Yankees' Juan Soto, Anthony Volpe and Alex Verdugo named finalists for Gold Glove

The Gold Glove finalists were announced Tuesday and the Yankees had three players among them. Two are not a surprise and one moderately so.

Anthony Volpe, who won the AL Gold Glove at short last season, again is a finalist, along with the Guardians' Brayan Rocchio and the Royals' Bobby Witt Jr.

Alex Verdugo, who didn’t take his troubles at the plate with him to the field, is a finalist in leftfield, joined by Colton Cowser of the Orioles and Steven Kwan of the Guardians.

The surprise?

Juan Soto, long known for his bat but who arrived in the Bronx last winter with questions about his defense, made the final three in right, along with Wilyer Abreu of the Red Sox and the Angels’ Jo Adell.

“I’m not surprised because I vote on that,” Aaron Boone said about Soto's selection before Tuesday night’s Game 2 of the ALCS against the Guardians. “We can’t vote for your own guys, but you get that [information about the voting] two, three weeks ago, it pops on your desk, and they give you numbers in there to kind of reference. And he [Soto] was up there, I noticed, on all the rightfield stuff, a lot of areas.”

One area in particular Soto excelled was assists, with 10, including memorably throwing out the game-tying runner at the plate in the ninth inning of the Yankees’ season-opening victory over the Astros in Houston.

Boone allowed that Soto “probably” had exceeded his expectations when it came to defense but that he had also heard before the outfielder arrived for spring training that he “cared” about that side of the ball.

“So you get a young, athletic guy that cares about doing it out there, they’ve got a chance to be good,” Boone said, noting the play in Houston and also Game 1 of the ALDS when he threw out the Royals Salvador Perez at the plate. “He had a couple games there where he struggled going back on a ball against the wall, but he’s also made a lot of plays out there, too.”

According to MLB.com, to determine the winners at the nine positions, all 30 big-league managers and as many as six coaches from their respective teams vote from a pool of players in their league, excluding, as Boone mentioned, players from their own team. These votes comprise 75% of the selection total with the SABR Defensive Index counting for the other 25%.

Verdugo, meanwhile, has started every postseason game so far, including Tuesday night’s, solely because of his defense. It was for that reason, and that reason alone, the Yankees went with him over prospect Jasson Dominguez in left.

“The second half offensively was a struggle for him, but one thing that's never left him is the glove,” Boone said of Verdugo. “In our stadium here in leftfield, that's a big deal.”

Elite company for Stanton

Giancarlo Stanton’s homer in Game 1 of the ALCS gave him 13 homers in 32 playoff games, making him just the third player in MLB history to hit at least that many homers in his first 32 career postseason games. The others are Carlos Beltran (14) and Nelson Cruz (14). Those 13 homers tied Stanton for fifth-most in franchise history with Aaron Judge. Bernie Williams is the franchise leader with 22, followed by Derek Jeter (20), Mickey Mantle (18) and Babe Ruth (15). The latter two, of course, didn’t have nearly as many rounds to build those totals, their blasts coming exclusively in the World Series.