Milwaukee Brewers: Zach Davies Is A Gold Glove Finalist

On Thursday, MLB unveiled the finalists for the prestigious Gold Glove Awards given to the best defensive player at each position in each league. The Milwaukee Brewers have one finalist on this list and his name is Zach Davies.

Of all the players on the Milwaukee Brewers, Zach Davies won’t immediately jump to anyone’s mind as a great defensive player. But the stats back it up. Zach Davies didn’t make a single mistake on batted balls this season.

In Davies’ 33 starts, he had 48 chances defensively, turning in 36 assists and 12 putouts. He didn’t commit a single error. Giving him a 1.000 fielding percentage. He also turned two double plays and had six defensive runs saved on the season.

The rest of the pitchers in the league averaged a .959 fielding percentage, putting Davies way ahead of the pack. Also, Davies has pretty good range for a pitcher. His range factor per nine innings was 2.26. The rest of the league was at 1.67, a major difference for Davies.

In another remarkable feat, base runners only stole seven bases on the season against Davies. The other three who attempted were thrown out. He also picked off two base runners.

The other two finalists for this award in the National League are Zack Greinke of the Diamondbacks, and R.A. Dickey of the Braves. The knuckleballer has one Gold Glove in his career while Greinke already has four.

Dickey had two errors on the season but he has a much larger range and picked off four base runners. Plus, he only allowed four stolen bases and five would-be base stealers were caught.

Greinke also had a perfect fielding percentage while turning five double plays and converting 56 chances into outs. Nine attempted base-stealers were thrown out while only five were able to successfully run on Greinke.

Both Greinke and Dickey had a better range than Davies and both had more opportunities to make plays and were tougher on base runners than Davies. Looking at these stats, it will be tough for Davies to win the Gold Glove but the fact that he’s a finalist says a lot about his ability to defend his position.

The Gold Glove Award winners will be announced on November 7th on ESPN.

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Many fans would have been expecting maybe Orlando Arcia or Manny Pina of the Milwaukee Brewers to be selected to be a finalist for a Gold Glove this year but that didn’t happen this year. If those two can keep up the defensive work they put in this year they will get their due but those are very tough positions to win at. Yadier Molina has a lock on this award as long as he plays and shortstop is tough to break into as well.