On Errors, Fielding and Gold Gloves

I've been a long advocate of the stupidity of errors -- indeed, the name of this very blog, Reign of Error, stems from my fantasy baseball team name (which is how this blog actually started) in my league where errors were sadly a stat we used to care about.

I railed against this year-after-year, pointing out that this is a subjective stat, and not a good measure of fielding. The easiest way to make this clear is that if a fielder is quick but poor handed, he'll get to a lot of balls and kick them, getting awarded an error. If he's slow, he'll never get there in the first place - the ball will go as a hit, but the fielder won't get an error. Does that make him better in any way? Of course not. I used to use Jeff Kent as the example here...but today, a better example is Derek Jeter. He had "only" six errors this season, but most Yankees and baseball fans alike would tell you that's at least partially due to his decreased range, not his slick fielding.

Well ... Jeter won a Gold Glove today. Now, Gold Gloves are not always great, but this seems to have sparked a lot of shock, disgust and anger - when guys like Elvis Andrus of the Rangers are infinitely more deserving.

My friend Paul Bourdett put it simply and succinctly:

Apparently, the smart folks at Baseball Reference think similarly -- this is from the front page of their website right now:

Good stuff.