Rawlings released its 2026 Gold Glove finalists at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday out of St. Louis, and two clubs ran away with the volume. The Blue Jays and Cubs each landed five finalists, more than any other team in baseball.
Winners are revealed Sunday, Nov. 1 on a one-hour special edition of ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” at 8:30 p.m. ET.
Four names on this list for the first time
Michael Massey earned the first finalist nod of his career at AL second base for the Royals. Jose Caballero got there as an AL utility finalist with the Yankees. On the National League side, Geraldo Perdomo at shortstop and Ildemaro Vargas at utility are both first-timers, and both are Diamondbacks.
Two first-time finalists out of the same Arizona infield is the kind of detail that gets buried on announcement day. It should not be. Perdomo in particular now has a credential that follows him into every future ballot.
How the voting actually works
Each club’s manager and up to six coaches vote, only within their own league, and they cannot vote for their own players. The SABR Defensive Index makes up roughly 25 percent of the total, so this is a hybrid of what coaches see and what the metrics say. The utility winners are a separate case entirely, chosen by Rawlings using a formula developed by SABR.
“Offense wins moments, but defense wins baseball games,” said Mike Thompson, Rawlings chief marketing officer. Corny, and also the entire premise of the award.
The groups worth arguing about
AL pitcher puts Tanner Bibee of the Guardians and Jacob deGrom of the Rangers alongside Jose Soriano. The NL group is Michael McGreevy of the Cardinals, Nolan McLean of the Mets and Chris Sale of the Braves.
AL catcher comes down to Dillon Dingler of the Tigers, Brandon Valenzuela of the Blue Jays and Austin Wells of the Yankees. AL shortstop is the deepest field on the board: Andres Gimenez of Toronto, Taylor Walls of Tampa Bay and Bobby Witt Jr. of Kansas City. AL center field has Evan Carter of the Rangers, Steven Kwan of the Guardians and Ceddanne Rafaela of the Red Sox.
NL third base is Alex Bregman of the Cubs, Max Muncy of the Dodgers and Javier Sanoja of the Marlins. NL center field has Pete Crow-Armstrong of the Cubs, Michael Harris II of the Braves and Andy Pages of the Dodgers. NL right field is Carson Benge of the Mets, Corbin Carroll of the Diamondbacks and Seiya Suzuki of the Cubs.
Add it up and the Cubs have finalists in the middle of the diamond and on both corners, which is what a roster built around gloves looks like on a ballot.
Then the fans get a turn
Platinum Glove voting opens to fans Nov. 1 at 9:30 p.m. ET, immediately after the ESPN show, and closes Nov. 5 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Those winners are unveiled at the Gold Glove Award Ceremony in New York City on Friday, Nov. 6.
What the full list tells us is simple enough. Toronto and Chicago spent the last few years treating defense as a way to win games rather than a tiebreaker, and the ballot caught up to them.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.