Gold Glove D-backs Finalists: LF, David Peralta

The candidates

• David Peralta, ARI/TB
• Ian Happ, CHC
• Christian Yelich, MIL

I’m not quite sure how this works with a player like Peralta, traded not just from one team to another, but one league to the other in the middle of the season in question. He played 607 innings in the field for the Diamondbacks, and was then traded to the Rays, where he played 320 more innings in left. Should we (and the voters) only consider his time in Arizona? Or is this one of those ‘Hall of Fame’ scenarios, where the entirety of a body of work should be taken into consideration, even though a player will be wearing a specific hat? I don’t know, and that makes evaluation a bit trickier than normal. I’m going to assume we’re looking just at his games for Arizona.

To be honest, I was quite surprised to see Peralta even nominated. He obviously has a good reputation, having won the Gold Glove at the position in 2019. But I was hard pushed to remember any particularly good plays he made before the trade. Yelich is a former Gold Glover too, though you need to go all the way back to 2014 to find that, and was the National League MVP in 2018, then runner-up the following season. Happ’s career has been solid rather than spectacular, since coming 8th in Rookie of the Year voting for 2017. However, he did represent the Cubs at this season’s All-Star Game

The statistics

For obvious reasons discussed above, Peralta will not have as much playing time as the other two candidates. The difference is very large: Yelich had more than four hundred additional innings, while Happ had more than twice as much time in left as Peralta, both by starts and total innings. Here are the basic lines for them:

• Peralta: 75 G, 69 GS, 64 CG, 607.0 IP, 162 Ch, 158 Outs, 2 As, 2 E, .988 F%
• Haoo: 146 G, 142 GS, 129 CG, 1233.1 IP, 285 Ch, 274 Outs, 8 A, 3 E, .989 F%
• Yelich: 115 G, 114 GS, 106 CG, 1008.2 IP, 192 Ch, 189 Outs, 2 As, 1 E, .995 F%

Looking at these numbers, there’s not much that stands out. Happ does have a decent number of assists. Though the not nominated Jurickson Profar of the Padres led the league with ten, so I’m not sure how much that’s a factor in the voting. [Profar did also tie for errors at the position with four] Still, eight is quite impressive at the position, considering assists are generally harder to come by in left than right field. The other candidates only managed a pair each, so advantage Happ on the basic stats. But let’s take a look and see what the advanced metrics have to say on the topic...

Yeah, it’s really a whole heap of... not very much, I’d say. Happ has an edge, averaging 4.2 compared to Peralta’s 1.3 and Yelich below zero, down at -2.2. However, it’s kinda hard to get excited about any of them, personally - much though I still have a fondness for the Freight Train. Maybe this will help?

Let’s go to the tape

Hmm. These are decent enough plays, certainly. But there wasn’t anything there which made me exclaim “OMG!” or something along those lines. That would be in line with StatCast, which says he had no recorded five-star catches this season (Yelich and Happ had one apiece) and five four-star ones (Happ also had four; Yelich only two). I’m afraid I’m still not able to work up much enthusiasm. I’ll be pleased if Peralta wins, but my level of outrage if he doesn’t is not going to move the needle very far. Still, poll and comments below: you know what to do!