Brenton Doyle‘s glove remains the place where balls go to die in center field.
Meanwhile, Rockies shortstop Ezequiel Tovar won his first NL Gold Glove Award in his second year as a finalist. And third baseman Ryan McMahon, in his fourth straight year as a finalist, lost to the Giants’ Matt Chapman, who won his fifth honor.
After Doyle asserted himself as the NL’s best center fielder as a rookie, he continued to make show-stopping plays and routinely took away would-be hits with ease, both in the wide Coors Field outfield and elsewhere. His consistency, range and flash enabled him to beat out the Nationals’ Jacob Young and Brewers’ Blake Perkins for the honor.
Doyle led all MLB center fielders with an 11.4 ultimate zone rating, an advanced stat that quantifies how many runs a player saved defensively. He was way ahead of the NL’s next-best center fielder in that metric, San Diego’s Jackson Merrill, who registered a 7.2 UZR.
The speedy Doyle, 26, was also first among MLB center fielders in range runs above average, which measures how often a fielder can get to balls in his vicinity, at 11.7. And he also ranked in the top three compared to his peers in several other sabermetrics.
He was third in outs above average (measures outs a player saved) at 16, tied for second in fielding run value (Statcast’s overall defensive metric) at 15, and tied for third with 11 defensive runs saved (a stat similar to UZR).
Doyle also led all MLB center fielders with “good fielding plays,” which Sports Info Solutions defines as web-gem level catches. Doyle won his first Fielding Bible Award on Oct. 24 after finishing runner-up for the honor last year.
While Doyle’s hitting took a noticeable leap forward in 2024 — he slashed .260/.317/.446 with a .764 OPS and 23 homers this year — his glove remained elite.
On June 18 against the Dodgers in Denver, Doyle’s full-extension, sprawling catch in right-center robbed Shohei Ohtani of a would-be extra-base hit on a liner that had an expected batting average of .810. Later that month, Doyle raced into shallow center field for a diving grab on a would-be walk-off hit by Tommy Pham in the 12th inning in Chicago, a game Colorado eventually won over the White Sox in 14 innings.
Doyle’s web gems continued through the stretch of the season, long after the Rockies were way out of contention. On Aug. 30 against the Orioles at Coors Field, Doyle made a diving grab to steal a hit from Austin Slater, then immediately hosed Jackson Holliday out at third base as he tried to advance on a tag.
Doyle also had two notable home run robberies over the final couple of months as well. On Aug. 2 at Petco Park, Doyle took away a solo shot from Jurickson Profar with a leap at the wall in right-center. And on Sept. 15 in Denver, Doyle backtracked to the center field wall and casually robbed the Cubs’ Ian Happ of a grand slam.
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