Unlike the real voting process, I like to give the three gold gloves to three different outfield positions. Last year the winners were Eric Byrnes in left, Jacque Jones in center (edging Beltran) and Jeff Francoeur in right.
Outfield FWS FWAA Pos C.Young 6.9 1.0 cf Beltran 6.5 0.0 cf Rowand 6.3 0.0 cf Victorino 6.1 0.5 cf Kemp 5.8 0.1 cf Cameron 5.0 0.1 cf Pence 4.8 1.7 rf Winn 4.5 1.4 rf Hart 4.1 -0.6 rf Werth 4.1 1.0 rf Braun 4.1 1.3 lf Fukudome 3.8 0.2 rf Ludwick 3.7 1.3 rf Francoeur 3.6 0.8 rf Schumaker 3.6 0.0 lf Burrell 3.3 -1.2 lf Soriano 3.1 1.1 lf
Guess we can get used to seeing Beltran, Cameron, Rowand and Francouer on this list every year, though Francouer is losing playing time. To me the most interesting people on this list are Ryan Braun, who was almost the Iron Glove at 3b last year, and Pat Burrell, who was the Iron Glove in left field last year. BP does not agree Burrell ought to be on here, and if you watch him play, you see why.
Also, it is extremely interesting that Skip Schumaker and Ryan Ludwick, flanking the reputationally-stellar Rick Ankiel, made the list and Ankiel did not. That's a good outfield!
Even though the averages are different depending on what position you play, I'll use 2.6 as the average WS for an outfielder. Since we are ranking them by position it shouldn't matter that left fielders get hurt by that average. Fortunately we don't have the "Ellsbury" problem with this set of fielders, who mostly stayed in the same positions all year.
The only real contenders we have in left field are Braun, Schumaker and Soriano and it's really no context. Ryan Braun gets the gold in left field. I'm pretty sure Soriano wins this if he plays a full season, but he didn't.
In right field it is Hunter Pence vs. Randy Winn, but Pence wins on both Win Shares and FRAA. Always an easy call when that happens. Hunter Pence gets the gold in right.
For the second year in a row Chris Young fares well in WS, but last year BP didn't like him. This year, it does. But it doesn't like Beltran, who I cheated out of the award last year because of his late season collapse. Maybe I knew what I was doing after all. Chris Young wins it in a landslide, with the exciting Shane Victorino second and Beltran third.
So the hardware goes to Braun, Young and Pence.
Iron Gloves last year went to Pat Burrell in left, Nate McLouth in center and Josh Willingham in right.
Willingham played mostly left this year, and was hurt a lot, but still turned in a bad performance. Under FWAA he was as bad as Burrell in about 50 fewer games. But Jason Bay was worse, and that's only counting his games in Pittsburgh. It's a good thing he got traded to Boston. He was bad in LF there too, but at least he didn't play enough games to show up on the radar. Bay gets the Iron in left. Winning the Iron from Burrell, Willingham, Adam Dunn and Carlos Lee is an accomplishment.
I was surprised how poorly Andre Ethier played in right field, but not nearly as surprised as I was about Brad Hawpe. BP didn't like Hawpe last year, but this year, he looks like the worst outfielder at any position, and Win Shares does not disagree. An arm is not enough. Hawpe gets the Iron Glove in right field, edging the aging Brian Giles, who needs to DH somewhere.
McLouth may have had a good year at the plate, but he managed to get even worse in the outfield. Last year he was the worst of a group of pretty good fielders. This year he was just bad. Ankiel almost got the iron here, despite that arm.
