Major League Baseball began handing out Gold Glove Awards in 1957. In a tidy piece of historical symmetry, the honor was split by league the following year — 1958, the same season the Giants played their first game in San Francisco.
In the 66 years since, the franchise and its players have amassed milestones on a scale that borders on the infinite.
Which is what makes a genuine first truly significant.
That moment arrived on Sunday, when Logan Webb and Patrick Bailey became the first Giants battery to win Gold Glove Awards in the same season — and the first in MLB to do so since Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina in 2013.
Wainwright and Molina also won together in 2009, but before them, the feat had only happened twice in the National League — both involving the last Giants pitcher to win a Gold Glove, Rick Reuschel.
This is where a few technical distinctions matter. Reuschel’s 1987 Gold Glove is credited to the Giants, but he began the season with Pittsburgh, where catcher Mike LaValliere also won.
Two years earlier, in 1985, Reuschel and Pirates catcher Tony Peña formed the only other NL Gold Glove battery — yes, the same Tony Peña who made Bob Costas sound as if he were about to tumble out of the Jacobs Field press box in the 1995 ALDS.
So with that in mind, Webb became the first Giants pitcher in their illustrious San Francisco history to win a Gold Glove after beginning the season in the Cactus League.
Equally remarkable to the historic nature of Webb and Bailey’s Gold Gloves is how opposite their chances appeared before 2025 — Bailey, an elite defensive backstop by a variety of metrics, was expected to win, Webb was not.
The Giants’ ace maximized his best attributes in 2025, pacing the National League in innings pitched (207.0) and strikeouts (224). But his defense had long lagged behind his pitching prowess — Webb posted a cumulative -4 defensive runs saved from 2019 through 2024.
Webb didn’t just improve defensively in 2025 — he flipped his numbers entirely, going from -3 DRS in 2024 to +7 in 2025, trailing only Max Fried (+10) among MLB pitchers. In those 207 innings, he committed just one error.
He didn’t just get better with the glove — he cut off the running game, too. His Net Bases Prevented swung from -5 to +5, tops among Giants pitchers, despite facing 1,169 stolen-base chances, the second-highest total in baseball.
And when it comes to stopping the running game, the focus goes straight to Bailey — the first NL catcher to win consecutive Gold Gloves since Yadier Molina’s eight-year run from 2008 to 2015.
There’s little point in tracking incremental gains with Bailey; he entered 2025 as one of the sport’s premier defensive catchers, and his performance this season only reinforced that standing.
Bailey didn’t just lead MLB in framing — he lapped the field, finishing +9 better than Alejandro Kirk and +19 clear of the next NL catcher, Gabriel Moreno. Bailey also topped the majors in Defensive Runs Saved at +19, twice the total of the next NL catcher, Pedro Pagés (+9).
Pagés, in his own way, is part of this story too. Webb has said his focus on the running game sharpened after a June 2024 loss to St. Louis, when four Cardinals stole on him — including Pagés, a 245-pound catcher with just eight career steals between the minors and majors.
The focal point became a tangible strength in 2025 for Webb, who now joins Bailey as one of the elite defensive players in baseball. Their awards also give the Giants just their third season since 2000 with multiple Gold Glove winners — the others coming in 2016 (Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, Joe Panik) and 2005 (Mike Matheny, Omar Vizquel).
The Giants, meanwhile, finished 16th in DRS, held back by an outfield that was inconsistent at best and a liability at worst. Yet Webb’s turnaround is proof that growth isn’t linear — even Heliot Ramos, who graded as the seventh-worst defender in MLB by DRS, isn’t beyond developing into an asset.
“I’m going to tell these guys, ‘If I can win it, anybody can win it,’” Webb told reporters after receiving the award.
The line was delivered as a joke. The history he and Bailey have just made was not.
Leave a Reply