All season long, Ender Inciarte impressed with defensive prowess in the Braves outfield, making a number of highlight reel grabs and excelling in Statcast™ fielding metrics. His performance earned him a spot among the nominees for this year's Esurance MLB Award for Best Defensive Player.
• Vote for this season's best stars and moments in the Esurance MLB Awards
The Esurance MLB Awards annually honor MLB's greatest achievements as part of an industry-wide balloting process that includes five groups, each of which accounts for 20 percent of the overall vote: Media, front-office personnel, retired MLB players, fans at MLB.com and Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) members. The MLB Awards are an all-inclusive program, encompassing the top players and performances from both the American and National Leagues from Opening Day through the end of the postseason.
Voting led off with seven categories on Sept. 18 at mlb.com/awards, serving as the grand entrance of a program that will unveil nominees for Best Call, TV/Radio; Best Major Leaguer, Postseason; and Best Postseason Moment following the Fall Classic's final out. The ninth inning of voting will begin around BBWAA Awards week, which opens when the Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year Award winners are unveiled Monday, Nov. 13. Voting for the final five categories will begin at 7 p.m. ET on the following dates:
• Best Executive: Thursday, Nov. 9.
• Best Rookie: Monday, Nov. 13.
• Best Manager: Tuesday, Nov. 14.
• Best Pitcher: Wednesday, Nov. 15
• Best Major Leaguer: Thursday, Nov. 16.
MLB Awards season will culminate Friday, Nov. 17, when winners are announced live on MLB Network and MLB.com starting at 8 p.m. ET.
Inciarte converted seven five-star catches -- outs with a catch probability of 25 percent or less -- in the regular season, the most of any Major Leaguer. He also ranked third in both four-star (17) and three-star outs (27) and paced the National League in Outs Above Average (19), a range-based Statcast™ metric that accounts for the number of players made and the difficulty of them.
"The jumps he gets are unbelievable," Braves manager Brian Snitker said in September.