Nate McLouth Wins Gold Glove

by Charlie on Nov 5, 2008 5:00 PM EST Comment 23 comments

Wow, I didn't see that coming.

The last Pirate to receive the Rawlings Gold Glove award was shortstop Jay Bell in 1993. Center fielder Andy Van Slyke received it in 1992.

That's right--Nate McLouth has a Gold Glove. Jack Wilson has none.

McLouth's memorable throw in the All-Star game probably helped him, but other than that, I don't know what the voters saw here. McLouth, to my eyes, looked like an average centerfielder. Perfectly decent, but not great. Whatever--I'm happy for him anyway.

McLouth may soon become a mini Derek Jeter--a lightning rod for arguments about the viability of defensive statistics as opposed to traditional approaches. At least one defensive metric thought McLouth was a complete disaster this year, at least through August, and he's never been rated as a good centerfielder by any advanced metric of which I'm aware.

Here are the other NL Gold Glove winners, by the way.

UPDATE: Thanks to Dtoddwin and Thunder for steering me toward this from Rob Neyer:

Nate McLouth, though? Quite frankly, this is like some horrible joke, roughly on par with giving three Gold Gloves to Derek Jeter (2004 to 2006) or giving one to Rafael Palmeiro (1999) on the strength of 28 games.

Neyer then names some fielding stats in which McLouth graded terribly, then guesses that the coaches voted for McLouth on the basis of his low error total.

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Congrats!

Nate is certainly deserving. In my opinion, he outperformed all NL outfielders with the leather this season.

by Deaner on Nov 5, 2008 5:07 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Well...

I’m not sure the Gold Glove is the place to start the argument about defensive metrics. The problem with it isn’t really that voters take the traditional approach, it’s that the voters are all the managers in the league. I’m not sure if they’re allowed to vote for their own guys or not, but the biggest problem is the amount you see people, and the situations in which you see them. It’s a hopelessly unbalanced and small sample size. I now view it as a “just-for-fun” award, like the grammys.

by Carnival Matleuse on Nov 5, 2008 5:20 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

and...

Who was the last Pirate to win the Spalding Gold Glove? Or the Wilson Gold Glove? Or the Play It Again Sports Gold Glove?

by Carnival Matleuse on Nov 5, 2008 5:31 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

its managers and coaches

and they can’t vote for players on their own teams. I’m not sure why you’d talk about a small sample size. In other judging systems I get the impression that some evaluators never watch players or perhaps only a couple times.

by ol Pete on Nov 5, 2008 10:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I would say

never underestimate how much putting up a good OFFENSIVE season gets you noticed for your defense, even when your defense is … not so much (since you mentioned him, I think that’s the case with Jeter).

by bucdaddy on Nov 5, 2008 5:49 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Supporting documentation

Here’s a paragraph lifted from the AP story on the AL Gold Glove winners:

The Gold Gloves often raise the ire of many baseball fans. Critics claim the
best fielders are overlooked in favor of more popular players, and further insist
that better hitters get a break in the voting.

by bucdaddy on Nov 6, 2008 5:31 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Joke.....

I’m happy for Nate but this is silly. Rob Neyer goes into it in detail on his blog at espn.com, but Nate rated terribly in a variety of defensive metrics. I do think the throw at the all-star game won the award for him.

by dtoddwin on Nov 5, 2008 7:01 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I really wish I could read Neyer.

by Charlie on Nov 5, 2008 7:27 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Charlie...

I can’t vouch for sure…but the Neyer column doesn’t appear to be an Insiders column today.
Neyer Blog

by Thunder on Nov 5, 2008 7:30 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I thought the column was horrible

He talks about other awards yet says nothing about the foundation of those awards. Are all of them done by guys like himself and based on mathematical computations derived from BIS and STATS data and play by play records? If so, those are proprietary products not scientific measurements. There are a whole host of reasons that they may not be very good and you’ll never hear them talked about. Video set up and equipment or even the guy who is charged with determining whether balls land in the zone assigned to the CF are just a couple possible systemic biases. Thats just a start at the number of things that are never evaluated scientifically. You’ll never hear terms like reliability and validity. The people selling them as raw data and the people manipulating them to sell opinions are entrepreneurs and just about everything in the process lacks testing or review.

Then the raw data is manipulated. Thats another minefield. There are a crazy number of attempts and if you ask me zone ratings, the currently popular type is conceptually flawed in ways that are next to impossible to correct.

Despite his claim that he “forgot” that Scott Rolen didn’t play for the Cardinals, there should be a way to know how many games he watched. When he says he saw Rolen on the Cards in his mind, it could mean that he never saw a Cards game this year.

And I have to say that this paragraph should literally get him fired:

Well, there’s this kid in Pittsburgh, looks good in a uniform, is shocking the world with his bat … and did you happen to notice that he made only one error all season long? My guess is… the managers and coaches are supplied with statistics. Just the old standards, of course. Even things like assists and putouts are meaningless to most of the voters. What they can understand, though, are errors and fielding percentage. And if you judge fielders by errors and fielding percentage, you have to allow that Nate McLouth was an excellent center fielder.

The managers and coaches of the NL (who all watch the players in person nearly every day) considered how McLouth looked in a uniform? They don’t know anything about those cool, newfangled statistics? They consider errors a good measurement? All three are sheer idiocy and arrogance and completely unsupportable. He openly claims that they do these things and are fools for doing it.

How good is Nate at defense? My impression is that he moves back and comes in well and catches the balls that he gets to. He has an average to above average arm but not great and was very accurate on his throws. You can’t judge how good a jump a guy gets from watching TV except for rare replays. Is he a gold glover? I sure don’t know, but I do know he’s not bad or horrible or whatever hyperbolic adjective people who never or rarely watched him play want to attach to him.

I wish he was a Brewer to tell you the truth.

by ol Pete on Nov 5, 2008 11:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

"They don't know anything about these cool newfangled statistics?"

They probably do have some inkling about them — the more enlightened ones, certainly — but it’s probably a question of time for these guys. Think about it this way: Every week in the fall there’s a poll that purports to be the best judgments of a panel of college football coaches on who the best 25 teams among them are. Do you seriously believe that any extraordinarily busy college coach is going to take 3-4 hours of his time every Sunday to sit down and fully analyze all facets of , say, West Virginia’s and Cincinnati’s and Pitt’s performances when it comes time to decide who ought to be No. 23, 24 and 25? You know they don’t. (I’ve often suspected this is really a poll of the SIDs. “Who’s your top 25 this week, coach?” “Lessee … Put Alabama and Texas Tech and Penn State 1-2-3 and … hell, son, you pick the rest. I have film to watch.”)

It’s not an in-season thing for the Gold Gloves, so it’s not quite the same, but it’s the few weeks out of the year when these guys can tend to stuff like, you know, having a family. It’s sportswriters and stat geeks who have nothing better to do for eight hours a day than sit around and argue defensive metrics.

I just hope Nate had a performance clause in his contract for this, so he can make Nutting let the moths out of his wallet.

by bucdaddy on Nov 6, 2008 10:23 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

the Brewers have several people who do advanced statistics

I doubt there is a single team that doesn’t deal with them. Rob Neyer may have never seen McLouth play, especially considering that he probably didn’t watch the Cardinals.

In all honesty, I don’t find many people who really have an idea of what defensive metrics are or what they mean or how they’re made. When someone “knows” about one, it typically means they know the thumbnail description of what is calculated, some are even familiar with the formulas. Those people routinely use the technique of using esoteric language and references that eliminate real discussion.

Regular fans think that zone ratings are highly reliable – they aren’t – and that its appropriate to measure a partial season or even a season and draw conclusions and it isn’t.

There are lots of loud declarations and proclamations across the blogs and forums of how awful Nate is and what fools the managers and coaches of MLB are but I’ve yet to read an actual criticism of his play. I doubt more than a tiny percentage have ever watched Nate play outside of the All-Star game which is frequently cited as the reason why he got the award. Think about that. People imagine Joe Torre and Joe Maddon eating some pizza and watching the All Star game and being impressed by a single play and deciding to give him the award. Rob Neyer thinks his good looks are an influence.

Just what is Nate bad at?

by ol Pete on Nov 6, 2008 12:51 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

To answer Carnival's question above

managers and coaches are not allowed to vote for their own players when voting for the Gold Glove.

Just did a brief look at a few defensive stats. Nate’s range factor is basically identical to Torii Hunter’s and Josh Hamilton’s, and better than Grady Sizemore’s. All range factor tells you is the average PO and A for 9 innings by a player.

I see that Nate is low in Zone Ratings…but how can Michael Bourn be way below Nate?? [sarcasm] Bourn is supposed to be one of the fastest guys in the league…yet he catches less balls in his zone than any CF not named Coco Crisp. Hint…speed alone won’t make Mr. Excitement a good CF. [/sarcasm] The metrics are likely skewed against Nate due to all the rockets our pitching staff gave up this season…and having to worry about covering the ground our outfield turtles (Bay, Nady, Moss, Michaels, et. al) weren’t going to be able to cover.

by Thunder on Nov 5, 2008 7:21 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Neither Hero Nor Disaster

We’ve seen disasters in the Pirates outfield — Nate isn’t one of them. I don’t think he’s a Gold Glover, necessarily, but not a disaster.

by KPatrick on Nov 5, 2008 8:58 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I don't trust

most defensive stats. I would rather go by first hand viewing.

by EndlessMike on Nov 6, 2008 12:33 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Witch!!

by azibuck on Nov 6, 2008 10:29 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Fielding % is useless in evaluating OF defense

I particularly enjoyed this quote from Perroto’s article today:

“McLouth led NL center fielders with a .997 fielding percentage as he made just the one error in 386 chances. The only NL outfielder with a better percentage was Milwaukee left fielder Ryan Braun, who finished with a perfect 1.000 after making no errors in 149 games.”

by Chad Bahamas on Nov 6, 2008 10:59 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

The same Ryan Braun

that was moved from 3B to LF because of his iron glove.

by Thunder on Nov 6, 2008 1:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

actually it was more of his rocket arm

He’s been really good in left field.

by ol Pete on Nov 6, 2008 1:28 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

McLouth

You can’t always go by some arcane “metric” valuation in determining whether or not a player should be a Gold-glover. He DID make only one error,and who wins the Gold Glove at a given position usually seems tied to their offensive numbers/performance as well. Kinda like……Who was the really good offensive player that was the best defensively?

by rissaldar on Nov 6, 2008 3:46 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

BTW

Is Adam Everett available? He’d probably be cheap if we moved Jack. I know he’s an abysmal hitter, but really, not all that much worse than Jack, if we’re really worried about inspiring confidence in our pitchers with great defense. He played only like 44 games this year (was he hurt?), so small sample size prevails, but he put up some of the best RF numbers of his formidable career, FWIW.

by bucdaddy on Nov 6, 2008 5:37 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Nate McClout

He wasn’t the best fielder, but I wouldn’t want someone like Chriss Duffy starting centerfield just for their glove when McClout has the glove and bat.

by dasox313 on Nov 6, 2008 5:41 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Hmmm...

in my post up above…I mentioned that Nate’s Range Factor was similar to Torii Hunter’s and better than Grady Sizemore’s. So who are 2 of the 3 GG outfielders in the AL…none other than the aforementioned Hunter and Sizemore. Nate had 5 outfield assists…Hunter 4…and Sizemore only 2.

Both of their Zone Ratings are higher than Nate’s…but again…I wonder if they are somewhat skewed by the ability of said pitching staffs. Pirate pitchers gave up 100 more hits than Cleveland’s (Sizemore)…and 200 more hits than the Angels (Hunter).

by Thunder on Nov 6, 2008 6:20 PM EST reply actions 0 recs