Atlanta Braves catch two more gold gloves

The “major” awards will elude the hands of the Atlanta Braves this year, but this defensively-minded team can still point to their hands and fingers as reminders of their work.

The Atlanta Braves are used to having pitchers who can field their positions well, and this year’s pitching-position winner of the Rawlings Gold Glove in the National League has used both his pitching style and his athleticism to become a back-to-back winner.

Max Fried was credited with a remarkable 6 Defensive Runs Saved in 2021 to go with a +5 “Plus Minus” runs saved score.  That combination was the highest in baseball except for Dallas Keuchel (12 and 10, respectively), and he got the nod as the American League’s Gold Glove winner.

Max’s fielding position after throwing certainly helps out a lot, but his ability to get off the mound in a hurry puts him in great shape to cover first base for grounders to the right side of the infield.

Of course, it was one of those plays that nearly went horribly wrong at the outset of World Series Game 6 when Freddie Freeman‘s timing almost resulted in a terrible injury to Fried.  Happily, all was well and the rest became World Series history for the Braves.

Outfield Prowess

Yes:  the second and final Braves winner for 2021 wasn’t even a member of the team until the very end of July.

Even once Adam Duvall rejoined the Atlanta club, spent practically no time in right field at all — 18 regular season innings (and this usually happened as part of the late-game defensive maneuvering).

It was as a member of the Marlins that Duvall saw more right field action (519 innings out of 689 in South Florida), and that’s how he got assigned to the position for this award.

It’s also perhaps with some satisfaction that Duvall beat out Mookie Betts this year — the winner of 5 straight Gold Gloves dating back to his American League days in 2016.

Despite being lauded for his corner outfield play in the past, this is his first Gold Glove.  Not bad for someone who was also the National League’s RBI leader.

But yes: despite some additional nominations, these were the only Gold Gloves awarded to Braves players in 2021.

That’s probably okay, though:  everybody else on the club will have to settle for a different piece of jewelry early next year… big enough to keep the glove on the bench.