Ichiro Suzuki wins 10th consecutive Gold Glove in his 10th season in MLB
The winners of the Rawlings American League Gold Glove Awards were announced on Tuesday. The biggest news of the day was the 10th consecutive Golden Glove award for Seattle Mariners’ right fielder, Ichiro Suzuki.
Gold Glove winners are selected by managers and coaches from around the League. Suzuki has been selected as a Gold Glove outfielder in every year he’s played in MLB. Only two players, Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente, have won more Gold Gloves than Suzuki,
they each have 12. Suzuki also tied Andruw Jones, Ken Griffey Jr. and Al Kaline with his tenth award.
Outfielders are not given the award based on their specific fielding position, but rather votes are complied for the top three outfielders in general. Carl Crawford of the Tampa Bay Rays and Franklin Gutierrez of the Mariners won the other two Gold Gloves
for outfielders.
Suzuki, who has been called ‘the hardest out in baseball’, is not only a genius in the field, he’s pretty good at the plate as well. He is a career .331 hitter with 90 career home runs, and 558 RBIs.
His career fielding percentage is .984 and in his 10 seasons he has committed only 21 errors in 1558 games.
Since moving from Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan to the Major Leagues, Suzuki has been selected to 10 All-Star teams, he’s won three Silver Slugger awards, he’s been the MLB hits leader seven times and twice was crowed MLB’s batting champion. In his
rookie season, 2001, he won the American League MVP and Rookie of the Year. He also set an MLB record with 262 hits in a single season in 2004.
Suzuki is already in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, the first MLB player to be inducted into it, and he is already a sure bet to make it into MLB’s Baseball Hall of Fame.
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