The Cincinnati Reds were left off the list entirely when Rawlings and Major League Baseball unveiled the 2026 Gold Glove Award finalists.
There are three finalists at each of the nine positions, plus three more in the utility category, and not a single Reds player made the cut.
That’s a notable shift from last season, when Cincinnati had two finalists in the mix. Spencer Steer was up for the award at first base, while Ke’Bryan Hayes, picked up at the trade deadline from the Pittsburgh Pirates, was a finalist at third base.
Neither player ended up winning the Gold Glove for their 2025 season. It also marked the first time since 2020 that the Reds had a player named as a finalist.
Tucker Barnhart won the catcher Gold Glove that year for the second time in his career, and Shogo Akiyama was also nominated but did not take home the award.
The absence of a finalist this time around isn’t exactly a shock. Cincinnati simply didn’t have many players who logged enough work at one spot to get serious consideration.
The outfield was mostly a shuffle of players bouncing around multiple positions, with only JJ Bleday topping 70 starts in the outfield among the group that spent time there. Third base was a constant reset.
At second base, Matt McLain handled the position, but he didn’t reach 100 games there.
That left a short list of possible names: Tyler Stephenson at catcher, Sal Stewart at first base, Elly De La Cruz at shortstop, and the pitchers who came close to spending enough time in one place to matter. Stephenson, if the rumors are to be believed, grades out poorly behind the plate, to the point that some teams weren’t interested in him at the trade deadline because of his defense.
De La Cruz did make strides at shortstop this year, but those gains still weren’t enough to push him into the top three in any publicly available defensive metric among National League shortstops.
The Gold Glove winners will be announced on November 1st on ESPN.
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