By Mark Simon

It's been a tradition here to bestow awards on some year-end leaders in stats that only we track. A few years ago, we refreshed the list of leaders and I'm doing so again this year to give us an entirely defensive theme.

Here are the award winners for 2025.

The Homer Robber Award

The title of this award speaks for itself. This one goes to the leader in home run robbing catches for 2025, which was Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. with 4 (here’s one example).

This was a prolific season for home run robbing catches. There were 88 in 2025, easily surpassing the 78 of 2024 for the most in any season since we began fully tracking them in 2004.

Most Home Run Robbing Catches - 2025 Season

 The Who Needs A Glove Award?

This award goes to the player with the most successful barehand plays. This works better if we separate this by catchers, third basemen, and others. Catchers are often fielding barehands that have come to a stop and that are right in front of the plate. Patrick Bailey led the position with 15, two more than Cal Raleigh.

Third basemen get the most barehand opportunities, which is why its best to separate them from other fielders too. This award could have been named for Nolan Arenado, who annually ranked as a leader in the prime of his career. But among third basemen this year, Alex Bregman of the Red Sox actually led with 13 successful plays, two more than Ke'Bryan Hayes and Maikel Garcia. Arenado finished with 10, fourth-most among third basemen.

The leader among those who don't play third base or catcher was Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo, who had 6 (this one in particular was pretty good). 

Most Barehand Plays - 2025 Season

The Vacuum Cleaner Award

SIS Video Scouts also track what are known as “Good Fielding Plays,” which are often those that lead to the unlikely recording of an out. Those can be broken up into different subtypes, including one just for ground balls. The leader in Good Fielding Plays on ground balls is the winner of our Vacuum Cleaner Award.

This year's winners were Brewers shortstop Joey Ortiz and Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott. Ortiz finished with -2 Runs Saved in his first full time season there as a major leaguer and Stott totaled 0 at second base, as making lots of Good Fielding Plays doesn't necessarily translate to a high Runs Saved total. Stott's issue wasn't range. He had -6 Runs Saved from the Phillies' difficulty turning double plays.

Nonetheless, both had their share of Web Gem-caliber highlight-reel moments (one example from Ortiz, one from Stott).

Most Good Fielding Plays - Ground Balls (2025 Season)

The Fly Swatter Award

The Fly Swatter Award is a similar award to The Vacuum Cleaner, except it’s for Good Fielding Plays resulting in outs on fly balls and line drives. The leaders were Tigers left fielder Riley Greene and Twins/Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader with 19 apiece.

Greene, the 2024 Fielding Bible Award winner in left field, slipped to -5 Runs Saved in 2025, though his primary issue was not catching balls (here’s one he ran down) but rather baserunner advancement on balls he fielded. Bader is one of the top defensive players in this year's free agent class.

Most Good Fielding Plays - Fly Balls (2025 Season)

Stolen Base Stopper

The awards for the Stolen Base Stopper go to the catcher and pitcher who had the most Stolen Base Runs Saved in 2025. 

Red Sox catcher Carlos Narváez had 7 Stolen Base Runs Saved in 2025, most among all catchers. Narvaez threw out 25 of 100 runners attempting to steal and also had 3 pickoffs. You could also make a good case for Luis Torrens, who had 6 Stolen Base Runs Saved and threw out 20 of 49 basestealers (41%).

For pitchers, Matthew Boyd led the way with 5 Stolen Base Runs Saved. Boyd had 8 pickoffs and 3 pitcher caught stealings. His 11 combined pickoffs and caught stealing were easily the most in MLB.

The Hall of Framer

The Hall of Framer award goes to the catcher who had the best pitch-framing numbers in 2025. In our world, that means the catcher who had the most called strikes above expectations (we call this stat Strike Zone Plus-Minus).

Patrick Bailey was the runaway leader in this stat for the second straight year. He finished 120 called strikes above expectations. Austin Wells of the Yankees and Alejandro Kirk of the Blue Jays were a distant second with 79.

Austin Hedges was the leader in this stat on a per-pitch basis. He ranked 4th overall in called strikes above expectations, impressive considering he caught only 67 games.

Bailey’s leadership in this stat factored into winning a bigger award than this, our Defensive Player of the Year award (which was announced with the Fielding Bible Awards).

To learn more about our pitch-framing methodology, read the paper from our award-winning presentation at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

The FieldingBible.com website is a great resource for your defensive stat needs. 

For more of our work check out The SIS Baseball Podcast, which posts new episodes every two weeks during the baseball season.

Mark Simon interviews players and coaches about defensive excellence. He also regularly talks with media members about the latest baseball news.

Check out our last couple of episodes in which Mark Simon talks to Fielding Bible Award winners Patrick Bailey, Ernie Clement, and Nico Hoerner, and NPB Fielding Bible Award winner Tyler Nevin.

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