The Toronto Blue Jays won the American League Team Gold Glove Award last night, Friday, November 6, named by Rawlings as the best defensive team in the American League for the third time in four seasons. Our full story on the Blue Jays Team Gold Glove win has the announcement, the 51 defensive runs saved and the five finalists who all came up empty in the individual races on November 1.
This morning the story reads differently than it did at the announcement. The full Gold Glove night settled overnight, the final SABR Defensive Index table is public, and the numbers underneath the team award say more about how Toronto won it than the headline did.
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Blue Jays Team Gold Glove, By The Final Numbers
The detail the first reports could not carry sits in the final SABR Defensive Index rankings published by SABR, the primary table behind the award. Toronto’s team total of 29.2 led the American League, ahead of Boston at 26.7, and the engine was the catching. Toronto’s catchers posted a 21.4 SDI, the best mark in the league by a wide margin over Detroit at 13.5, built by Brandon Valenzuela and Alejandro Kirk across the season. The infield added 9.6, second in the league, while the outfield chipped in 2.1 and the pitchers cost 3.9.
Alejandro Kirk behind the plate. Toronto’s catchers graded first in the American League in the final SABR Defensive Index. Photo: Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The same table sharpens the strangest part of Toronto’s week. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. posted a 6.2 SDI at first base, the highest mark of any American League first baseman in the final rankings, ahead of the 5.3 posted by Christian Walker, the man who won the Gold Glove at the position. Four Blue Jays finished in the American League’s top 25 fielders overall: Valenzuela ninth at 7.0, Nathan Lukes tenth at 6.9, Guerrero twelfth at 6.2 and Andrés Giménez 24th at 4.0. ClutchPoints’ morning report filled in the rest of the unit: Lukes recorded 11 defensive runs saved without an error in right field, with Statcast rating his arm the most valuable among American League outfielders, and Valenzuela ranked among the top five catchers in fielding run value.
Put together, Blue Jays Nation’s morning-after history check found that Toronto is the first American League team since the team award began in 2020 to win it in a season when no player on the roster won an individual Gold Glove. The only previous case in either league was Milwaukee in 2023. The league marked the win itself on X:
And I will always glove you. Congratulations to the @BlueJays for winning the Rawlings Gold Glove Team Award as the Best Defensive Team in the American League for the third time in the last four years. (MLB, on X, November 7, as carried in Dose’s report of the announcement)
Platinum Gloves Complete The Same Night
The team awards were only half of Friday night. Rawlings also named the Platinum Glove winners, the best overall defender in each league, and both went to outfielders who had won Gold Gloves on Sunday. The Score’s report of the full announcement has Cody Bellinger of the Yankees taking the American League honour with 21 defensive runs saved, the most among American League left fielders, as the second Yankee to win it after Jose Trevino in 2022. In the National League, Pete Crow-Armstrong of the Cubs became the first National League center fielder to win a Platinum Glove since the award began in 2011, and the first center fielder in either league to win it since Byron Buxton in 2017.
The Platinum results also put Toronto’s team win in its proper scale. Chicago’s defence was the best in baseball by every public measure, leading the majors with 115 defensive runs saved and 72 outs above average, a team SDI of 74.6 against Toronto’s 29.2, and just 61 errors, the fewest in the majors, per The Score’s report. Toronto did not need to be Chicago. The Blue Jays needed to be the American League’s most complete unit across nine positions, and the final table says the catchers and the depth did it. MLB Trade Rumors’ Saturday morning Opener noted the same split, and added that Crow-Armstrong is widely expected to be named National League MVP when that award is announced on November 12.
What The Team Award Means For The Winter
None of this changes the standings. Toronto finished 79-83 and missed the postseason, and the morning-after coverage was blunt about why: a team with the league’s best defence and no Silver Slugger finalists needs bats. The Gold Glove coverage itself made the turn to the winter, with ClutchPoints noting that improving the lineup is the top offseason priority and that Ken Rosenthal has identified Seiya Suzuki and Randy Arozarena as logical targets. Rosenthal made the case on Foul Territory earlier this week, as TSN’s report of his comments recorded: “Certainly the Blue Jays, though, are a team that is quite a logical fit, a team that is almost certain to have interest if they haven’t expressed it already. Suzuki is a natural for them,” Rosenthal said. “I expect the Blue Jays to be active.”
That is the honest shape of the morning after. The Blue Jays wake up today holding a piece of American League history, the first three-time Team Gold Glove winner in the league, won in the one way no American League club had ever won it, with the best catching numbers in the league and a first baseman the final index ranked first at his position. The defence is settled and certified. Everything the winter is about sits on the other side of the ball.
