Minnesota Twins 1st Baseman Carlos Santana Wins Gold Glove

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Carlos Santana, Minnesota Twins
Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images

The Minnesota Twins ended their season without a playoff appearance despite being in position most of the year. There really weren’t many ways to sugar coat how it all ended. If there was a silver lining to be found, it was going to come in the form of individual performances. Defensively, Carlos Santana was chief among them.

Carlos Santana is golden for Minnesota Twins

At the beginning of the year Carlos Santana sought out to grab his first Gold Glove. He had a discussion with his mother and wore a pink glove as a constant reminder. Despite having played 14 years in the big leagues, it something that the veteran had yet to accomplish. Signed as a bargain $5.25 million acquisition, achieving that reality would be a coup from a value perspective. Now it’s reality.

By whatever metric you would like to look at, Santana was elite. His eight defensive runs saved, 14 outs above average, and 11 fielding run value all checked in near the top of positional leaderboards. Only a handful of players, at any position, in either league, had better defensive seasons than Santana did. The Gold Glove award for Santana is Minnesota’s first such honor since Brian Dozier and Byron Buxton won them in 2017.

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Rocco Baldelli immediately inserted Santana as his regular starter at first base. There was a possibility that either Alex Kirilloff or Jose Miranda could have factored in there. The reality is that Santana proved his glove was too good to ever be without. The former has since retired, and the last one still has plenty of question marks. With Santana hitting the free agent market though, Minnesota will have big shoes to fill on the dirt.

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It’s possible that Minnesota could re-up with Santana for another year. It seems likely that his price tag will go up a bit after this performance, but there are pitfalls to that. Santana will be 39 years old with nearly 2,100 games under his belt. He had just a 109 OPS+ last season, and needed to rebound from an ugly start. The Twins previously moved on from Nelson Cruz before it was too late, and that may be the blueprint here.

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No matter what happens on the open market for Santana this offseason, the reality is that he won an award he has always coveted. The one-time All-Star and one-time Silver Slugger now gets another accolade to add to his mantle.

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