DEREK JETER—THE BONURA SALUTE? Nick writes: “just found out that only Ozzie Smith, Mark Belanger, and Omar Vizquel have more Gold Gloves at SS than Derek Jeter. Does anybody still think this award has any meaning?” This blog post by David Brown on Big League Stew also criticizes the choice, pointing out that the different fielding metrics that have been developed in recent years by sabermatricians show that Jeter has very limited range. One measure showed him as last out of 59 American League shortstops. Brown points out that Jeter did lead the league in fielding percentage—if he did get to a ball, he made very few errors. Although there has been a lot of progress in measuring fielding in the last few years, it has long been known that fielding percentage has very little to with good defense. My father pointed out to us when we were young that fielding percentage was a terrible measure of fielding. I posted here on the Bonura Salute, which was the name that White Sox fans in the 30’s gave to Zeke Bonura’s wave at balls that went by him. Like Jeter, Zeke led the league in fielding percentage.
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In a way the fact that Jeter only committed 6 errors over the course of the whole season (compared to the usual 14-25 generally seen by shortstops over the course of ~155 games), should be an indicator that he isn’t that good.
Either you argue that Errors are really important – in which case you are positing that Jeter was absolutely transcendent in the field relative to his peers – or you can realize that they are relatively incidental and are a product of how many balls in play you can actually reach. Obviously it’s better to have a fielder who gets to as many as possible…
Then again, it’s clear from many anecdotes of clubhouse reporters, that the people who are voting on this don’t spend more than a few seconds thinking about it.