Joe Posnanski

Gold Glove (NL): Orlando Hudson
Gold Glove (AL): Placido Polanco
Fielding Bible: Aaron Hill

As Bill James has pointed out many times, the error is an utterly unique statistic in all of sports. It is the only statistic (at least the only one I can think of right now) that measures what might have been (or, in the opinion of the official scorer, should have been). There are other what you might call negative statistics in sports — fumbles, turnovers, home runs allowed, goals against average — but something actually has to HAPPEN for those to be recorded. There is no judgment involved, at least not on the part of the scorekeeper/statistician.

It would be fun to see some of these more judgmental stats in other sports:

Hockey: ONM (Open Nets Missed).

Basketball: SHHR (Should Have Had Rebounds)

Soccer: ONM (Open Nets Missed — I know this is my hockey one, but it is even more important for soccer, I think. Unlike many of my friends, I enjoy watching soccer — probably because my father played in Poland. But I’m American enough to be frustrated as hell when, after watching a perfect setup in a nil-nil scrum, seeing a guy miss an open net. And often he won’t just miss the open net, he will send the ball spraying 30 feet wide. I realize it’s a difficult thing to score a goal, and I can appreciate that. But come on … you’ve got to give me a better effort than that after watching 42 minutes of guys turning the ball over at midfield and players rolling around on the ground after routine tackles like they had stepped on a land mines).

Football: In football, we do have an unofficial statistic for “dropped passes” which may be the closest thing any other sport has to errors. But it is unofficial and nobody really refers to it. I would prefer “MH” or “Missed Holes” to define running backs. Maybe it could be be “YLBMH” or “Yards Lost Because of Missed Holes.”

Tennis: I’m not exactly sure how they figure unforced errors — is it any shot that is not a winner or is there some judgment involved? Is there a “forced error” category? And come to think of it, aren’t they all really “forced errors?” I mean, the other guy did hit the ball over the net. And, as George Carlin asked, if a boxer is an undisputed champion, why does he still have to fight people?

Back to errors.

The concept of errors, like most concepts in baseball, goes back to a simpler time almost 150 years ago when neighbors were killing each other in the bloodiest war in American history. Ah, yes, those were the days. For whatever reason, some guys were playing a baseball game in 1863 during the Civil War — and that was a different game. Pitchers threw underhand. Players didn’t wear gloves. And some wise guy in the New York Sunday Mercury decided to put “Catches Missed” into his box score (source: Alan Schwarz’s excellent book “The Numbers Game”).

Fielding was everything then, and it actually made some sense then to record “errors” because the players who made the fewest errors were, in fact, the superstars of the time. You needed some serious guts to catch a line drive or step in front of hard ground ball with no glove on.

Of course, like most concepts and stats in baseball — here’s looking at you Mr. walk-doesn’t-count-as-an-at-bat — the error just kept going on and on and on way past its original intent and way past its general usefulness. When I was growing up, the error was pretty much the ONLY way you judged a fielder. Whoever made the fewest errors was, by and large, thought to be the best fielder. And this wasn’t just the fans and media either. I think most clubs saw it that way too.

Now, most people look at fielding in a big more varied way, but even with all sorts of better options, errors still dominate the landscape. That’s why it is no surprise that Detroit’s Placido Polanco won the Gold Glove. Polanco, you know, did not make an error all year. He set the record for most consecutive games without an error (he did have one error given and then taken away by an official scorer, but that was after he had set the record). With that record, he was virtually a guaranteed Gold Glove winner.

But how good defensively is Placido Polanco? Well, let’s compare him to Aaron Hill, the Fielding Bible’s choice:

Hill had a +22 Dewan Score. That was best in baseball (tied with Chase Utley).
Polanco scored a +4, which put him in the middle of the pack.

Hill made 62 good fielding plays, best in the American League (and second only to Cincinnati’s Brandon Phillips).
Polanco made only 25 good fielding plays, which might help explain the errorless streak.

Hill made 21 defensive misplays, which is actually quite good.
Polanco was even steadier. He made only 14 defensive misplays.

Fielding range was close — Hill’s 5.13 barely edged Polcanco’s 5.08

Zone rating was not as close — Hill’s .849 was quite a bit better than Polanco’s .828.

Hill turned 13 more double plays (114-101) and had a stagerring 171 more assists — in part because he played 160 games at second while Polanco played 141.

Hill had 14 errors. Polanco had zero.

In the end, for me, if it’s the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series, and I’ve got the lead, and I need my best defensive man out there, I would take Hill over Polanco every single day and twice on Sundays (you know, for those old Sunday doubleheaders). It’s not even close. The errorless streak is impressive in its own way — it speaks to a level of concentration (and perhaps a nice liberal scorer) but to me there ain’t no way Polanco is as good as Aaron Hill in the field.

Most of the Fielding Bible Awards voters agreed with me — nine of 10 had Hill ranked ahead of Polanco. Only the Tango Fan Poll had Polanco ahead of Hill (4th and 5th respectively), and the fans picked Mark Ellis as better than both of them.

Moving to the NL, the Fielding Bible Gang also picked Hudson as the best in the Senior Circuit, though I personally voted for Utley.