The shortstop-to-first defensive combo is a great pair to have on the infield. This year both the National League and American League have teammate pairs to win the Gold Glove.
- The Chicago Cubs Javier Baez finally gets a well-deserved Gold Glove, matching up with his teammate at first, Anthony Rizzo who got his 4th defensive award.
- The Seattle Mariners SS-1B combination both win their first Gold Gloves. SS J.P. Crawford and rookie 1B Evan White.
How many shortstop & first base Gold Glove teammates have there been?
Seven pairs of 1B+SS teammates have won the Gold Glove in the same year.
1963 Minnesota Twins
SS Zoilo Versalles (1st)
1B Vic Power (6th)
The Gold Glove awards started in 1957. Thus, the first SS-&-1B teammates to win occurred in the the 7th year of this prize.
Shortstop Zolio Versalles got his first Gold Glove, along with 6x-winner teammate Vic Power. The Twins finished 3rd in the American League with an impressive record of 91-70 (behind the Yankees 104-57, and White Sox 94-68).
Versalles managed to grab a second Gold Glove in 1965, but that’s all he collected in his career. Versalles had very tough competition with 9x Gold Glove winner Luis Aparicio taking most of the hardware in the 1950s and 1960s.
This 6th Gold Glove by Vic Power would be his second-to-last. He would won 7 consecutive first base Gold Gloves from 1958 to 1964.
1982 St. Louis Cardinals
SS Ozzie Smith (3rd)
1B Keith Hernandez (5rd)
19 years had passed until another SS-1B teammate pair would win the Gold Glove together.
In 1982 it was pretty much set that Ozzie Smith and Keith Hernandez would win the award as teammates. When the Padres traded Ozzie Smith to the Cardinals in December 1981, 2x-winner Smith joined 4x-winner Keith Hernandez.
The Cardinals won the World Series in 1982; and it would be the one full season where Ozzie Smith and Keith Hernandez shared the diamond together. Midway through the 1983 season with the Cardinals record standing at 31-26, Keith Hernandez was traded to the Mets.
Both players went on collecting double-digit Gold Gloves for their respective teams. Ozzie ended up with 13, Keith Hernandez with 11.
2009 New York Yankees
SS Derek Jeter (4th)
1B Mark Teixeira (3rd)
27 years would pass until another 1B+SS combo would win the Gold Glove.
For Jeter’s 4th Gold Glove, he paired up with Mark Teixeria. Texas Ranger Teixeria previously had two gold gloves when he joined the Yankees.
The 2009 Yankees won the World Series, their first since their 3-peat in 1998, 1999, and 2000.
Interesting that it took Derek Jeter a while to get his first Gold Glove. It was his 9th full season with the Yankees until he won his first. Perhaps he became a better defensive player over his career. Or people just became so enamored with Jeter, that they gave him the award because “he’s Derek Jeter.”
Jeter and Teixeria would both win Gold Gloves as teammates in 2009 and 2010.
2010 New York Yankees
SS Derek Jeter (5th)
1B Mark Teixeira (4th)
As this list implies, Jeter and Teixeria are the only SS-1B teammates to have won the Gold Glove together twice.
As the wild card team in 2010, Yankees lost the ACLS to the Rangers. 2010 would be the last year Jeter wins a Gold Glove. He played three more full seasons without winning the award.
Teixeria would get his 5th and final Gold Glove with the Yankees in 2012.
2015 Kansas City Royals
SS Alcides Escobar (1st)
1B Eric Hosmer (3rd)
The 2015 Royals won the World Series—their first since winning the World Series in 1985.
This is Alcides Escobar’s only Gold Glove. Hosmer has a total of four (2013, 2014, 2015, 2017). Escobar and Hosmer played together on the Royals for seven years.
2020 Chicago Cubs
SS Javier Baez (1st)
1B Anthony Rizzo (4th)
How is this El Mago’s first Gold Glove after five full seasons with the Cubs?
Of Rizzo’s nine seasons with the Cubs, he has four Gold Gloves so far.
The 2020 Cubs won the division, but lost to the Marlins in the first round of the playoffs.
2020 Seattle Mariners
SS J.P. Crawford (1st)
1B Evan White (1st)
This is Evan White’s rookie year. J.P. Crawford got his first Gold Glove in his third full year.
The Mariners finished 3rd in the AL West.
Sources: Baseball-Reference has an excellent chart that shows all the year’s Gold Gloves for each league: AL list. NL list.
Total number of seasons each pair played on the same team.
We’ve already noted that Ozzie Smith and Keith Hernandez played with other for only one full season. How about the other pairs?
- Zoilo Versalles & Vic Power: Two seasons MIN (1961-1962)
- Ozzie Smith & Keith Hernandez: One season STL (1982)
- Derek Jeter & Mark Teixeira: Five seasons NYY (2009-2012, 2014)
- Teixeira played 15 games in 2013
- Alcides Escobar & Eric Hosmer: Seven seasons KCR (2011-2017)
- Javier Baez & Anthony Rizzo: Five full seasons CHC (2016-2020)
- Baez played in 52 games in 2014, and 28 games in 2015
- J.P. Crawford & Evan White: One season SEA (2020)
Themed collection of 1B+SS Gold Glove baseball cards
It would be really cool to have all these cards as a themed collection in a binder with traditional 3×3 pages. Each row in the page would be dedicated to one pair. The first column in the page would hold the first basemen. The second column would hold the shortstops. The third column of the page would have these little “Gold Glove” cards.
While selecting cards for these players, I wanted two things:
- The photo to show the player fielding.
Which would be obvious, because this is about the player winning a fielding award. - Both cards come from the same set.
To really get the point across that these are teammates, the cards really needed to be from the same set, so they pair up nicely together, and function as a unit.
I hunted around comc.com’s catalog to find cards fitting both these criteria for both players. It was a bit tricky to find BOTH players FIELDING in the SAME SET. When I couldn’t find cards that matched all this, I stuck to the using the same set, even if one of the players isn’t fielding.
For Evan White’s card, he’s a rookie so he didn’t have much selection. None of his rookie cards with the Mariners have an image of him fielding. In fact, Evan White isn’t even any of the same sets as J.P. Crawford, so I had to use a different set for Evan White. Ah, well. That’s what happens when you win this as a rookie.
If anyone is interested, here are the cards used in these images:
- 1963 Topps #349 Zoilo Versalles
- 1963 Topps #40 Vic Power
- 1982 Topps #210 Keith Hernandez
- 1982 Topps Traded #109T Ozzie Smith
- 2009 Topps Unique #109 Derek Jeter
- 2009 Topps Unique #150 Mark Teixeira
- 2010 Bowman Platinum #2 Derek Jeter
- 2010 Bowman Platinum #36 Mark Teixeira
- 2015 Bowman #97 Alcides Escobar
- 2015 Bowman #2 Eric Hosmer
- 2020 Topps Heritage #142.1 Javier Baez
- 2020 Topps Heritage #373 Anthony Rizzo
- 2020 Topps #263 J.P. Crawford
- 2020 Bowman Prospects #BP-77 Evan White
I wonder how many times a SS or 1B with multiple Gold Gloves has joined a team with an existing SS or 1B with multiple Gold Gloves, but when they are on the same team, they failed to win the award together.
In retrospect, Ozzie Smith joining the Cardinals make it seem obvious he and Hernandez would win together. Same thing with Teixeira joining the Yankees and Jeter. But there’s gotta be times where the pair don’t result in a a teammate win.