In 2009, Alexei Ramirez, shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, came close to winning a Gold Glove. On that occasion the desired award went to Derek Jeter though The Cuban Missile had excelled in average field travel (UZR) and was 4th in the entire league in errors. Still, the Pinar del Rio player had no choice and could not be the most qualified defender of the majors in the shortstop, trophy that would had joined his second Silver Slugger Field recently received.
The god Chronos suddenly waved his time and five years later, on the night of November 4, 2014, the Cuban showed up and tried again to win his first Gold Glove. But this was elusive for him. The winner was JJ Hardy of the Baltimore Orioles.
Now you must know all these votes are dominated by 75% of managers, coaches and players in the league, leaving only 25% to the criterion of journalists and writers who are quite unanimous. That is why the nature of this prize is still arbitrary and random.
In many predictions and reports the potential winners were Alexei Ramirez and Alcides Escobar. However, the award went to the hands of Hardy for the third consecutive year. Two other Cubans (Adeiny Hechavarria and Yoenis Céspedes) also chose to win the Gold Glove although both lacked Ramirez opportunities.
The Pinar del Rio player beat Hardy in fielding percentage with 978 and seventh in MLB and second in the American League. Hardy was involved in 89 Double Plays and Ramirez in 112. The number 10 also surpassed Hardy in assists with 91 more. In addition, he played nearly 100 innings more and made just 2 more errors than the exalted defender from Baltimore. Ramirez should have won the award and not just because these overwhelming statistics, but in the sabermetrics the Missile proved to be the insuperable number 1 in the entire league in Factor Range for 9 innings, ie more putouts and assists per innings played. The range factor was 4.45 for Ramirez beating Escobar and Hardy by far, those who are not in the list of the top ten.
In other news, fangraphs.com tells us that Alexei managed to capture four more impossible connections than Hardy. In connections considered remote, he captured the 4.3% more and a 20.1% increase in the frequent connections and 1.1% more in routine connections. Hardy surpassed Ramirez by only two errors less and almost 100 more innings played less.
Since its inception in baseball, Ramirez has had to fight a rematch. It was undervalued as a player in Cuba and still is. There’s blind side of his game that are not recognized and do not let him prevail. Hopefully someday the boomerang will be back.
