LOS ANGELES – Pat Murphy clearly had bigger fish to fry on Wednesday, Oct. 14 with his Milwaukee Brewers preparing to face the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series at Dodger Stadium.
But there was some Brewers-adjacent news that broke earlier in the day that irked Murphy – one of his best players had seemingly been disrespected.
William Contreras, whose 1,085 ⅔ innings and 9.064 pitches caught led the major leagues, was not among the three finalists at catcher in the National League for the Rawlings Gold Glove Award.
Those catchers were Freddy Fermin of the San Diego Padres, Gabriel Moreno of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Luis Torrens of the New York Mets.
"Contreras, he wasn't in there? Contreras?" said Murphy when asked initially for his reaction both to Brice Turang and Jackson Chourio being named finalists at second base and in left field, respectively, as well as any Brewers players he thought might have been snubbed.
"I'm biased. I get to see him 100-plus games catching. I think he caught the most games in the major leagues this year, and he was so important to us. They should come up with another award for William, because he's been incredible.
"So, if he's not on that list, ask for a redo."
The criteria is listed by Rawlings as the following:
To determine the winners of the 18 defensive position Awards, each team’s manager and up to six coaches on his staff vote from a pool of qualified players in their League and cannot vote for players from their own team. In 2013, Rawlings added the SABR Defensive Index™ (SDI) to the Rawlings Gold Glove Award selection process, which comprises approximately 25 percent of the overall selection total, with the managers’ and coaches’ votes continuing to carry the majority.
To identify the utility Award winners, Rawlings collaborated with the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) to create a specialized defensive formula separate from the traditional selection process for the Rawlings Gold Glove Award position winners. Utilizing the SABR formula and additional defensive statistics, Rawlings will select one utility winner from each League.
Looking at metrics, Contreras did rate out poorly in areas like framing (minus-6, 53rd out of 56 qualified catchers) and blocks above average (minus-7 on 4,361 opportunities). But with Contreras behind the plate, Brewers pitchers threw to a 3.32 ERA with the team ultimately going 80-41.
Contreras also threw out 28.4% of would-be basestealers (19 of 67).
Joey Ortiz also failed to make the cut as a utility player despite finishing 15th in the major leagues with 15 outs above average and also logged eight total defensive runs saved between third base and shortstop.
"Joey's a great defender," said Murphy. "I don't know the other guys in the league, but Joey, if given the chance to play every day on a team, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better defender. I don't know how all the voting takes place and everything. I know I vote, but I don't remember who was on there and who wasn't. You can't vote for your own players anyway.
"I try to just really vote for who I think is the best. I think you're doing a disservice if you try to like, 'Well, I don't want to vote for this guy because my guy's in competition.' I just voted for the guys that I think are the best. But for Contreras not to be on there, I don't know what it's based on. There's so many things in the catching position that you can't measure.
"So, now I'm kind of ticked about it now that you brought it up."
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Pat Murphy 'ticked' catcher William Contreras not a Gold Glove finalist