Ronald Acuna Jr., Dansby Swanson, and Max Fried all named Gold Glove Finalists

Lets go ahead and get this out of the way....Gold Glove Awards are a recognition award which is distinctly different from a performance-based award on a number of levels. Very often, a guy’s reputation or even offensive prowess dictates whether or not they get the votes over strictly performance in the field. It is the nature of the beast. One need to only look at when Andrelton Simmons, who was the best fielder on planet Earth period that season, lost the Gold Glove to Brandon Crawford seemingly because Crawford hit more homers than him....not that I am bitter or anything.

However, being recognized is still an achievement and the Braves have done well in the last few years in getting guys recognized for their defensive excellence. A couple of Braves last year, Josh Donaldson and Ozzie Albies, were nominees as an example. Well this year, a few new faces got some recognition.

One of these days, Freddie Freeman is going to be recognized for his work at first, although the defensive metrics do not seem to like him very much, so for now, Braves fans will just have to be happy to see Ronald Acuna Jr., Dansby Swanson, and Max Fried get nominations for the award.

The Braves can expect even more hardware in the short and long-term. Freddie Freeman is widely considered to be the favorite for the NL MVP award this year, a couple Braves have some decent cases to make for Silver Slugger awards, and going into the 2021 season, Cristian Pache and Ozzie Albies have to be heavy favorites to at least be named finalists for Gold Gloves next season.

The Gold Glove winners will be announced on Tuesday, November 3rd at 7 pm EST over on ESPN.