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The tour is on again for Brenton Doyle, an encore after so many stirring performances last season that there ought to be a T-shirt listing all the venues: Boston, Tampa Bay, San Francisco…
“And that was just me,” said Austin Gomber, a Colorado Rockies pitcher, still amazed this spring at how often Doyle saved him in center field last summer. “I know he made another catch in the right-center field gap in St. Louis that was unbelievable. There’s a reason he won the Gold Glove.”
Doyle, 25, is like an indie band with a cult following that just hit it big. It’s hard to get noticed when your team finishes 41 games out of first place, as the Rockies did last season while enduring a franchise-worst 59-103 record. But when it was time to recognize defensive excellence, Doyle was impossible to miss.
The Gold Glove winners are determined by sabermetric data and votes from managers and coaches. However you look at it — as the refrain from “Billy Madison” (sort of) goes — Doyle rules.
“With all the data and the metrics that are out there now, he was far and away the winner,” said Rockies manager Bud Black. “And based on the data, what we see in person, what we see on TV when we’re watching games and highlights — with Doyle, it was clear cut. Best center fielder in the game.”
Doyle hit only .203 last season, with a .250 on-base percentage and 10 home runs. But he also stole 22 bases, flashing the speed that helped make him the first rookie outfielder to win a National League Gold Glove — an award that dates to 1957.
Doyle said he’s eager to display the trophy in his home office with the others he’s won, at Shepherd University in West Virginia and Class A Spokane. He’s been a natural in center since he outgrew shortstop at Kettle Run High School in Nolesville, Va.
“My freshman to sophomore year, I probably grew from 5’9” to 6’2”, and then I grew one more inch from sophomore to junior year,” Doyle said. “You see a lot of tall shortstops — Corey Seager’s as big as me and he plays short — but I come from a pretty small town, and in high school they wanted the bigger guys in the outfield. So that’s where I moved, and it worked for the best.”
It worked so well last season that Doyle essentially broke the metrics. In the first 20 seasons that Sports Info Solutions tracked defensive runs saved (2003 to 2022), no Rockies center fielder ever amassed more than six in a year — then Doyle had 19. Fangraphs gave him an Ultimate Zone Rating of 24.5, nearly three times better than the next-best center fielder, the Blue Jays’ Daulton Varsho (9.2).
But folks don’t think about numbers when they watch Doyle work. Even a guy like Charlie Blackmon, who has logged more than 5,000 innings at center for the Rockies, is awestruck.
“You watch him and you start taking note of how many plays where, just off the bat, you’re like, ‘Oh that’s 100 percent a double if it stays in the park’ — and then it turns into an out,” Blackmon said. “He’s not taking away singles. These are run-scoring, extra-base hits he’s taking away. It’s really impactful.”
Last spring, Doyle said, Blackmon reminded him never to coast at Coors Field, where balls tend to stay airborne much longer than you’d think. But really, Blackmon said, there was nothing he could teach a player with Doyle’s instincts and attitude.
“The thing about great defenders is that they want to make plays, so he’s not afraid to dive, and he doesn’t shy from the wall,” said Black, the manager. “You cross your fingers when you see outfielders crash into a wall; you’re always saying, ‘Get up, get up.’ But that’s how they’re wired.”
When he was a boy, Doyle said, he would tag along to his sister’s tennis practice and scramble around the court, snaring balls with his bare hands. These…
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .