Though none of them ultimately claimed the award, the Brewers had several strong finishers in voting for the prestigious annual Fielding Bible Awards—further affirmation of the stellar team defense the team played all year.

Though much newer and less widely recognized than Gold Gloves, the Fielding Bible Awards are the only defensive honors serious baseball fans should care about each year.

Rather than hurriedly scribbled onto three-person ballots by disinterested and often underqualified coaches and managers, as the Gold Gloves are, the Fielding Bible Awards are voted on by a cast of the top experts and evaluators of defense in the public sphere.

Only one award is given for each position, covering all of MLB, so there are fewer winners than with the Gold Gloves, but finishing second for a Fielding Bible Award is often a much more reliable indicator of the value a player provided in run prevention than winning a Gold Glove.

No Brewers defender won a Fielding Bible Award in 2024. However, on Monday, Sports Info Solutions—the company that commissions and compiles the votes and announces the awards—published the full voting results, and in studying them, there’s plenty of good news about the Crew.

There are 16 voters and 10 spots on each ballot, so a unanimous winner at a given position would receive 160 vote points. A first-place vote is worth 10; a 10th-place vote is worth 1.

At second base, Cleveland’s Andrés Giménez claimed an impressive 156 points, but Brice Turang finished right behind him, at 141.

Turang arguably had a slightly better season than Giménez with the leather, but the Guardians’ second baseman has a stronger arm and did a bit better turning the double play. There’s no shame in finishing second to him, and indeed, this is a reminder that Turang was an elite defender in 2024.

At third base, Joey Ortiz’s easy adaptation to third base was one of the great stories of the season, and it paid off with a third-place finish at the hot corner. San Francisco’s Matt Chapman won the award, as he does pretty much every year, and came up just one vote shy of unanimity.

The only other player in MLB to rank above Ortiz at third, though, was potential Brewers trade target Ryan McMahon.

Willy Adames, deservedly, got shut out of voting at shortstop, so after he heads for greener pastures this winter, Milwaukee could slide Ortiz to short (where he has all the tools to hold his own) and trade for McMahon, reestablishing perhaps the best infield defense in the game.

Blake Perkins deserved more credit than he got in center field, but his limited playing time and a crowded field of competitors pushed him out of the top 10.

However, Sal Frelick finished second for the right field Fielding Bible Award, trailing only Boston’s Wilyer Abreu in voting.

The Brewers were also lightly represented on the voting results page by William Contreras, who got a good chunk of down-ballot votes at catcher as he continues to dedicate himself to the nuances of that position; and by Jackson Chourio, whose edges are still rough but who flashed tremendous athleticism in his time in left field this year.

In all likelihood, playing great defense again will be vital to the Brewers’ pursuit of what would be a third straight NL Central crown in 2025.

Though they might or might not claim a bevy of Gold Gloves, and though they didn’t win any of the more serious awards for that type of excellence, these numbers remind us that the team was great in that regard—and that all the pillars of that greatness will be back (and will still be young, fast, skilled and agile) next season.