The Cincinnati Reds were one of the worst defensive teams in Major League Baseball in 2024. If you are reading this article, it’s probably something that you are already aware of. Fangraphs defensive value had the Reds as the 26th best defensive team in the league – ahead of just the Washington Nationals, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, and Chicago White Sox. Rawlings and Major League Baseball released the finalists for the 2024 Gold Glove Awards and there was not a single Cincinnati Red among them.
That is the 4th year in a row in which the team was without a player being a finalist for a Gold Glove. In 2020 Cincinnati had their last Gold Glove winner – Tucker Barnhart. That was his second Gold Glove, previously getting the award back in 2017. But back in 2020 Barnhart was not the only Reds player that was a finalist for the award. Shogo Akiyama was also named as a finalist for a Gold Glove that season.
Getting back to 2024, there really wasn’t much of an argument for anyone on the team to be a finalist for the award with one exception. And it’s going to get some people in the comments section worked up. Elly De La Cruz was among the most valuable defensive players in baseball according to both the Fangraphs and Baseball Savant (Statcast) defensive metrics.
Fangraphs rated De La Cruz, errors and all, as a +16.7 defender. That was good for 3rd best in the National League at the position (and 4th best overall in the NL, with Giants catcher Patrick Bailey being at the top spot, followed by four shortstops). If we look at Fielding Run Value as provided by Baseball Savant, De La Cruz was at +11 runs, which was 3rd best at shortstop in the National League – tied with Ezequiel Tovar.
At shortstop, the three National League finalists were Dansby Swanson of the Chicago Cubs, Ezequiel Tovar of the Colorado Rockies, and Masyn Winn of the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s tough to argue against Swanson, who topped the charts at both Fangraphs and Baseball Savant for the position. Tovar was tied for 3rd at Fangraphs and was a decimal point behind De La Cruz at Fangraphs and ranked 4th. But Winn was well down the list, coming in at 7th at Fangraphs (and at about half the value as anyone in the top four) and 5th at Baseball Savant (and at just +3, while the top four guys were all at +11 or better).
Francisco Lindor and Elly De La Cruz were both ranked 2nd and 3rd on both lists and were left off of the finalists list. If one of them were left off in favor of Ezequiel Tovar, who was very close to them both in the values, it could be understandable. But for them both to be left off of the list while having Masyn Winn make it feels a bit off.
The finalists, and winners are chosen by a 2-fold system. Managers and coaches around the league vote. They are not allowed to vote for players on their own team, and they only vote for players in their league. Those votes account for 75% of the selection. The other 25% of it is made up by the SABR defensive index.
Whatever it is that they use seems to differ from what Fangraphs and Baseball Savant are coming up with. The system they use isn’t exactly clear, with the webpage discussing it being rather vague other than noting that they use several defensive metrics/sources to come up with their numbers.
No matter how you want to slice things up, though – the Reds defensive as a whole is bad. And they arguably only had one or two defensive players who were even better than average – Elly De La Cruz and Tyler Stephenson – according to the metrics. They are going to have to improve on that in 2025 if they want to win more. Some of this is on the front office, who has acquired poor defenders and not enough players who have experience playing the positions they’ve then been asked to go out and play.
But some of this is also injury related. TJ Friedl’s a good defender, but after his injury this season he simply wasn’t as fast when he returned to the field. You saw that in the outfield and at the plate as he stopped bunting for much of the year despite it being a huge part of his offense for his entire career. His sprint speed in 2023 was well above-average, but in 2024 it was slightly below-average. A healthy Friedl should improve the defense some.
And then there’s Matt McLain, who was an above-average fielder in his rookie season and then missed all of 2024. While Jonathan India filled in adequately at second base, and showed good improvement from his past defensive numbers, he still wasn’t the same kind of defender that McLain is or was.
Counting on the health of those two guys, or anyone if we’re being truly honest about it, is iffy at best. Depth matters somewhat here. But so does having more than a few good fielders in your starting lineup. Can the Reds do something this offseason to improve that? It’s going to be a wait-and-see kind of thing, but there’s work that needs to be done here if the organization is going to be serious about making a run at the playoffs.
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