”. bad ‘he performs. … A positive SDI number indicates that a player was above average compared to other players in his position this season. Conversely, a negative SDI number means the player has performed below the league average in that position this season.“
Bradley expressed his frustration on Twitter, raising the voice of a common complaint among players, the inconsistency of defensive measures:
“I just don’t get it, and I don’t yet have anyone from an analysis department explaining to me how they ‘calculate’ the ‘numbers’ or, better yet, how can you improve them physically as a player …“
This included a retweet of a Minor League post Baseball.comof Sam Dykstra who showed another metric that made Bradley the best defensive center in the AHL:
“Jackie Bradley Jr. tied with Luis Robert with 7 above-average strikeouts, the highest among any center fielder in the MLB. Snubbed.
No Red Sox player was a finalist.
In Bradley’s case, the frustration probably stems from more than just ego. Bradley is a free agent in a market that will be financially depressed by the damage to team budgets caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Bradley has had an All-Star appearance, a Gold Glove and an ALCS MVP honor. Adding that second Golden Glove would have been a nice added bonus as he tries to coax someone into a big contract.
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