Kolten Wong, Jackie Bradley, Jr. announced as finalists for Gold Glove Awards

The Gold Glove Awards are no longer considered the standard when it comes to the best of the best defensively — the Fielding Bible Awards are metric based — but winning a Gold Glove is still an historic and prestigious honor. Nominations for the awards were announced yesterday, and the Milwaukee Brewers have two finalists:

Kolten Wong has won back-to-back Gold Gloves at second base, earning the award with the Cardinals each of the previous two seasons. In his first year with Milwaukee, Wong was charged with just two errors across 113 games and 937.0 innings at the keystone. Wong was second in the NL with +6 Defensive Runs Saved at second base, and first with a +4.7 Ultimate Zone Rating. Wong will be competing for the award against Ozzie Albies of the Braves and Tommy Edman, who supplanted him at second base with the Cardinals.

Jackie Bradley, Jr. was arguably the worst hitter in baseball this year, but he did not take that out to center field with him. Signed late in the offseason, injuries to other outfielders meant that JBJ wound up playing in a largely full-time role for much of the season, appearing in 134 games and getting 428 plate appearances despite the fact that he hit only .163/.236/.261 for a 34 OPS+. But the 2018 Gold Glove winner also played error-less baseball across 915.1 innings in the outfield. JBJ recorded three outfield assists, ranked t-3rd among all NL outfielders with +12 Defensive Runs Saved, and second with a +10.7 UZR. Bradley, Jr. is up against Harrison Bader and Bryan Reynolds for the Gold Glove Award in center field.

The Brewers last Gold Glove winner was Lorenzo Cain in 2019, and Carlos Gomez in 2013 before that. The Gold Glove Award winners are typically announced by Rawlings in the early part of November.