The Giants Have the Longest Gold Glove Drought

Carlos Gomez won a well-deserved Gold Glove last week. Prior to Gomez, the Brewers hadn’t had a Gold Glove winner since 1982, when Robin Yount won it at shortstop. Now that a Brewer has won a Gold Glove in 2013, the team with the longest Gold Glove drought is . . . let’s see . . . I made a table . . .

San Francisco Giants 2006 Omar Vizquel
Cleveland Indians 2008 Grady Sizemore
New York Mets 2008 David Wright, Carlos Beltran
Detroit Tigers 2009 Placido Polanco
Houston Astros 2010 Michael Bourn
Minnesota Twins 2010 Joe Mauer
Seattle Mariners 2010 Franklin Gutierrez, Ichiro Suzuki
Los Angeles Angels 2011 Erick Aybar
Los Angeles Dodgers 2011 Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier
Oakland Athletics 2012 Josh Reddick
Chicago White Sox 2012 Jake Peavy
Chicago Cubs 2012 Darwin Barney
Florida Marlins 2012 Mark Buehrle
New York Yankees 2012 Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano
Philadelphia Phillies 2012 Jimmy Rollins
Pittsburgh Pirates 2012 Andrew McCutchen
San Diego Padres 2012 Chase Headley
Washington Nationals 2012 Adam LaRoche
Tampa Bay Rays 2012 Jeremy Hellickson
Arizona Diamondbacks 2013 Paul Goldschmidt, Gerardo Parra
Atlanta Braves 2013 Andrelton Simmons
Baltimore Orioles 2013 Adam Jones, Manny Machado, J.J. Hardy
Boston Red Sox 2013 Dustin Pedroia
Cincinnati Reds 2013 Brandon Phillips
Colorado Rockies 2013 Carlos Gonzalez
Kansas City Royals 2013 Salvador Perez, Eric Hosmer, Alex Gordon
Milwaukee Brewers 2013 Carlos Gomez
St. Louis Cardinals 2013 Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright
Texas Rangers 2013 Adrian Beltre
Toronto Blue Jays 2013 R.A. Dickey

 

There are only nine teams that haven’t won a Gold Glove since last year. Of those, the Giants have been waiting the longest. The Giants have been pretty fortunate with some other individual awards. Our last league MVP was in 2012. Our last rookie of the year? 2010. And a Giant won the Cy Young Award in 2009. 2008, too, but who’s counting?

In a league where Andrelton Simmons is hurt, Brandon Crawford might win a Gold Glove. Brandon Belt might have a shot one day. But we have to recognize that it is unlikely the current crew of Giants will win a Gold Glove.

We’ll end with happier Gold Glove memories. Here are the Giants who won a Gold Glove in 1993:

Kirt Manwaring – C
Robby Thompson – 2B
Matt Williams – 3B
Barry Bonds – LF

Ridiculously impressive, right? The Cardinals did that in 2002, when they lost the NLCS, and in 2003, but that’s it. It’s freaky-rare to get four Gold Glovers on one team. Now consider the players who didn’t win a Gold Glove on the ’93 Giants:

Will Clark – 1B
Royce Clayton – SS
Darren Lewis – CF
Willie McGee – RF

McGee was average. Clayton was a great defender, although not so much in 1993. Lewis may have been the best defender out of all of them, and he’d win the following year. Clark was good if not great. That was the best defensive Giants team we’ll probably ever see.

 

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