Pete Crow-Armstrong, Alex Bregman and Cubs' Team Defense Win Fielding Bible Awards

Image courtesy of Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images

Cubs Video

As I remind you every year, you shouldn't care at all about Gold Gloves. The process by which those awards are handed out makes them as meaningless as they often are maddening. They don't accurately reflect and reward the talent of big-leaguers, because they're voted on by managers and coaches who don't pay the right kind of attention to be good at evaluating defensive performance throughout the league. There's now a statistical element involved, to address some of the especially glaring errors made by that disinterested electorate in the past, but the process is still lousy and the results are often wrong. They also manufacture needless, vapid news cycles each fall by announcing "finalists" for the awards. In reality, the voting has already been done at that point, and no final round takes place pitting top vote-getters against each other. It's just a way to force people to talk about something an extra time or two—a cheap outrage machine.

No, instead, you should care about the Fielding Bible Awards. No longer are they a mere piece of internet stuntwork by a startup. For 20 years, now, Sports Info Solutions has been seeking the votes of actual experts who agree to pay close attention to what's happening on the field, then giving out an award (just one at each position for the whole majors, rather than hewing to the obsolete notion that the American and National Leagues are truly distinct) for the best work at each spot. These are the awards that actually tell you who stands out among big-league defenders; these are the ones worth your time.

This season, the Cubs took home three Fielding Bible Awards, for the first time ever. In fairness, the awards have expanded a bit over the years, making that more possible. SIS created a Multi-Position category in 2014; the Defensive Player of the Year in 2023; and the Defensive Team of the Year in 2025. Still, the three wins affirmed the brilliance that characterized the team's whole season, defensively. Alex Bregman won at third base. Pete Crow-Armstrong lost out on the center field award (more on that shortly), but won Defensive POY, and the team won Defensive Team of the Year, defending their crown after taking the inaugural version of that award in 2025.

It's hard to convey how impressive Bregman's win is. To be crowned the best defensive third baseman in baseball at age 32 is extremely hard, in this day and age. The only player in the history of this award to win it at a more advanced age was Adrián Beltré, in 2012; he was 33. Pedro Feliz also won at age 32, in 2007. The league is getting younger at key defensive positions almost all the time, beginning to nudge even third basemen down the defensive spectrum by the time they hit their mid-30s. That looks unlikely to happen with Bregman—and with Dansby Swanson, who's the same age but played a plus defensive shortstop again in 2026. The left side of the Chicago infield was impressively ageless this year.

Swanson and Nico Hoerner each finished sixth in the balloting at their own positions, which marks a noticeable decline. Swanson won the award at shortstop in 2023; Hoerner won it last year. They're both plus defenders, but that each slipped a bit on the leaderboard this year is fair. It's one good reminder that the team might not be quite as dominant with the gloves next year, as Bregman and Swanson turn 33 and Hoerner heads into his 30s. Another is that both Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki finished third in the voting at their outfield corners—another well-measured result, in each case, but not great news, since both will be free agents at the end of the World Series (and are past 30, making it unlikely that they age well defensively even if the Cubs re-sign them).

If any one person should receive the Cubs' Team of the Year trophy, it might be Quintin Berry. The third-base coach and outfield instructor turned Suzuki's career around with the help he gave him on reading swings and getting good jumps in the outfield. He was also good at positioning the Cubs' outfielders, and it's under his tutelage that Crow-Armstrong has blossomed into the Defensive Player of the Year.

Crow-Armstrong and Boston's Ceddanne Rafaela finished in such a dead heat for the center field award that not even looking at 1st-5th vote distributions separated them. The award went to Rafaela on a statistical tiebreaker, and that was a reasonable result. He applied his arm better than Crow-Armstrong did in 2026, and as the year went on, Crow-Armstrong slipped ever-so-slightly in the field, from an all-time jaw-dropper of a player to merely excellent. However, in the DPOY voting, he came out on top. Voters for that award probably weren't any less attuned to Rafaela's brilliance, but having players from other positions to consider tilted the dynamic just enough for Crow-Armstrong to win a much-deserved honor.

While their pitching staff was atrocious and their offense came up short when they needed it most, the Cubs' defense was the best in baseball. They did everything well. Shota Imanaga even finished second in Fielding Bible Award balloting at pitcher, thanks in large part to his mastery in stopping opponents from running against him. With Bregman, Swanson and Hoerner hitting age-related inflection points; Happ, Suzuki, Imanaga, Carson Kelly and Matthew Boyd all headed for the open market; and much more being asked of Crow-Armstrong on offense, don't count on Chicago winning a third straight Defensive Team of the Year Award in 2027. In fact, they could slip back significantly on that front. That underscores the stakes of the offseason ahead, but this trio of trophies—for the impeccably professional Bregman, the sensational Crow-Armstrong and the well-oiled machine that was this team defense, for a second year in a row—is a well-deserved reward for an important achievement. It's a good reminder that while this season ended in deeply disappointing fashion, it was far from an unmitigated failure.