The Gold Glove awards were handed out last week. And we had our say.

But you know who didn’t get to chime in? Chipper Jones!

Well, consider that remedied. Chipper this week tells AJC blogger David O’Brien that he was shocked that David Wright won the Gold Glove. Shocked!

“When I find out [Wright won] I was speechless, for quite some time,” Chipper said. “Certainly the guys with the least amount of errors and best fielding percentage quite obviously didn’t win it.”

That’s true, Chipper. You had nine errors. Wright had 21. Your fielding percentage was .971. Wright’s was .954.

But wait! This is the 21st century, after all. And we’ve developed new statistics. Like Bill James’ range factor. Chipper, your range factor was 2.51. Wright’s was 2.73.

And don’t forget about Zone Rating, the percentage of balls fielded by a player in his typical defensive “zone”. Wright’s ZR was .771. Chipper’s was — wait a second — Chipper’s was higher! ZR = .797!

Chipper is right. Wright shouldn’t have won the Gold Glove.

Pedro Feliz (ZR=.852, RF=2.91, 11 E, .973 FPCT) should have.

And Chipper would be fine with that.

“I wouldn’t have been disappointed had someone like Feliz or Ramirez won it,” Jones said. “I’m a little confused by the final tally — that’s a head-scratcher for me.”

I’m gonna go ahead and agree with you, Chipper. Wright’s selection is a mystery.

You know what? Let’s not worry about it. Let the baby have his bottle. Wright may have a Gold Glove, but he’s also got an offseason full of questions to answer about the Mets’ epic collapse and the always possible A-Rod signing. That guy’s got it so tough he can’t even support cancer kids without getting shat on (and on, and on).
You? You’re playing golf with Smoltzy and Glavine and hanging out at Hooters. It’s good to be a gangsta.

Thank god that in these topsy-turvy times, when real journalism has been replaced by infotainment and more Americans are getting their news from the O’Reilly Factor and The Spin Zone than from the newspaper, we have the Boston media to give us straighforward, unbiased critiques. 

This week, Boston Herald columnist Tony Massaroti is taking MLB to task for awarding Derek Jeter a gold glove award. Massaroti points out that he is a HUGE Jeter fan (he freakin’ loves that guy), but then proceeds to argue that Jeter was in no way the best shortstop in the AL this season. Who was, according to Masseroti? Sox shortstop Alex Gonzalez, of course.

Don’t misunderstand. In many corners - including this one - Jeter is the best player in all of baseball, because there is not a single aspect of the game in which he is rated anything less than above-average. But when coaches and managers fail to recognize that Jeter is an inferior defensive player to someone such as Gonzalez, it reeks of politics and/or awarding honors based on reputation rather than the cold, hard facts, which in this case clearly pointed to the shortstop of the Red Sox.

Okay, fair enough. Hard to argue with facts. Facts, after all, are facts. But does Masseroti offer any facts to support his argument that Gonzalez was a better fielder in 2006 than Jeter? Noooo. That would be just a little too much to ask.

Instead, Massaroti suggests “Gonzalez might have been hurt some by the fact that he played in only 111 games.” Hey, wait, “THE FACT that he played in only 111 games” – that’s a fact! And you know what? That’s generally how it works. You miss 1/3 of the season and you risk missing out on awards. Sorry Alex.

Massaroti goes on to call people who praise Jeter’s defense “ridiculous.”

Jeter’s defense has been rather consistent over the past six seasons, during which he has committed no fewer than 13 errors and no more than 15. But the fact that he has won the last three suggests a drop at the position more than it does an improvement in his play.

Holy crap, was that another fact? 14 errors per season? That’s pretty good, right? Not Ripken-esque, but not bad…right?

Claiming that there has been a “drop at the position” seems irrelevant. That Jeter’s competition for the gold glove wasn’t as stiff this season as it was three years ago, when he went up against younger Nomar, A-Rod and Vizquel, doesn’t really matter, does it? So Jeter isn’t the best ever. He was the best in 2006. And that’s what we’re talking about, right?

Boston needs to get over their Jeter-complex. Because if they’re gonna get their panties in wad over this, they’re really gonna be pissed when he wins the MVP.

Bill James, who needs no introduction here, and John Dewan, author of The Fielding Bible, have assembled a 10-person panel to pick the best defensive players in the majors. According to the Boston Globe:

The panel includes the Baseball Info Solutions video scouts; Strat-O-Matic Baseball creator Hal Richman; Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski; Seattle Mariners scout Mat Olkin ; Chicago sports talk show host Mike Murphy; Nate Birtwell, who oversees the BIS data collection; and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer. Results from a poll taken on the fan website Tango on Baseball (tangotiger.net) was also used.

King Kaufman’s Sports Daily at Salon.com has an easy-to-read summary of the project and rundown of the winners:

The alternate universe Gold Gloves are a publicity stunt for the “Bill James Handbook 2007,” where they’ll appear. But I think it’ll be interesting to see how the picks of Dewan and his impressive panel, listed below, differ from the real Gold Gloves. I wish they’d picked the best fielder at each position in each league, like the awards, but for some reason they just went with the best in the majors.

Here they are:

Albert Pujols at first base, Orlando Hudson at second, Adam Everett at shortstop and Adrian Beltre, just beating out Scott Rolen, at third. Carl Crawford, Carlos Beltran and Ichiro, left to right, though the real Gold Gloves generally go to three center fielders, which is dumb. Greg Maddux and Ivan Rodriguez as the battery.

How does this list mesh with this year’s Gold Glove winners? Pujols, Hudson, Ichiro, Beltran, Rodriguez, and Maddux all won Gold Gloves as well as making the panel’s list. But the following Gold Glove winners were left off the list: Scott Rolen, Omar Vizquel, Brad Ausmus, Andruw Jones, Mike Cameron, Torii Hunter, Vernon Wells, Derek Jeter, Eric Chavez, Mark Grudzielanek, Mark Teixeira, and Kenny Rogers.

Adam Everett, Adrian Beltre, Carl Crawford didn’t receive Gold Gloves, but did make the list.

All of this info seems to yield more questions than answers. Are Everett, Beltre, and Crawford just underrated? Or are certain Gold Glovers just overrated? Is Derek Jeter, for instance, really the AL’s best defensive shortstop? (I find this hard to believe. We all know he’ll dive into the stands when he has to, but he’s not the slickest glove out there.) And how much do individual awards matter in a team sport, even a team as individualistic as baseball? (For instance, despite their flamboyant collapse at the end of the season, the Red Sox still finished the year with the fewest errors in the majors. Yet not a single Red Sox was awarded a Gold Glove.)

Does all this mean that the Gold Gloves themselves are irrelevant—meaningless door prizes handed out to star players on winning teams, awarded to the same old saws year after year after year? Or are the metrics used to pick the winners just a titch obsolete?

King Kaufman asked Dewan about the process he used to pick his fielders:

I asked Dewan if anyone other than he used fielding metrics like his, that is, those beyond the ones easily found on numerous baseball-stat sites.

“Statistics, both old and new (for example, fielding percentage and plus/minus numbers), were provided to the panelists for their reference along with this note: ‘Feel free to use it, or not use it, as you see fit,’” he wrote in an e-mail. “One of the main purposes of having an award and a voting procedure was to consider the non-statistical aspects of evaluating defense. While ‘The Fielding Bible’ puts a lot of emphasis on the numbers, I feel that visual observation and subjective judgment are very important parts of determining the best defensive players.”

Non-statistical aspects? Subjective judgment? Visual observation?!

My God, gentlemen—are we returning to the days of guts and instincts and hunches? Is the Bill James of the future a middle-aged scout with a chewed-off cigar in his mouth and a bit of flint in his eye? Has the statistics revolution come full circle?

At any rate, let’s hope The Fielding Bible throws some needed attention on an oft-overlooked part of the game. (Would it kill ESPN.com to have more fielding stats more readily accessible, for instance? Their sortables are killing me.)