Cuban-American Nolan Arenado won the Platinum Glove award for best defender in the National League on Friday for the sixth consecutive time, and reaffirmed himself as the man who has won this award the most times, which began to be awarded 11 years ago.
The third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals was the fourth position player in the Majors with the most defensive runs saved (19) and the seventh in above-average putouts (15), two indicators of modern metrics that tend to have a lot of impact on the decision of the individual prizes.
Arenado had already won the Gold Glove as the best third baseman in the National League for the 10th consecutive season, tying Mike Schmidt for the second-most hot corner defenders with such accolades, second only to Brooks Robinson (16).
Now the Cuban-rooted third baseman has won the Gold Glove in each of his first ten Major League seasons, something that only Japanese outfielder Ichiro Suzuki had achieved before.
As for the Platinum Glove, Arenado keeps it for the second time with the Cardinals jersey, after winning four in Colorado. In this way, the St. Louis-based franchise now has six of the 12 Platinum Gloves that have been awarded in the National League, because catcher Yadier Molina won it four times in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015.
This is the third time in his career that Arenado has won a full number of individual awards, after winning the Gold and Platinum Glove, as well as the Silver Slugger. Previously, he had won all three awards in 2017 and 2018 as a member of the Colorado Rockies.
In the American League, Yankees catcher José Treviño won the Platinum Glove after a stellar performance in his first season in New York. The mask led all Major League catchers in defensive runs saved (21) and was third among all position players in that category.
Treviño becomes the first Yankees player and the first catcher to win the Platinum Glove Award in the American League.
