LA Angels: 3 reasons Jared Walsh undoubtedly deserves the Gold Glove

Earlier this week, Jared Walsh was named a 2021 AL Gold Glove finalist along with his LA Angels teammate David Fletcher.

Walsh was exceptional this season in the field, and was one of the top reasons that he made the AL All-Star team. He and Fletcher were exceptional in holding it down defensively in the right side of the infield. Things got so much better when Albert Pujols left to go across town to the Dodgers and Walsh received the chance to be the full-time first baseman.

Competing with Walsh is Yuli Gurriel and Matt Olson, which will obviously be tough. That being said, Walsh was the better defensive player than both of them this season.

No. 3 reason Jared Walsh undoubtedly deserves the Gold Glove:  He has the least amount of errors

Jared Walsh is 12th in the American League among first basemen in most errors (5). That’s a pretty good ranking, and it’s better than the other two he’s competing with.

Olson has six errors, and Gurriel even has seven.

The most important part of being a good defensive player is about making the routine plays. They had more routine blunders than Walsh, which is one of the top reasons they don’t deserve the Gold Glove over Walsh.

Walsh may not have received the credit and notoriety as the other two, but much of that is due to for instance Olson having a reputation for many years as a great defender. This is just Walsh’s second year in the Big Leagues, and his first as a full-time player. He was the better defensive player this year.

No. 2 reason Jared Walsh undoubtedly deserves the Gold Glove: His range

Jared Walsh has the most range out of any first basemen in baseball. Fangraphs did a study on this and found out.

He’s so quick that he plays off of the bag more than anybody in baseball. He really put that second-best 40 ft split time among first basemen to use.

Fangraphs found that Walsh positioned himself 42.9 feet off of the base, which was much more than Gurriel’s 39.3 feet and Olson’s 37.7 feet. His 40 ft split time (2.18 seconds) was so much faster than Gurriel’s 2.26 and Olson’s 2.30.

Walsh covers that 3-4 gap, and can get down to the foul line so much faster than these other two candidates. Having more range to make more difficult plays while also not making as many errors on the routine plays really tells a lot about Walsh’s defense.

Many look at Walsh and wonder why he’s also such a good defensive player in the outfield. Well, I’d say it’s even the other way around. The fact that he has enough speed to play the outfield goes to show the athleticism he has, and it’s clearly helped out in his play at first base.