Let's be honest, Jacoby is a great defender. And his offense is getting him some notice this year and that should help his chances with BBWAA for the Gold Glove voting. He's got those great, diving catches and takes great routes to the ball. And he's doing it in all three fields, no less.

His style is certainly the type that tends to get rewarded by the BBWAA, but THT's RZR has him as the third-best outfielder on the Sox, behind Drew and Crisp.

And I haven't watched every inning of every game - far from it - but I've definitely seen him take some bad routes. He usually tends to make up for those with his wheels, though. That was the scouting knock on his defense when he was called up, and I think he has shown some improvement, but if he were taking better routes and getting better jumps he would make more catches and dive less often.

He's a neat player and he wouldn't be a terrible GG choice, but he isn't what I would call deserving. Then again, I'm not in the BBWAA. They offered me a membership, but the lobotomy just didn't fit in with the rest of my career plans.

Well, I can't see Hunter getting it again. I just think that the media attention on Boston helps Jacoby; plus it looks like he's learning Fenway quite well, especially LF.

Oh, no doubt, playing for a winner in a big media market, making lots of diving catches, and hitting well are pretty much your golden ticket to a gold glove. He has an abundance of that skill set. Plus he plays all three outfield positions pretty darn well. I'm not trying to hate.

If anything, I just think JD Drew deserves some love as well. He has the top RZR rating of anyone at any position in MLB. I was surprised to see that when I looked it up, but then I thought back to how he's been playing the field this year, and I wasn't surprised at all. If I were Matsuzaka or Beckett or whoever, I would buy those guys new cars or at least a case of nice wine and some steaks or something.

Possibly, but I don't think he will. I don't hear much talk about his defense from anyone other than Sox fans. I don't think he deserves it, personally. Crisp definitely deserves it... this should be his third -- but he won't win one, of course because he's not a good hitter and therefor not a star player.

Well, it's pretty tough for an incumbent to give his up once the voters have decided that he is a gold glove guy. So Suzuki and Sizemore are keeping theirs. I think Curll is right about Hunter giving his up.

Ellsbury seems as good a candidate to replace Hunter as anyone else in the league, at least as far as the voters are concerned.

He's .947 RZR for CF, .921 in LF - Monster effect?

I would say he's among the finer CFers in the league... and being behind Coco in most defensive metrics doesnt mean a whole lot. There are plenty of guys who are excellent defenders but cant match Crisp.

It doesn't mean a lot to us, but to the morons that vote on the gold glove, who knows? There have been plenty of times where I have questioned the sanity of the voters, but after Coco was snubbed last year, I decided to not give a shit who gets them anymore.

There's no doubt at all that Ellsbury's defense is quite an asset. There are guys who have won them about whom I can't say that.

Nice toss from JD Drew to save this game in extra innings. Right field in Fenway is tough.

Verring off topic a bit here, but I'm more concerned with Jacoby's offense than whether he wins a GG. I don't think anyone expected him to sustain his small-sample-size numbers from 07. But the fall off from .353/.394/.509/.903 (131 OPS-plus) to .276/.354/.395/.749 (OPS-plus of 100) has been greater than I would have expected.

Considering he's only only 24 and 102 games into his MLB career, I wouldn't be too worried about his offense. Remember, 3 years ago, he was still playing in the College World Series.

And this year's #'s are more in line with what he produced in AAA last season (.298/.360/.380).

He doesn't even have a position. He has played the most innings in CF (although, more games in LF), but his time spent there doesn't even account for half of his innings defensively. He's a utility outfielder right now.

I know the OF Gold Gloves aren't position-specific (imagine how different the results would be over the years if they gave out four Gold Gloves for "infield"), but how many guys have ever won Gold Gloves while moving around as much as he does? I have no idea, but I would guess not many.

Moreover, to the extent that these things are about perception as much as reality: Whenever they're in the lineup together, Coco Crisp is the CF and Ellsbury gets bumped to LF (or RF on a few occasions). In some instances, maybe you could make the argument that that speaks to Ellsbury's versatility – but, given that we're frequently talking about putting Ellsbury in Fenway's cozy left field, I don't think that's the conclusion anybody is going to draw. Clearly the Red Sox (or Terry Francona, at least) don't even think that Ellsbury is the best defensive CF on the team.

I can't imagine that he has much of a shot, at all, for this season.

rom, you just listed some perfectly rational reasons why he probably doesn't deserve the gold glove. The voters, however, don't care about rational reasoning for these things.

As others have said, gold gloves are won by players who have a lot of notoriety as excellent offensive players who also happen to be pretty good fielders. Ellsbury is getting a lot of attention now (probably too much) as a player with great potential, so he would have a better chance at a gold glove than Coco, for example. He's the kind of guy writers would like to vote for, whereas Coco isn't. Won't happen this year, but maybe as soon as Coco is moved and Ellsbury plays 150+ games in center, and if he improves a good deal offensively, it'll be gold glove time for Ellsbury.

I was making the opposite point, though.

Ellsbury could be the best left fielder and the best CF in the league (I don't think he is on either count, but that's beside the point). Even if he's deserving by objective measures, though, I can't imagine most voters looking past the fact that he gets moved all over the outfield. Speed and diving catches might be sexy. Being a utility guy isn't, though.

Guys win Gold Gloves on reputation, sure. It's a bit premature to think that Ellsbury has that kind of reputation.

As always, I agree with Rominer. Ellsbury may have gold gloves coming his way, but they won't start appearing until he has a firm defensive position to play. 4th outfielders don't win gold gloves, regardless of how good they are.

Isn't Coco the 4th OF'er? JE has a lot more games played than Coco, I think.

He has (70-61), but that may not be the best criterion becasue Ellsbury has also played more games than JD Drew (70-66) and I don't think anyone is going to mistake JD for the 4th OF.

I look at it this way... Coco bats at the bottom of the order. Ellsbury may move around in the OF a bit, but they always find a way to get him in there and he bats leadoff. If it wasnt for all the crap and injuries this year it would be obvious to everyone that Coco is ineed the 4th OFer. If Tito had to choose between the two he'd obviously choose Ellsbury.

That all adds up to make Coco the 4th OF to me. Ellsbury won the job like two months ago.

I'm in agreement with you on most of that. I just don't know how voters decide who has the rep for what. The process is just a black box to me. One need only point to the Palmeiro incident to note a guy who wasn't a starter at the position on his own team being handed the award.

This week, he's been making some fantastic defensive plays. Just in time to engrain himself in the minds of the voters.

And making fantastic plays at all 3 outfield positions. The voters have to take into consideration he performs well wherever he is put.

He really needs to start doing more interviews as The Ells. The announcers are already calling him "Ells", so it's just a slight jump to go from the soft spoken, say all the right things to The Ells, who wears $3000 suits, wears his ring on a necklace outside of the suit, and saying things to Heidi Watney and Tom Carron similar to this.

THAT would garner him national attention.

ESPN just stole my idea. Had a "Jacoby for GG" reel. Bastards.

On Jacoby's struggles at the plate, he's coming around a little bit in the Toronto series. It looks to me like he swings the bat like a golfer who is off plane. In other words his bat is frequently in the wrong position to deliver the barrell of the bat to the ball as contact nears. Somehow he is getting his hands out of position as the pitch is on the way. I still think he can be a big league hitter, but he has some bad habits that makes solid contact almost impossible 75% of the time. I'm thinking he needs to keep the barrell vertical longer and then point the knob at the pitcher as long as he can as his hands level the bat on plane. He must be doing something with his hands to put the bat in a position of deficiency.