Posted by Matt Sisson on Friday, December 18, 2009 at 11:44 am

Jacoby Ellsbury was named the Defensive Player of the Year in the 2009 MLB.com This Year In Baseball awards.  According to a posting on the MLB.com website, more than 12 million votes were cast by fans across the globe, producing another record-breaking total.   Ellsbury, who won by a landslide, earned 34.6 percent of the vote, easily beating out the 15.3 percent earned by Jimmy Rollins.  Others nominated for the award were: Yadier Molina, Torii Hunter, Troy Tulowitzki, Melvin Mora, Adam Jones, Ryan Zimmerman, Michael Bourn, & Kaz Matsui.

Ellsbury’s victory was said by MLB.com to be because of his .994 fielding percentage and by the fact that he made just two errors last season. This just goes to show how little the general baseball fan knows about defense and the advanced metrics use to evaluate it.  According to Fangraphs, Ellsbury had a UZR/150 of -18.3 during the 2009 season.  This ranked him in the bottom 3 of center fielders in the majors and second to last in the American League, with only Vernon Well’s having a worse defensive season in ‘09.

Here is a listing of American League Center Fielders by UZR/150 for 2009:

You’ll notice that Ellsbury actually has a lower UZR than Wells by a fraction of a point.  If  you’re not a fan of UZR or UZR/150 and prefer John Dewan’s +/-here you go:

Ellsbury is ranked as the 29th best defensive center fielder according to +/- and actually cost the Boston 8 runs through his defense…Hardly sounds like the credentials for a Defensive Player of the Year to me.  As a comparison,  Franklin Gutierrez was ranked as a +43, saving the Seattle Mariners 24 runs through his defensive play.  Sorry, but the fans got this one wrong…But what can you really expect at this point?