Carlos Santana named Gold Glove Award finalist

Rawlings announced the finalists for the 2023 Gold Glove Awards on Wednesday. Carlos Santana is one of the finalists for the National League at first base.

The winners will be announced on Sunday, Nov. 5 at 6:30 p.m. CT as part of ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” broadcast.

Santana upheld his reputation as one of baseball’s best defensive first basemen. Splitting the season between the Pirates and Brewers, he led all NL first basemen with 11 Defensive Runs Saved and ranked third with 3 Outs Above Average.

His fellow nominees are Christian Walker and Freddie Freeman. Walker’s 12 OAA led all NL first basemen. Freeman tied with Santana in the same metric.

The Brewers were baseball’s best defensive team by multiple metrics, including OAA and FanGraphs’ Defense metric. There were a couple of notable Brewers omitted from the finalist lists.

William Contreras finished second among NL catchers in FanGraphs’ Defense metric but was not a finalist. Instead, J.T. Realmuto made the cut after ranking 44th among 60 catchers by the same measurement.

Willy Adames finished second among NL shortstops in OAA, trailing only Dansby Swanson and tying with Ezequiel Tovar. Adames also finished fourth in DRS. Still, Francisco Lindor received the final nomination alongside Swanson and Tovar.

Brice Turang was not a finalist after a solid rookie season in the field. Turang led all NL second basemen with 12 DRS but faced stiff competition in Ha-Seong Kim, Nico Hoerner, and Bryson Stott. All three led Turang by plenty in OAA and were named finalists.