Three Red Sox players have earned 2018 American League Rawlings Gold Glove Awards: right fielder Mookie Betts, center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr., and second baseman Ian Kinsler. The honorees were announced tonight on ESPN.
 
The Gold Glove Award honors the best defenders at each position in each league. Major League managers and coaches, voting only within their league and unable to vote for players on their own teams, account for 75 percent of the selection process; the sabermetrics community accounts for the other 25 percent.
 
The three honorees match a Red Sox single-season record, equaled in 1968 (George Scott, Reggie Smith, and Carl Yastrzemski); 1979 (Rick Burleson, Dwight Evans, and Fred Lynn); and 2011 (Jacoby Ellsbury, Adrián González, and Dustin Pedroia). The only other pairs of Red Sox outfielders to earn the recognition in the same season are Smith and Yastrzemski in 1968 and Evans and Lynn in 1978 and 1979.
 
This marks the third consecutive Gold Glove Award in right field for Betts. He is the seventh Red Sox player since the award's 1957 inception to be recognized as many as three times, joining outfielders Yastrzemski, Lynn, and Evans, second baseman Pedroia, first baseman George Scott, and third baseman Frank Malzone. Betts-who turned 26 years old on October 7-is the only player in team history to win as many as three Gold Glove Awards at the age of 26 or younger. 
 
In 120 games (115 starts) in right field, 14 games (13 starts) in center field, and six innings at second base, Betts ranked second among American League outfielders and fifth among all major leaguers with 20 defensive runs saved, also leading major league outfielders with a 16.8 ultimate zone rating (source: FanGraphs). In the past three seasons (2016-18), he leads all position players in both categories with 83 DRS and a 57.8 UZR. His lone error of 2018 came on May 24 at Tampa Bay, as he committed none in his final 88 regular season games and all 14 postseason games.
 
This marks the first career Gold Glove Award for Bradley, who was also named a finalist in 2014 and 2016. He is the sixth Red Sox outfielder to win the award while playing the majority of his games in center field, joining Jimmy Piersall, Reggie Smith, Fred Lynn, Ellis Burks, and Jacoby Ellsbury. In 2018, Bradley finished fifth among American League outfielders with an 8.8 ultimate zone rating in 150 games in the outfield, including 129 starts in center field and eight in right field. He tied for the AL lead with nine assists from center field, bringing his AL-best total to 28 assists from the position since 2016. Per StatCast, his 11 outs above average matched Mookie Betts for fourth-most among AL outfielders. 
 
The 36-year-old Kinsler, who was acquired by the Red Sox from the Los Angeles Angels on July 30, played 128 games between the two clubs to garner his second career Gold Glove recognition after earning his first with the Tigers in 2016. He played all of his 128 games at second base, leading the American League at the position in defensive runs saved (10, tied), ultimate zone rating (9.7), and FanGraphs' overall defensive metric (11.6). Kinsler is the third Red Sox second baseman to win a Gold Glove Award, joining Doug Griffin (1972) and Pedroia (2008, '11, '13-14). He became the first Red Sox player ever to win a Gold Glove Award after joining the Red Sox midseason, and the second-oldest Red Sox player ever to earn the honor after Carl Yastrzemski, who won his seventh Gold Glove at the age of 38 in 1977 (source: Elias).
 
Since the award was founded, 23 different Red Sox have combined to earn 48 Gold Glove Awards, including 14 over the last 14 seasons. The Red Sox have received at least one Gold Glove Award in each of the last three seasons, their longest streak since earning recognition in a franchise-record 11 straight campaigns from 1975-85.
 
Fan voting for the Rawlings Platinum Glove Award presented by SABR begins tonight at 10:00 p.m. ET at www.rawlings.com and continues through Thursday, November 8, at 10:00 p.m. ET. Fans can select only one 2018 Rawlings Gold Glove Award winner from each league to take home this "best of the best" honor.