The Toronto Blue Jays won the American League Team Gold Glove Award on Friday, November 6, 2026, named by Rawlings as the best overall defensive team in the American League. It is Toronto’s third Blue Jays Team Gold Glove in four seasons, after the wins in 2023 and 2024, and it makes the club the first American League team to win the award three times.
TSN’s report of the announcement confirms the run: Toronto also won in 2023 and 2024, the Texas Rangers captured the honour in 2025, and the Team Gold Glove Award was first introduced in 2020. Sportsnet’s report adds that the Chicago Cubs took the National League award on the same night, and that the team awards go to the clubs that grade out best in the SABR Defensive Index, the sabermetric model formulated by the Society for American Baseball Research.
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Blue Jays Team Gold Glove Makes American League History
The short history of the award is what turns a Friday night honour into a record. Rawlings began recognizing the top defensive club in each league after the 2020 season, and the American League winners before Toronto’s run were Cleveland in 2020, Houston in 2021 and the New York Yankees in 2022. The Blue Jays then won in 2023, the first team award in franchise history, and repeated in 2024. Texas interrupted the run in 2025, and Toronto’s win on Friday night is the third, one more than any other American League club has managed in the award’s seven editions.
The National League tells the same story on the same night. The Cubs, the inaugural National League winners in 2020, won again in 2025 and again on Friday, so Chicago joins Toronto as a three-time winner. The St. Louis Cardinals, winners in 2021 and 2022, and the Milwaukee Brewers, winners in 2023 and 2024, had set the previous mark at two. No team in either league had reached three before Friday night. Toronto and Chicago got there together, each as the standard for defence in its own league across the first seven years of the award.
The Numbers Behind Toronto’s Defence In 2026
The case rests on the full season, not one highlight reel. Sportsnet’s report puts Toronto third in the American League in defensive runs saved at 51, fifth in outs above average at 14, and first in fielding run value at 46, with a team fielding percentage of .983. Those totals were built across the diamond on a roster that missed the postseason, which is part of the point: on a 79-83 team that finished five games out of a playoff place a year after winning the American League pennant, the defence was the one part of the club that graded at the top of the league all year.
Andrés Giménez led it. Sportsnet names him Toronto’s top defender by fielding run value at 16 in 2026, in a season where he completed the move back to shortstop after spending the majority of his time at second base since 2022. He played 1,179 innings at shortstop, posted 19 outs above average and committed just seven errors. Manager John Schneider saw the shape of it early, when Giménez first took over the position. “I think he’s the best infielder in Major League Baseball, no matter where you put him,” Schneider said. Giménez had already won three straight individual Gold Gloves at second base from 2022 to 2024 and the American League Platinum Glove in 2023, and his first full season at shortstop ended with him as the highest rated defender on the league’s highest rated defensive team.
No Individual Winner, One Team Award
The team award also closes a strange week in Toronto’s awards season. The individual Rawlings Gold Glove winners were unveiled on Sunday, November 1, and the Blue Jays had five finalists, tied with the Cubs for the most of any club: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at first base, Giménez at shortstop, Brandon Valenzuela at catcher, Nathan Lukes in right field and José Soriano at pitcher. None of the five won. Christian Walker took first base, Taylor Walls took shortstop, Dillon Dingler took catcher, Wilyer Abreu took right field and Tanner Bibee took pitcher, and it was the first time since 2020 that no Blue Jay won an individual Gold Glove.
Read together, the two announcements describe the same team from opposite ends. No single Toronto defender was voted the best at his position, yet the full unit graded above every other American League club in the SABR Defensive Index. That is a roster built on depth of glove work rather than one star season: a first baseman playing the best defence of his career, a shortstop learning a harder position at an elite level, a rookie catcher holding his own behind the plate, and enough range across the outfield and the pitching staff to keep the totals at the top of the league for six months.
A Foundation The Offseason Has To Build On
The award does not change what the winter asks of this front office. Toronto’s season ended early, general manager Ross Atkins has a roster to rebuild, and the club’s busy November calendar is already under way, with free agents to replace and a lineup that needs more than it got in 2026. What Friday night settles is the one question the offseason does not have to answer. The Blue Jays do not need to find a defence. They have the American League’s best, now for the third time in four years, and the first three-time record in the league to prove it. The work ahead is building a team worthy of the gloves behind it.
