With the deadline to file my 2023 Pacific and Central league award and Golden Glove ballots fast approaching, I’ve spent much of the past two weeks in my annual number-crunching excursion into NPB’s team and individual performances.

As some of you know, I calculate Bill James’ Win Shares for NPB players, which in general agree with Wins Above Replacement except that pitching in WAR contributes roughly 60 percent of the value, with offense and defense sharing the rest. In Win Shares, offense is set at 42 percent, with pitchers and fielders splitting the remainder, with the size of the split largely determined by the quality of each team’s defensive and pitching stats.

To my thinking, the differences in these relative splits can be attributed to two things, that WAR assigns value based on the principle of scarcity an individual’s performance represents, while Win Shares assigns value on the principle that wins result from the contributions of each team’s pitchers, fielders and hitters, and examines individual results to assign the share each player contributes to team success with his batting, pitching and fielding.

The win share awards are results of calculations using complex algorithms, but are calculations producing estimates, not knowledge, and come with their own biases. These influence my own award voting, but do not represent my eventual decisions.

Each leader comes with his relative Win Shares total, and the score of the player with the next highest total. Although it lacks game-by-game observational accounts that result in the Ultimate Zone Rating used by WAR, and more detailed individual play metrics, Win Shares defense scores mesh well with WAR over a period of seasons, but individual years can provide some interesting results.

For the Golden Glove awards, I ranked players by their number of win shares at their position per 1,000 innings played. For both Best Nines and Win Shares, I limited the players ranked to those who spent at least half the season at that position.

Pacific League

• PL MVP: Kensuke Kondo 32.1, 2^nd place: Hideto Asamura 28.5, 3^rd place: Yuki Yanagita 25.1
• PL Rookie of the Year: Shumpeita Yamashita 10.4, runner-up: Yuki Udagawa 6.7

PL Best Nine

• P: Yoshinobu Yamamoto 19.8, runner-up: Hiroya Miyagi 12.8
• C: Tomoya Mori 24.6, runner-up: Takuya Kai 8.7
• 1B: Yuma Tongu 20.0, runner-up: David MacKinnon 17.1
• 2B: Hideto Asamura 28.5, runner-up: Shuta Tonosaki 21.7
• 3B: Kotaro Kiyomiya 14.7, runner-up: Hisanori Yasuda 12.4
• SS: Yudai Fujioka 16.4, runner-up: Kotaro Kurebayashi 15.7
• OF: Kensuke Kondo 32.1
• OF: Yuki Yanagita 25.1
• OF: Keita Nakagawa 21.2
• OF Runners-up: Chusei Mannami 19.7, Ryosuke Tatsumi 19.4, Go Matsumoto 15.1
• DH: Gregory Polanco 13.4, runner-up: Takeya Nakamura 11.6

PL Golden Gloves

• P: Win Shares doesn’t do pitcher fielding, sorry.
• C: Kenya Wakatsuki 5.5 WS (7.4 per 1,000 Innings); runner-up: Yuta Koga: 5.3 (7.1)
• 1B: David MacKinnon 1.3 (1.8), runner-up: Yuma Tongu 1.4 (1.7)
• 2B: Shogo Nakamura 7.2 (6.1), runner-up: Masaki Mimori 3.00 (4.4)
• 3B: Kotaro Kiyomiya 3.2 (4.3), runner-up: Ryoya Kurihara 3.1 (4.0)
• SS: Kotaro Kurebayashi 6.5 (6.1), runner-up: Sosuke Genda 5.0 (5.8)
• OF: Keita Nakagawa 4.3 (4.0)
• OF: Tokumasa Chano 2.5 (3.4)
• OF: Kensuke Kondo 2.7 (3.1)
• OF runners-up: Yutaro Sugimoto 1.9 (3.0), Tatsuru Yanagimachi 2.2 (3.0), Go Matsumoto 3.0 (2.8)

Central League

• CL MVP: Shugo Maki 28.9, 2^nd place: Yusuke Oyama 27.6, 3^rd place: Koji Chikamoto 27.3
• CL Rookie of the Year: Shoki Murakami 13.9, runner-up: Yuto Akihiro 11.8

CL Best Nine

• P: Katsuki Azuma 17.4, runner-up: Shoki Murakami 13.9
• C: Takumi Oshiro 20.7, Shogo Sakakura 19.2
• 1B: Yusuke Oyama 27.6, runner-up: Neftali Soto 10.9
• 2B: Shugo Maki 28.9, runner-up: Takumu Nakano 23.3
• 3B: Toshiro Miyazaki 26.3, runner-up: Kazuma Okamoto 25.9
• SS: Hayato Sakamoto 21.8, runner-up: Seiya Kinami 14.0
• OF: Koji Chikamoto 27.3
• OF: Keita Sano 19.2
• OF: Yuki Okabayashi 18.7
• OF Runners-up: Ryoma Nishikawa 18.6, Seiya Hosokawa 17.6, Shogo Akiyama 17.5

CL Golden Gloves

• P: see above.
• C: Yuhei Nakamura 5.3 WS (6.7 per 1,000 innings), runner-up: Takumi Oshiro 6.2 (5.9)
• 1B: Yusuke Oyama 2.9 (2.2), runner-up: Neftali Soto 1.8 (2.2)
• 2B: Takumu Nakano 7.2 (5.6), runner-up: Naoki Yoshikawa 4.4 (4.3)
• 3B: Toshiro Miyazaki 3.5 (4.0), runner-up: Teruaki Sato 3.9 (3.4)
• SS: Seiya Kinami 6.6 (6.0), runner-up: Hayato Sakamoto 3.6 (5.1)
• OF: Sheldon Neuse 4.7 (4.7)
• OF: Koji Chikamoto 5.1 (4.5)
• OF: Shota Morishita 3.4 (4.5)
• OF runners-up: Masayuki Kuwahara 4.2 (4.2), Shogo Akiyama 3.4 (3.4), Lewis Brinson 2.0 (3.1)