Congrats to Carlos Pena as he has come along way in his career. Its leaked info so maybe some if this isn;t accurate.Michael Young will be the AL Gold Glove shortstop in balloting announced Wednesday.
ESPN won't be happy about the leak. Also winning Gold Gloves are P Mike Mussina, C Joe Mauer, 1B Carlos Pena, 2B Dustin Pedroia, 3B Adrian Beltre, OF Torii Hunter, OF Grady Sizemore and OF Ichiro Suzuki. Young is a terrible choice, perhaps even worse than Derek Jeter would have been. Orlando Cabrera would have been the safe pick for AL managers once again, but Jason Bartlett was the class of a very weak group of shortstops. Pena's inclusion over Kevin Youkilis is quite a surprise. We can only imagine it has something to do with Youkilis playing mostly third base at the time the balloting was done. The rest of the infield is fine, though Akinori Iwamura had a case at second. Hunter has been coasting on his reputation for a few years now, but it would have been stunning if he wasn't picked. Carl Crawford, Alex Rios and Carlos Gomez were all clearly more deserving.