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Carlos Gomez won a Gold Glove on Tuesday night. It was well-deserved. You might not think this means anything to you, except it kinda sorta does. Prior to Gomez, the Brewers hadn't had a Gold Glove winner since 1982, when Robin Yount won it at shortstop. He'd move to the outfield three years later, but that's not the point. The point is that the Brewers' long regional nightmare is over. That leaves the team with the longest Gold Glove drought as ... let's see ... I made a table ...
San Francisco Giants | 2006 | Omar Vizquel |
Cleveland Indians | 2008 | Grady Sizmore |
New York Mets | 2008 | David Wright, Carlos Beltran |
Detroit Tigers | 2009 | Placido Polanco |
Houston Astros | 2010 | Michael Bourn |
Minnesota Twins | 2010 | Joe Mauer |
Seattle Mariners | 2010 | Franklin Gutierrez, Ichiro Suzuki |
Los Angeles Angels | 2011 | Erick Aybar |
Los Angeles Dodgers | 2011 | Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier |
Oakland Athletics | 2012 | Josh Reddick |
Chicago White Sox | 2012 | Jake Peavy |
Chicago Cubs | 2012 | Darwin Barney |
Florida Marlins | 2012 | Mark Buehrle |
New York Yankees | 2012 | Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano |
Philadelphia Phillies | 2012 | Jimmy Rollins |
Pittsburgh Pirates | 2012 | Andrew McCutchen |
San Diego Padres | 2012 | Chase Headley |
Washington Nationals | 2012 | Adam LaRoche |
Tampa Bay Rays | 2012 | Jeremy Hellickson |
Arizona Diamondbacks | 2013 | Paul Goldschmidt, Gerardo Parra |
Atlanta Braves | 2013 | Andrelton Simmons |
Baltimore Orioles | 2013 | Adam Jones, Manny Machado, J.J. Hardy |
Boston Red Sox | 2013 | Dustin Pedroia |
Cincinnati Reds | 2013 | Brandon Phillips |
Colorado Rockies | 2013 | Carlos Gonzalez |
Kansas City Royals | 2013 | Salvador Perez, Eric Hosmer, Alex Gordon |
Milwaukee Brewers | 2013 | Carlos Gomez |
St. Louis Cardinals | 2013 | Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright |
Texas Rangers | 2013 | Adrian Beltre |
Toronto Blue Jays | 2013 | R.A. Dickey |
There are only nine teams that haven't won a Gold Glove since last year. You can see how this is annoying from the Giants' perspective. It's not really important -- or, you know, important at all -- but I love trinkets. And baubles. The more hardware, the better. Do you know this is the first year since 2012 the Giants haven't had an MVP? And since 2010 they haven't had a Rookie of the Year? And since 2009 they haven't had a Cy Young? It's been a positively unbearable stretch for us Giants fans, and I'm pretty sure the rest of baseball feels our pain. The Gold Glove thing is just sad icing on the cake of despair.
The weird thing about the A's being up there is they have Josh Donaldson, a magnificent defender who couldn't even get nominated because of the impressive competition. That's just like the Giants and Brandon Crawford. In another era, both players would have at least been nominated. They probably would have each won in the right year, too. As is, they're fourth-place finishers in 15-contestant fields.
Edit: The other weird thing is that Josh Reddick won for the A's last year. Boy, howdy, that sure is strange. Also, I screwed up, like, six other things on that table. Most of them are fixed now. Most of them.
There probably isn't a Gold Glove coming soon for the Giants, unless they sign or trade for some crazy left fielder, or if Simmons gets hurt, or if Brandon Belt starts hitting enough to get Gold Glove consideration.
We'll end with happier Gold Glove memories. Here are the Giants who won a Gold Glove in 1993:
Kirt Manwaring - C
Robby Thompson - 2B
Matt Williams - 3B
Barry Bonds - LF
Ridiculously impressive, right? The Cardinals did that in 2002, when they lost the NLCS, and in 2003, but that's it. It's freaky-rare to get four Gold Glovers on one team. Now consider the players who didn't win a Gold Glove on the '93 Giants:
Will Clark - 1B
Royce Clayton - SS
Darren Lewis - CF
Willie McGee - RF
McGee was average. Everyone else was an absolute badass. Lewis was probably the best defender out of all of them, and he'd win the following year. That was the best defensive Giants team we'll probably ever see. Stupid Fred McGriff.
In conclusion, Gary Brown needs to learn how to hit, and I don't think Gold Gloves mean anything, and I don't even think about them anyway, and they're stupid, so, like, pfft, whatever, and man oh man oh man I just want a Giants player to win a Gold Glove.