ST. PETERSBURG - Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Taylor Walls won the American League Rawlings Gold Glove Award Sunday, becoming the first player in franchise history to claim the honor at shortstop - a recognition that his own manager said was long overdue.
“I feel like we’ve known and we’ve been kind of pounding the table for many years on how special he is defensively,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said when Walls was named a finalist. “I’m proud of him and happy that he’s getting the recognition, because he deserves it.”
Walls, 30, posted 21 defensive runs saved this season - tied for third among all Major League defenders regardless of position - and no other shortstop in baseball surpassed 10 DRS, meaning Walls recorded twice as many runs saved as the second-best defender at his position. He and Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Konnor Griffin led the Majors in Statcast’s estimated success rate metric, and the top four marks in that category dating back to 2022 belong to Walls.
The award came despite some advanced metrics rating him lower. Statcast’s fielding run value graded Walls as the 65th-best defender at shortstop with a minus-2 FRV, and 33rd in outs above average at minus-3. Rays bench coach Rodney Linares dismissed those numbers. “He’s the best at doing it in all of baseball,” Linares told MLB.com earlier this season. “I’ve never seen anybody like Wallsy.”
Walls had been a finalist twice before - at shortstop in 2025 and as a utility player in 2023 - without winning. He said during the American League Championship Series that the previous near-misses taught him to manage expectations. “I kind of learned to be more level-headed about it,” Walls said. But he acknowledged the award carried personal weight: “If I did win, it would be awesome. It’d be something that I looked forward to doing when I was younger and dreamed of as a kid.”
Critics have long questioned Walls’ place in the everyday lineup given his offensive production. He slashed .222/.309/.298 with two homers, 36 RBIs and 21 stolen bases this season, and his career slash line over six seasons stands at .200/.291/.298. But Baseball-Reference’s wins above replacement ranked him the fourth-most valuable player on the AL champion Rays’ roster, behind Junior Caminero, Drew Rasmussen and Nick Martinez. Starter Griffin Jax credited Walls’ baseball intelligence for the gap between perception and impact. “There’s some public metrics out there that don’t necessarily see the impact that Taylor makes on the game, but he’s one of the smartest dudes I’ve ever played with,” Jax said during the postseason. “And the way he’s positioning himself in the infield, the way he’s taking that little jump-step to get to the ball as quick as possible, it’s just really impressive and it’s fun to watch.”
Third-base coach Brady Williams offered perhaps the most precise description of what makes Walls elite: “He’s moved toward where the ball is being hit before the ball is being hit.”
Walls is the first Rays infielder to win a Gold Glove since third baseman Evan Longoria in 2017, and Tampa Bay’s first Gold Glove winner at any position since outfielder Kevin Kiermaier in 2019. Chandler Simpson was the Rays’ only other Gold Glove finalist this year but lost to Yankees left fielder Cody Bellinger. Cash praised Simpson’s development regardless of the outcome: “I think that is maybe one of the coolest stories of our season, where he was defensively last year, where he’s come to this year. I give Chandler all the credit, but if you’re going to look at the help along the way, Corey Dickerson has been right by his side.”