What are Patrick Bailey's chances of taking him a Gold Glove Award in 2024?

The SF Giants had three finalists named for the Gold Glove Award at their respective positions in 2024. This included young catcher Patrick Bailey. What are his chances of taking home his first Gold Glove Award?

What are Patrick Bailey's chances of taking him a Gold Glove Award in 2024?

It bears mentioning that the voting has already taken place. So, the finalists represent the top vote-getters at each position. The selection process has improved in recent years where some level of objectivity is factored into the calculation.

25 percent of the voting comes from the SABR Defensive Index, which is a measure to evaluate a player's defensive performance. The remaining 75 percent is voted on by coaches and managers.

Bailey will be going up against Gabriel Moreno of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Will Smith of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Moreno did take home last year's award, so he does have that in his favor. Realistically, the vote should be between Bailey and Moreno as they are far superior backstops compared to Smith.

SABR's Defensive Index is updated through August 11. At that point, Bailey was third in the NL and led all catchers with +11.3 SDI. What does that mean exactly? I do not know but it paints a favorable view of Bailey's work behind the plate. On the other hand, Moreno had +4.7 SDI. These numbers will be updated when the Gold Glove winners are announced.

Bailey is an elite pitch framer. He led all qualified catchers with +16 Catcher Framing Runs and a 52.5 strike rate. He also has a quick pop time as he was tied for the league lead with an average pop time of 1.85 seconds to second base. On top of this, he has one of the better arms in baseball.

Moreno has a quick pop time, but his framing and throwing numbers are closer to the middle of the pack than at an elite level.

While runners generally steal off of the pitcher, catchers can play a role with a quick release and accurate throw. Bailey does that quite well, especially considering that Giants pitchers did not do a good job of holding on runners this year. He still nabbed 27 percent of would-be base stealers this year.

The 25-year-old backstop posted +20 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and +22 Fielding Run Value (FRV). He leads all catchers in DRS and was first among all position players in FRV. Moreno was still a quality catcher with +10 DRS and +4 FRV.

In addition to this, Bailey led all catchers with +24.4 Catching Defense Added (CDA) according to Baseball Prospectus. CDA factors in a catcher's framing, throwing, and blocking into one metric. Framing is such a huge component of how catchers are viewed today, that Bailey is still an elite catcher despite below-average blocking skills. That component is just not valued as highly.

What does all this mean? It may not amount to much because the voting from managers and coaches carry much more weight than any objective number. That said, there is a good chance that coaches and managers are aware of these metrics when voting.

If so, that would bode for Bailey's chances of taking home his first Gold Glove Award. When factoring all this in, the odds are certainly strong that he becomes the first Giants catcher to take home the award since Buster Posey did so in 2016.