No one takes the Gold Glove awards that seriously. These are the defensive awards that matter.
Riley Greene had an excellent 2024 season at the plate, taking the next step toward being a true star hitter in the league. He mashed 24 home runs and posted a fine.348 on-base percentage while making his first All-Star Game. He stood out even more on the defensive side of the game. The 24-year-old outfielder was named the Fielding Bible’s left fielder of the year for 2024 on Thursday.
Unlike the more well known Gold Glove Awards, which has long been more of a popularity contest and often favors the biggest names and even just the best hitter at each position regardless of their actual defensive value, the Fielding Bible Awards actually focuses on recognizing the best defensive players in the game each season. Presented by Sports Info Solutions nowadays, the developers of the metric defensive runs saved (DRS), the voting for the Fielding Bible awards is rooted in actual defensive data.
Greene led the league with 14 defensive runs saved at the left field position. He also played 190 1⁄3 innings in center field, and probably wouldn’t have been eligible to win this award if not for the return of Parker Meadows in the second half of the season. That freed Greene up to play his best defensive position full-time, and he thrived there all season long.
His closest competition for the award came from Baltimore Orioles left fielder Colton Cowser. Per Statcast’s Outs Above Average and Fielding Run Value, Cowser beat Greene pretty handily with a 7 OAA and an 8 FRV compared to Greene’s 4 OAA and 4 FRV. However, by DRS, Greene ran away with it posting a 14 DRS to Cowser’s 4 DRS.
Each metric weights things a little differently, and while their methodologies are objective, the creation of each metric emphasizes different elements and as a result comes up with their model “average” defender a little differently. So the results of each metric in comparison to that baseline are going to favor different plays and different plays over other metrics and value them differently.
My general impression is that DRS grades the plays themselves for difficulty and taking into account details like wind, managing the wall on deep fly balls, and other factors, whereas Statcast is more a strict measurement of how much ground the player had to cover from his starting position in the given amount of time before the ball would land. Some of the finer points of an individual play, like having to leap near the wall, aren’t considered.
So while the Fielding Bible awards are far superior to the Gold Gloves, there still isn’t a perfect single metric for defense, and maybe there never will be. Still, it’s nice to see Greene recognized properly for his outstanding defense all season. He didn’t even make the list of three finalists in the Gold Glove voting for left field.
FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens has a pretty good article explaining the voting and how he went about selecting the top player at each position. He actually favored Cowser, but it’s an interesting read if you’re curious how the awards are determined and how one writer deeply versed in the different metrics used them to get to his choice at each position. Wenceel Pérez also gets a nod in right field from Clemens, though he’s not near the top of the list. Jake Rogers gets some mention at catcher from some voters, while Meadows didn’t play enough overall to overcome some early season defensive issues like he and Pérez struggling to stay out of each other’s way.
The Fielding Bible voting panel is made up of a small group of writers and commentors on the game well versed in sabermetrics, as well as Sports Info Solutions personnel. Beyond Clemens, Eno Sarris and Travis Sawchik, two of the best baseball analysts writing today, got votes, as did Eduardo Perez from ESPN, and our own Bobby Scales.
Individual awards beyond the Cy Young, MVP, and Silver Slugger don’t really get much ink, but the Fielding Bible awards do a really good job identifying the actual best defenders in the game. So it’s nice to see Greene being recognized as the all around star talent that he is, particularly coming off Tommy John surgery on his non-throwing arm. He never missed a beat, and with Meadows in center field and Greene in left field, the Tigers have one of the top outfields in the game heading into 2025.
Here are a few Riley Greene highlights from the 2024 season. There are another big batch of diving catches I could’ve added, but I think this covers the gamut.
Greene is only marginally above average in terms of speed, but he gets good jumps, and his ability to extend his effective range by going to the ground and still making so many of these look routine really adds to the territory he covers that even many faster outfielders can’t match. As a result he’s still pretty solid even in center field, but the fit out in left appears to be a perfect match with Greene’s skillset. Add a powerful bat that matured in 2024, and Greene is set up to be one of the better all around outfielders for the rest of the decade and beyond.