No, the Red Sox didn't win the World Series (or even make the playoffs), but Boston did produce three American League Gold Glove Award winners this season. This is something!
Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia and Adrian Gonzalez were selected as the best defensive players at their position on Tuesday night. After the jump, we'll take a look at the picks and do just a little celebrating.
The good folks over at Baseball Nation provided great capsules to go with the awards. Here they are:
Jacoby Ellsbury (first-time winner)
Ellsbury used to be a polarizing figure when it came to his defense, but he's had fantastic UZR for four of the last five seasons -- not just good, but fantastic. In 2011, he made 91 plays out of his zone according to FanGraphs, which made me look up David Ortiz's stats to see if he played any right field this year.
Dustin Pedroia (2-time winner)
Pedroia has amazing range for someone who covers only three feet of territory when he's completely outstretched on the ground, and he's a worthy winner. The folks on ESPN expressed mild surprise that it wasn't Cano, but it probably would have been Ian Kinsler if the voting were done after the playoffs.
Adrian Gonzalez (3-time winner)
If you go by UZR -- and I'm sure all the coaches and managers who voted on this stuff made sure to flip to FanGraphs on their iPads before they submitted their ballots -- the voters got this one exactly right. It's a little bit of an upset that Mark Teixeira didn't win, but it's not like Gonzalez had the reputation of being a clankmitt over there at first.
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