New York Mets star shortstop Francisco Lindor was not only the best offensive player at his position in 2024, but he was amongst the very best defensively. It’s the reason why he will likely finish No. 2 in the National League MVP vote behind Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani, who became the first man in MLB history to record a 50/50 season.
Yet Lindor was left off the list of Gold Glove finalists, which was put together by Rawlings, as announced on Tuesday. Instead, the award will come down between Dansby Swanson of the Chicago Cubs, Ezequiel Tovar of the Colorado Rockies, and Masyn Winn of the St. Louis Cardinals.
The list is a mystifying one considering Lindor carries better defensive numbers than Tovar and Winn — this was expected to be a two-horse race between the Mets’ talisman and Swanson.
Lindor’s outs above average (OAA) — a range-based metric of skill that shows how many outs a player has saved over his peers, per Baseball Savant — is 16, which ranks within MLB’s 98th percentile this season.
Tovar’s OAA is at 15, and Winn’s is at three.
When measuring Fielding Run Value — Statcast’s overall metric for capturing a player’s measurable defensive performance onto a run-based scale, converting various metrics like OAA, blocking, framing, etc., per Baseball Savant — Lindor’s mark of 12 ranks in the 96th percentile, just one below Swanson.
Meanwhile, Tovar’s 11 is in the 94th percentile, and Winn is lagging far behind at 3, which is in the 72nd percentile.
Lindor won two Gold Glove Awards in his first five seasons with Cleveland, but despite being one of the game’s elite defenders, he has not been in the running since coming to the Mets in 2021.
