How Wilyer Abreu Snagged a Gold Glove for the Red Sox

Well, every once in a while, justice is served. Wilyer Abreu, the 25- year-old rookie who ran a 114 wRC+ while playing the best right field in baseball, took home the first piece of hardware in his young career in the form of the 2024 American League Gold Glove for right field. Abreu became the first Red Sox rookie to win a Gold Glove since Fred Lynn in 1 975, and just the seventh rookie ever to take home the award. To say that it was well-deserved would be a major understatement. Here’s a list of metrics in which Abreu led all AL right fielders:

• Assists
• Defense Runs Above Average
• Defensive Runs Saved
• Outfield Arm Runs Saved
• Ultimate Zone Rating
• UZR/150
• Outs Above Average
• Fielding Run Value
• Deserved Runs Prevented
• Range Defense Added
• Range Out Score
• SABR Defensive Index

An important thing to keep in mind here is that most of these metrics are counting stats. The more you play, the better your chance to rack up good numbers, and Abreu was a platoon player in 2024. He only spent 921 1/3 innings in right field, 10th-most in baseball. In other words, he racked up all this value in a lot less time than most other players. On a per-inning or per-chance basis, he was even better than the numbers indicate. I don’t expect you to be familiar with every stat I listed above. What's important is that it’s basically all of them. By any metric – from old-school assists to the video-tracked Defensive Runs Saved to the Statcast-powered Fielding Run Value – Wilyer Abreu was the best right fielder in baseball.

It’s not just that Abreu was best overall, though. It’s that he was the best in every facet of the game. Some of the metrics in the list above are just the components that make up the more famous metrics. For example, Deserved Runs Prevented is Baseball Prospectus’s flagship metric. It combines a range component, Range Defense Added, with a throwing component, Throwing Runs. Abreu led all right fielders in both components. Statcast breaks things down by range (Outs Above Average) and Arm Value, and once again, Abreu was the best right fielder according to both. Defensive Runs Saved breaks things down into three main categories. Abreu was the AL leader in Outfield Arm Runs Saved and Plus/Minus Runs Saved Above Average, which measures range. However, DRS also has a component called Good Fielding Plays, which gives fielders credit for particularly tough plays, and Abreu didn’t lead that category. This is where things get really interesting.

It's important to remember how Abreu achieved all this. He’s not your typical defense-first outfielder. His sprint speed of 27.5 feet per second is just barely above the league average. For an outfielder, where 28 fps is the standard, it actually makes him slow. According to Statcast, which buckets plays by difficulty, Abreu didn’t make a single five-star catch. Those are balls with a catch probability under 25%, and they require great speed and a perfect jump; only the speediest outfielders can get to them, and only if they do everything perfectly. Abreu doesn’t have the speed to make those plays, and he went 0-for-17 on them. But he made more four-star catches than anyone else in baseball.

Four-star plays have a catch probability between 25% and 50%. They require great speed OR a great jump, and Abreu went 10-for-10 on them. Because he doesn’t have great speed, that means that he got a great jump on every single one of them. Since Statcast started bucketing catches this way in 2016, Abreu is the only player ever to have more than six four-star opportunities and catch every single one of them. It took a combination of instinct and effort, two categories in which Abreu also led the league. And after all that, the play that best summed up Abreu’s incredible rookie season with the glove was the one he just quite couldn't complete.