How Salty Should I Be About Brett Gardner Not Winning A Gold Glove?

(Helping the old UZR.  Courtesy of The Star Ledger) 

Brett Gardner- 1251.0 Inn, 202 TP, 322 PO, 7 A, 5 E, .985 FP, 25.8 UZR, 29.5 UZR/150

Alex Gordon- 1309.0 Inn, 239 TP, 312 PO, 20 A, 3 E, .991 FP, 10.5 UZR, 10.0 UZR/150

There's how Gardner and Gordon stack up, and I only put that up because I thought it was a foregone conclusion that Gardner was going to win his first Gold Glove last night.  When you look at these 2 guys, though, you can see why Gordon got the victory.  He made more plays and had fewer errors than Gardner in slightly more innings and also dominated with 20 outfield assists.  The slightly higher FP also doesn't hurt.

But Gardner dominates Gordon in the sabermetric defensive breakdown, torching him and pretty much every other AL outfielder in UZR and UZR/150 .  I also found it particularly interesting that Gardner's Revised Zone Rating (RZR) and OOZ (Plays Made Out Of Zone) numbers were much better than Gordon's, .944 RZR/120 OOZ to .923 RZR/74 OOZ respectively.  This is almost certainly due to Gardner's very high RngR (24.5), which was much higher than Gordon's (-2.1).

Basically this award played out in a complete "old school vs. new school" fashion, with Gordon winning the old school side and Gardner the new school.  Gardner covers more ground, gets to more balls, and makes more plays than he should, but Gordon does more with the balls hit right to him and uses his arm strength as a defensive weapon to cover for the extra ground he can't cover.  Gordon also had a much better year at the plate, and to a certain degree the Gold Glove is still looked at with offensive stats taken into consideration as well.  That was likely enough to tip the scales in Gordon's favor, which sucks for Brett and Yankee fans but is understandable.

Maybe if Brett started taking my advice and learned to hit with a little more power, he could drive up his offensive numbers in 2012 and finally win a Double-G.