Monday, May 10, 2010

Trivia: Gold Glove Love

In 1957, the baseball glove manufacturer Rawlings started honoring the top fielder at each position with the Gold Glove Award. Over the years, Greg Maddux has won the most Gold Gloves, taking home the award 18 times as a pitcher. And Darin Erstad is the only player to ever win a Gold Glove as an infielder and as an outfielder.

Among currently active players, Ivan Rodriguez has the most Gold Gloves with 13. Only five other current players have at least nine Gold Gloves. Can you name those five players?

Update: Previous version of this question mistakenly said there were only four other current players with at least nine Gold Gloves. This has been corrected to say five.

6 comments:

Pauly said...

OK here are my official 4 guesses without looking it up:
Ken Griffey
Andruw Jones
Derrick Lee
Omar Vizquel

Here are the other ones that didnt make the cut:
Ichiro
Torii Hunter
Pedro Feliz
Jim Edmonds
Luis Castillo
Miguel Tejada
Carl Crawford
Mike Lowell
Todd Helton
Orlando Hudson
Alex Rodriguez
Derek Jeter

I will probably look it up now...I just went team-by-team in my head.

Pauly said...

Nice...3 out of 4 and the 4th was the #1 guy on my left out list.

Unknown said...

Pauly - good guesses, although I would've guessed that both ichiro and Hunter had more than D-Lee (since I knew that Helton had a few and Pujols had one). And it looks like your top 2 alternates were both good :-) One quibble - Crawford is currently playing in his 9th season :-)

Initially, I was a little surprised that there were only 4 (or 5) players that had 9, but then you think about guys like Edmonds, Rolen, and Chavez, who had a bunch, but got a little older and started getting hurt.

Greg McConnell said...

OK, I'm now officially in a trivia slump. I had overlooked Omar Vizquel when I was going through the list. Pauly, you've got this Gold Glove stuff down pretty well. As it turns out, your top TWO on the "left-off" list were right. According to Baseball Reference, these currently active players have at least 9 Gold Gloves:

Ivan Rodriguez (13)
Omar Vizquel (11)
Ken Griffey Jr. (10)
Andruw Jones (10)
Torii Hunter (9)
Ichiro Suzuki (9)

It's also interesting to note that Scott Rolen has 7 Gold Gloves, which is third on the all-time 3B list. (Note: In my Baseball Reference link above and here, you'll have to scroll down to get top totals by position.)

Greg McConnell said...

Ah, I just saw the Chairman's post now. Good points about guys like Edmonds, Rolen, and Chavez being slowed by injuries.

Pauly said...

yep...Omar Vizquel is still playing, and he's on one of your hometown rosters.