From the outside, you wouldn’t expect the Pirates, who finished with the fourth-worst record and allowed the fifth-most runs in baseball, to rake in defensive awards.
And yet, on Thursday, four separate Pirates were named award winners or finalists. Catcher Jacob Stallings, shortstop Kevin Newman and center fielder Bryan Reynolds were all listed as National League Gold Glove finalists, while Stallings and third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes were named the winners of the Fielding Bible award for their respective positions.
The qualifications for each are different. The Gold Glove is the more well-known, prestigious defensive award, as it’s been around much longer. MLB managers and their coaching staff turn in a ballot to decide the winner at each position, though no coach or manager can vote for their own player, and they can only vote for players in their respective league.
Hayes, despite outstanding defensive metrics, did not qualify for the Gold Glove. A player must play in 713 innings over the team’s first 142 games of a season to qualify for voting, and with Hayes’ wrist injuries, he did not make the cut.
He did, however, qualify for the Fielding Bible awards, voted on by a 17-person panel of experts. That panel deemed that Hayes, despite his physical limitations this season, was the best defensive third baseman in baseball.
That vote is certainly defensible. Hayes finished with the fourth-most defensive runs saved with 16 in 766 1/3 innings played. He had some trouble offensively and he had those injuries, but there can be no question about the quality of Hayes’ glove.
“We see guys, even veteran players at the major league level, who, every once in a while, you can see an at-bat creep into their defense, and I can't think of a time in two years when I've seen that with Ke'Bryan,” general manager Ben Cherington said Thursday. “It's just remarkable consistency on the defensive side of the ball. He makes plays that are routine plays. He makes plays that look routine but are actually hard, hard plays that he makes look routine and you take for granted, and he also makes some spectacular plays.”
The big winner is Stallings. After all, he was the only one of the four to both win a Fielding Bible award and become a finalist for the Gold Glove. It is the second consecutive season that he has been named a finalist, losing out to Cincinnati Reds backstop Tucker Barnhart in 2020.
The recognition continues what is still a wildly fast acclimation for Stallings in the majors. He didn’t even become a starting catcher until partway through the 2019 season, when he was already 29. This year, he led all players in baseball with 21 defensive runs saved this season, according to Fangraphs. He also placed 17th among MLB catchers with two runs from extra strikes, a metric based on pitch framing, according to MLB Statcast.
Stallings’ is a story of hard work, grinding to become a better defensive catcher until he finally did. Now he’s reaping the recognition.
“So much of defensive improvement and being a great defender is simply the willingness to work at it, and not just to work at it in time spent, but the willingness to be open-minded, how to work at it, how to train, what information to use and what not to use, trying new things,” Cherington said. “[Stallings] just does that consistently. It's not just that he has pride in it, but he's willing to challenge himself to get better, put the time in, and if you do that as a player, with that specific skill, defensive skill, we see pretty consistently that improvement happens.”
The fact that Newman and Reynolds are deserving candidates is a testament to their growth in the field. The Pirates challenged Newman last offseason to improve his defense, and he did, sharing that his pregnant wife helped him in the offseason by feeding balls into a machine so Newman could drill his infield work. Then he opened the year with 76 straight games without an error. After putting up negative defensive runs saved numbers in each of the last two seasons, he had nine defensive runs saved in 2021, according to Baseball Reference.
Reynolds faced questions about his own position to start the year. Some roster moves necessitated a shift from left field to center for him, and he never looked back. Reynolds finished second among all National League center fielders in outs above average, according to Statcast.
So in the end, even with the many struggles the Pirates faced this season, their fielding was greatly improved. Now, the core of that defense is being recognized for its labors.
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak
First Published: October 28, 2021, 8:56 p.m.
