DETROIT -- Dillon Dingler joined Ivan Rodriguez, Lance Parrish and Bill Freehan as Tigers Gold Glove catchers when he won the award last year. Dingler’s predecessors had all won the award in back-to-back seasons. Now Dingler has that feat, too, repeating his Rawlings American League Gold Glove Award honor in results announced Sunday.
It was not a surprise to those who watched him daily this season.
“Dillon has been identified by so many people as one of, if not the best catcher in baseball,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said at season’s end.
Defensively, he has the credentials, and now, he’s got the hardware to back it up.
Behind the plate, Dingler was a force all season, starting with his plus-17 fielding run value that well outpaced the rest of MLB and easily topped his plus-12 value from last year. He led the Majors in catcher framing runs at plus-9, according to Statcast, up from plus-7 last year. His three catcher blocking runs tied for second, and his 11 blocks above average tied for fourth. He tied for fifth in caught stealing above average, helped by an average pop time to second base of 1.86 seconds that ranked fourth fastest in the Majors. He was well above average in ABS challenges despite a few misses costing him in metrics down the stretch.
The traditional stats praised Dingler as well. His .995 fielding percentage ranked just behind Houston’s Yainer Diaz for the AL’s highest rate.
Just as big as Dingler’s defensive ability was his availability. Dingler led AL catchers with 995 2/3 innings caught and 113 games started. He was a near-constant presence behind the plate all summer while the Tigers were fighting to get back into the playoff race. The wear and tear seemed to impact his offensive performance, but never his defense.
For a Tigers rotation that underwent wholesale changes from Opening Day to the end, Dingler was a constant that allowed Detroit to overcome the trades of Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize.
“There’s a whole subset of his game that is really valuable, but not necessarily measurable,” president of baseball operations Scott Harris said last month. “Like his impact on our pitching staff, his impact on game-calling, his preparation going into every game, the effect that he has on pitchers in really tough times to get them out of a game.”
Dingler not only earned his first All-Star selection over the summer, he won his first Fielding Bible Award last week. He was the first Tigers catcher to win the latter honor since Rodriguez in 2006, a nod to Dingler’s analytical defensive dominance.
Dingler is the first AL catcher to repeat as a Gold Glove winner since Cleveland’s Roberto Pérez in 2019 and ’20. But for Tigers catchers, defending the defensive honor is a habit. Rodriguez’s 13 Gold Gloves included three over four years as a Tiger (2004, 2006-07). Parrish won three consecutive Gold Gloves from 1983-85. Freehan won five in a row from 1965-69.
Dingler is the 31st MLB catcher to win multiple Gold Glove Awards, but he’s just the seventh to win in both of his first two full Major League seasons, joining a group that includes Rodriguez, Johnny Bench, Salvador Perez, Charles Johnson, Patrick Bailey and Ray Fosse.