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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Travesty: Wright Beats Out Chipper For Gold Glove

I can't believe the Mets David Wright won the Gold Glove. He's known to be a hack in the field, and has often made errors that led to Mets losses. Chipper had another slick-fielding year, despite numerous injuries. Here are some comments from the AJC's David O'Brien, who thought the voters must've taken into account Wright's hitting:

"Wright had the fifth-most errors (21) among NL third baseman, and his .954 fielding percentage was fifth-lowest among NL third baseman, far behind the top three of SF’s Pedro Feliz (.973), Chicago’s Aramis Ramirez (.972) and Chipper (.971), who had nine errors in 126 games at third base.

The managers and coaches do the voting for Gold Gloves, and I told Chipper it wouldn’t be the first time their votes were swayed as much by a player’s hitting totals as his defense. Wright hit .325 with 30 homers and 107 RBIs in 160 games.

“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.”

O'Brien continued: "This afternoon I was going over stats and started comparing. And it made me realize, again, just how potent Chipper’s bat has been whenever he’s been in the lineup the past two seasons.

Consider this: Wright had what was widely hailed as a terrific offensive season, batting .325 with 40 doubles, 1 triple, 30 homers, 113 runs, 107 RBIs, a .416 OBP and a .546 slugging percentage (.962 OPS).

Now consider this: Chipper played 24 fewer games than Wright, and Hoss hit .337 with 42 doubles, 4 triples, 29 homers, 108 runs, 102 RBIs, a .425 OBP and a .604 slugging percentage (1.029 OPS).

Wright killed him in steals (29 to 5), but otherwise Chipper’s numbers are all nearly equal or better than Wright’s, in 24 fewer games."

At least Jeff Francoeur won one. Andruw & Greg Maddux did too...perhaps the voters felt that was enough "Braves."

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