Oakland's Sean Murphy, Gold Glove Finalist

The reigning Gold Glove catcher in the American League is up for another piece of hardware this winter, so how does he stack up against Seattle's Cal Raleigh and the Yankees' Jose Trevino?

History may be on Sean Murphy's side when the final tally is announced for the AL Gold Glove award before Game 4 of the World Series on November 1. That history involves only two past winners this millennium that haven't had at least one back-to-back run on Gold Gloves behind the dish. 

Those two players were Martín Maldonado of the Los Angeles Angels in 2017, and Jason Varitek of the Boston Red Sox in 2005. 

Granted, a lot of the past American League winners have had some long runs in that span. Iván Rodríguez won every award from 1992 to 2001, then again in 2004, 2006, and 2007. In 2002, he only played in 108 games, and in 2003, he was on the Florida Marlins in the National League. In 2005 he was back in the AL with the Detroit Tigers, and he was still an All Star. 

In 2008 the torch passed to Joe Mauer, who collected Gold Gloves from 2008 to 2010, then Matt Wieters won a couple of his own in 2011 and 2012. 

Then came the Salvador Perez years from 2013 to 2016, then again from 2018 to 2020, before Sean Murphy won in 2021. 

So history is on Sean Murphy's side here, but how does he stack up defensively against Jose Trevino and Cal Raleigh? 

The real test here could come down to what the voters are looking for, and how in depth they're going to go into the metrics. 

Over at FanGraphs, they didn't like Murphy's defense quite as much as they did a year ago. He accumulated 10 Defensive Runs Saved last year, and just one this season. 

By the same metric, Cal Raleigh of the Mariners saved 14 runs and Trevino of the Yankees saved an astonishing 21. Trevino's total ranks third in all of baseball at any position. 

That said, Sean Murphy's defensive rating on FanGraphs is higher than Raleigh, and he also totaled nearly 200 more innings at catcher than Trevino, who had a slightly higher defensive rating in fewer innings.

If the voters are going a little deeper than that, then Baseball Savant has some pretty intriguing metrics too. Sean Murphy had the fourth-best pop time to second among all catchers, with it taking him 1.89 seconds on average from the time he caught the ball to the time he was already hurling it towards second. 

Cal Raleigh ranks 47th behind the dish with a 1.99 pop time, and Trevino ranked 52nd with the same pop time. They're technically all tied for 43rd along with former seven-time gold glover Salvador Perez, and old friend Jonah Heim. 

That's a pretty large gap, if it's being taken into consideration as a measure of catcher performance for the gold glove, but pop time and caught stealings go hand in hand, so let's shift our focus there. 

In terms of how that speed to second translated into controlling the running game, Sean Murphy caught 19 of 61 thiefs, good for a 31% caught stealing with the league average being 25%. 

Raleigh caught 25 of 78 stealers (32%), and Trevino nabbed 15 of 45, for a league-high 33%. With the caught stealing rate so high for all three backstops, the pop time doesn't seem to account for much in terms of swaying a voter Murphy's way. 

Trevino and Raleigh have the edge over Murph in framing, too. Murphy ranked in the 86th percentile in catcher framing, but Trevino ranked atop the leaderboards by a wide margin, while Raleigh ranked fourth, with Murphy coming in sixth. 

The main factors working in Murphy's favor are that he played more than the other two candidates, and he won the award last year, too. That has seemed to account for something in the past.

Any of the three could walk away with the award, but Jose Trevino had one heck of a season behind the dish, and was also the only one of the three to be named to the All Star Game this season, which could sway a voter or two his way. 

Regardless of whether or not Sean Murphy wins his second consecutive golden glove, the numbers he put up both offensively and defensively were quite impressive. The phone is definitely going to be ringing with inquiries about acquiring his services this winter, and this nomination should help make the case for the A's front office that he's one of the premier catchers in the sport. 

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