The Best Glove on the Philadelphia Phill

The Philadelphia Phillies used to be a Gold Glove factory. From Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins, to Carlos Ruiz and Aaron Rowand, to Shane Victorino, PedroFeliz, Jayson Werth and Placido Polanco, they all played outstanding defense.But since 2012... silence. The Phillies won nine Gold Gloves from 2007 to 2012. Since then J.T. Realmuto has been the Phillies only recipient of the award. It's an area of team construction the Phillies have Solomon Thomas Jersey almost entirely neglected.Placing Rhys Hoskins in left field, Carlos Santana at third base, Scott Kingery at center field and Jean Segura at shortstop were never going to do the club any favors, but one would think that acro s a decade of Terrell Owens Jersey baseball, one premium defender would rise above the pack.For the 2022 Phillies, it already has.Ranger Surez is the best defensive pitcher in Major League Baseball. Since 2019,Surez's first full season in the Big Leagues, albeit as a reliever, he is fourth among all pitchers in defensive runs saved with 15. Two short of the Major League leader, Max Fried, Suarez has played fewer than half the innings of Fried and Zack Grienke, two of the three players outpacing him. Even third place Dallas Keuchel has well over 100 more innings thanSurez.Stated simply,Surez is the more efficient at fielding his position.Scroll to ContinueHowever, DRS is a confusing statistic when viewing players under Bryant Young Jersey a small sample size, and all pitchers are going to have small sample sizes as fielders. So let's look at the statistic DRS is based upon to better understand how wellSurez outcla ses his competition.Range factor per nine, or RF/9, is an extremely basic statistic. It determines exactly how many plays a fielder makes on average per nine innings.Since 2019, the average pitcher has an RF/9 of 1.47. In that timespan, Greinke made on average 2.34 players per nine innings. Keuchel's RF/9 was 2.13. Fried's RF/9 was 2.26. Surez's though, was a comparatively astronomical Keena Turner Jersey 2.72. He makes over an extra out per nine innings compared to the league average pitcher, 1.25 extra outs per nine innings to be exact.Over the course of his whole career, removing those extra outs would cause his lifetime ERA to rise from 2.98 to 3.12. That may seem insignificant, but that's a huge margin over the course of a career.Suarez's defense isn't properly valued, nor is the defense George Kittle Jersey provided by most pitchers, but hisdynamicfielding ability has won ballgames for the Phillies this year, and will do so for years to come.More From SI's :