Posted 1:52 PM by Sean
AL Gold Gloves announced. The Angels had two: Bengie Molina at catcher and Darin Erstad in the outfield. Erstad is a no-brainer, now that he's gotten some media exposure, but I'm surprised that Molina beat out Ivan Rodriguez, simply because Rodriguez is so much better known. Not that Molina doesn't deserve it - he's been far and away the best defensive catcher in the AL this year - but I suspect that the recent media knock on Rodriguez as being past his prime and injury prone had a lot to do with this.

I haven't seen any vote totals, but I'd be interested to see where Spiezio ended up. His defense at first this year saved the Angels pretty often; one of the reasons they were able to get away with having Eckstein's weak arm at short was Spiezio's skill receiving the ball at first. He also made some amazing plays on line drives that would have gotten past a lot of other guys. Looking at the statistics, Spiezio had a better fielding percentage, range factor, and zone rating than did Olerud, but Olerud played more innings. Plus, when was the last time you heard someone talk about range factor or zone rating? Even ESPN has the range factors screwed up - either all the decimals are in the wrong place or the formula is missing a factor.