Watching the 2021 New York Mets, you saw two of the best fielding pitchers you’ll ever see in Marcus Stroman and Taijuan Walker. Neither one will win a Gold Glove.

There’s a lot to unpack here. That goes double when you consider Stroman made the absolute best plays we saw a pitcher make all season. That’s not hyperbole. Stroman was a Wizard.

He went behind the back on Joshua Fuentes. He went Derek Jeter against Brandon Belt. He chased down Juan Soto.

Make no mistake. There’s no better fielding pitcher. None. The problem is this isn’t a career award. It’s for 2021 only.

Because of that, Stroman was deservedly, albeit shockingly, not named as Gold Glove finalist. While you can make a case for him, when you look at the data, Stroman ranked just 14th among qualifiers in DRS.

In terms of DRS, Max Fried and Zack Wheeler were the top two qualifiers. That makes them deserving finalists for the Gold Glove. While Zach Davies did not qualify, he had a 6 DRS, which tied him with Fried and put him one up on Wheeler.

Given his strong DRS ranking, you can understand why he was a finalist. That is, until, you realize Walker was better. In fact, Walker with his 7 DRS was the best fielding pitcher in the National League.

The problem might’ve been Walker didn’t have enough innings in time. According to Tim Ryder of The Apple, Walker only had 138.2 innings through the first 142 games of the season. He needed 142.0 leaving him 3.1 innings short.

Being diplomatic, this is stupid. There are 162 games in a season, and for an inexplicable reason, they cut off 20 games to make an arbitrary end point. It robbed Walker of an award rightfully his.

Consider that Davies, who qualified by the arbitrary point threw 11 fewer innings than Walker. There’s also the matter of chances.

In 2021, Walker had 51 chances. That’s 16 more than Davies. That’s three more than Wheeler. It’s five more than Fried.

That’s right. Walker made more plays, and he was a better fielder. He had the best DRS while making more plays in the field. Not giving him this award makes the award a sham.

In reality, that’s what this is. It’s a sham. The best fielding pitcher in 2021 wasn’t even eligible for the award because of an arbitrary cut off date before the season ended. As a result, Walker was cheated out of an award rightfully his.

There needs to be a way to fix this. You can’t have a pitcher with the most plays and best DRS not winning the Gold Glove. There’s no justifying it, and Taijuan Walker is owed an apology.