The Cubs had baseball’s best defense in 2026, and it wasn’t even close.
Now, they’ve got the hardware to prove it.
Center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong and third baseman Alex Bregman won Gold Gloves when the annual position-by-position defensive awards were announced Sunday night.
Three other Cubs – shortstop Dansby Swanson, left fielder Ian Happ and right fielder Seiya Suzuki – were previously announced as finalists at their respective positions but did not win.
Still, between the winners and the near-winners, the team’s reputation as the sport’s finest in the field was backed up in a big way.
The statistics did that plenty prior to Sunday’s haul, with the Cubs boasting massive leads in defensive metrics like Outs Above Average (73, compared to the 44 of the second-place Diamondbacks), Defensive Runs Saved (115, compared to the 87 of the second-place Rays) and Fielding Run Value (72, compared to the 46 mark of the second-place Blue Jays).
So whether you prefer numbers or trophies, there was no question: The Cubs were baseball’s best defensive team.
“It’s a point of emphasis for us as a ballclub,” Bregman said Sunday. “From top to bottom in the organization, we take pride in the defense and trying to save as many runs as possible. ... Nine guys doing their job turns into a really good team defense. When we’re out there, it’s like, ‘Let’s try and make every play.’”
The eye test, if that’s your thing, did a lot to seal that argument, too, and the Cubs spent the summer making one fantastic play after another, talking often about defense as the backbone of a team built to contend for a championship.
That championship, of course, never came, and as good as the gloves were, they did little to stave off postseason embarrassment. The Cubs stumbled in the regular season’s final week, failing to secure home-field advantage in the wild-card round, and were swept without putting up too much fight in just two games against the Padres.
That finish might dominate the memory of fans, but they watched an otherwise thrilling summer at Wrigley Field – and the defense had a lot to do with that.
“We take the field every day knowing that we’re very capable of changing the course of a ballgame with our gloves,” Crow-Armstrong said.
Crow-Armstrong, who’s expected to win the NL MVP, made defense a cornerstone of his case for the sport’s top individual award, with his excellence in the field and at the plate compared to the two-way dominance of Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, creating a meaty debate prior to late-season health issues that took Ohtani out of the race.
Crow-Armstrong’s defensive exploits helped him to a jaw-dropping 10.6 fWAR that dwarfed that of all other position players in the game. This Gold Glove was his second in as many seasons.
“It was incredible,” Bregman said of watching Crow-Armstrong do his thing all summer long. “He stole one from me last year in left-center when [the Red Sox] played [at Wrigley Field], and that’s the first time I saw him run it down out there.
“But to be there every day and watch him go about his business and watch him take extra-base hit after extra-base hit away, it’s pretty special. When you’re there on a consistent basis and you watch it over the course of 162, it just amazes you with how many runs he saves out there.”
Bregman, now a two-time Gold Glover, isn’t going anywhere after the Cubs locked him up last offseason, and that’s great news for them after the 32-year-old posted perhaps the best defensive season of his career at the hot corner. His 15 Defensive Runs Saved nearly doubled his previous career high, and he set a new career high with eight Outs Above Average, as well.
Bregman became the Cubs’ first Gold Glover at third base since Ron Santo in 1968.
“Pretty early on, a lot of us were turning our heads and just being like, ‘Wow,’” Crow-Armstrong said of Bregman. “It was early that we were all like, ‘This is going to be his award.’
“He was the most deserving of this award this year by far. It wasn’t so surprising seeing the defensive ability, but it was something that I maybe didn’t think about as much until I saw it on the field and in person.”
