Miami Marlins "Golden" at another position, as Javier Sanoja wins Gold Glove

Chalk up another Gold Glove for the Miami Marlins.

With Sunday night's announcements, Javier Sanoja came out as one of the NL winners for the Rawlings award for defensive excellence, securing the Gold Glove for the utility position. While Gold Gloves have been around since 1957, recognizing utility has only been a thing since 2022. Sanoja's win marks a first for himself at any position, and the first for the Marlins at the utility spot.

Position wise, that leaves three spots unrecognized for the Miami Marlins in franchise history: center field, right field, and shortstop. Then again, Sanoja did spend time at center and short this season, so you could technically claim that it is right field alone that has come up short on defensive hardware.

In terms of how many different players in franchise history have won the award, Sanoja is the ninth Marlins player to do so. It's the first win for a Miami player since 2017, and puts an end to the longest Gold Glove drought in franchise history. Fortunately, this could be the start of another run of Marlins players being regularly in the conversation, as 2025 was also the first year since 2015 that they had three finalists. The club had three finalists in 2014, three in 2015, one in 2016, and then two in 2017. In that stretch, three different Marlins won the award.

Which brings us to Marlins Gold Gloves overall. Sanoja's win gives Miami thirteen Gold Gloves in total, starting with Charles Johnson's first of three wins back in 1995. Johnson shares the top spot with Luis Castillo, who won the award from 2003-2005. Unless...you actually decide to give Johnson some Marlins credit for his 1998 win. The team website chooses not to, but if you wanted to take that road, Johnson would stand alone with four, and that would make fourteen Miami Gold gloves. One more than the career total of Ivan Rodriguez, who won 10 Gold Gloves before coming to the Marlins, and three more after he left.

In short, the Miami Marlins have a long history of defensive excellence. Sanoja's most recent chapter was invaluable to the team in 2025, and there's no reason to expect that to change moving forward.