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“There are only nine players in the major leagues who are the absolute best at fielding their position,” says John Dewan, co-author of The Fielding Bible, Volume III and owner of Baseball Info Solutions, a baseball analytics company that carefully watches and rates the actual fielding performance of every player in the major leagues. “The ten experts on The Fielding Bible Awards panel stand up and name the one guy who was the best at his position during the 2012 season, bar none, no matter which league he happened to play in last year.” “Mark Buehrle was the best-fielding pitcher when he was with the White Sox in the American League for the last three years,” Dewan continues, “and—guess what—he was the best-fielding pitcher this year when he played for the Marlins in the National League. He was the ‘best-fielding pitcher in baseball’ last year, not the ‘best-fielding pitcher in whichever league he happened to be in.’” In fact, this year’s Fielding Bible Award winners split 5-4 between the American and National Leagues, with Buehrle switching leagues from last year. The 2012 Fielding Bible Awards, with a listing of all players receiving votes and how many each received, will be announced in The Bill James Handbook 2013, which hits booksellers on November 1, just four weeks after the end of the regular season. The winners are chosen by a panel of ten experts, including Peter Gammons, Bill James, Joe Posnanski, Doug Glanville, and John Dewan, “The Fielding Bible Awards are determined by a panel of ten human beings who are charged with the task of determining the best fielders in baseball,” Dewan points out. “We ask them to use all the tools at their disposal to make their picks: both scouting and sabermetrics, and then we tell the world how they voted on each position. None of baseball’s other awards reveal who the voters voted for. The Fielding Bible Awards do.” “The fact that Mark Teixeira of the Yankees is a first-time winner is a bit of a surprise, only because he hasn’t won before,” Dewan says. “Everyone knows he has always been a good fielder at first base. The Mariners’ Brendan Ryan’s first award at shortstop is overdue as well. The other deserving first timers are Darwin Barney of the Cubs, Alex Gordon of the Royals, Mike Trout of the Angels, and Jason Heyward of the Braves. So many new winners shows that—at least as far as fielding is concerned—you have to look at what a player is doing now, not last year or the year before that. And you have to look JUST at his fielding and not at the other aspects of his game.” Here are the results of THE 2012 FIELDING BIBLE AWARDS. A complete record of the voting can be found in The Bill James Handbook 2013. |
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