Span, LaRoche come up short in Gold Glove voting

Both Denard Span and Adam LaRoche came up short in their pursuits of Gold Gloves today. Span, a finalist among National League center fielders for the second straight year, lost out to the Mets' Juan Lagares, and is still in search of his first career Gold Glove. LaRoche won a Gold Glove with the Nationals in 2012, but this time, he saw Adrian Gonzalez of the Dodgers take home the hardware. Span made four errors this season and posted a .990 fielding percentage, this after going the entire 2013 campaign without committing an error. Advanced metrics didn't rate him as highly as Lagares or Billy Hamilton, the third finalist among NL center fielders. Span had a minus-4.7 UZR this season, according to FanGraphs, while Hamilton had a 20.1 UZR and Lagares had an 18.6 UZR. LaRoche posted a .994 fielding percentage this season, making seven errors in 1,200 chances, and had a minus-5.0 UZR, per FanGraphs. Slightly more than 75 percent of the overall selection total for Gold Gloves is made up of votes submitted by managers and up to six coaches on their staff. Coaches are not allowed to vote for players on their own team. Nearly 25 percent of the vote comes from the SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) Defensive Index. This index is determined based on two types of defensive metrics: those derived from batted ball location-based data and those collected from play-by-play accounts.