TAMPA, Fla. — Back to his youth-league days, Tampa Bay Rays shortstop Taylor Walls would go to the field early or stay late, fielding ground balls as hard as his father, Dave, could hit them, motivated to someday win what he considered baseball’s biggest individual honor — a Gold Glove.

“It was something I always dreamed of and just thought that it was like the coolest damn thing ever,” Walls said. “To me, that was the same caliber of an MVP award. Just the significance that it kind of meant at the time — it means you’re the best player at that position in that league.”

Walls was nominated twice previously, in 2023 in a utility role and in 2025 at shortstop. Despite a broad reputation as one of the game’s best defenders, he didn’t win either time.

He acknowledged getting a little soured on the voting process (75% by league coaches and managers, 25% a sabermetric component) that he felt made it more of a popularity contest or matter of politics than a true reflection of performance and relevant statistical/analytical data.

But when Walls found out he had won this year’s American League award at shortstop — getting word before the start of the Rays’ playoff run (showing his ability to keep a secret, as the public announcement wasn’t until Sunday night) — all those special feelings he had of the honor rushed back.

“Dude, I was pumped,” Walls said. “I didn’t know if I’d be as excited as I would been a few years ago if I won it, but as soon as they told me I was extremely excited.”

Most special, he said, was sharing the news with his parents.

“My dad was almost in tears, thinking back to when we were at the Little League fields, me and him, and he’d be smoking ground balls at me, trying to hit them past me,” Walls said. “That was the game we would play. He’d start off with routine plays, and I’d be catching them. Then I’d get a little cocky telling him he couldn’t hit it past me, So he’d slowly start amping it up to where he was pretty much swinging as hard as he could, trying to beat me and get something past me. …

“So I feel like when I told him that it was just like a flood of emotions and kind of like flashbacks and memories of when we used to be in the yard or at the field competing like that. So that kind of came full circle.”

Walls won the Rays’ 10th Gold Glove and became the sixth player to do so (and first since 2019), joining Kevin Kiermaier (three), Evan Longoria (three), Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena and Jeremy Hellickson (who tied for the pitcher award in 2012).

Chandler Simpson was a finalist this year in left field, having made impressive improvement from his 2025 rookie season, but the New York Yankees’ Cody Bellinger won.

Walls said he would hear from players and staff on other teams how highly regarded his defense was and even that he was used as an example in teaching minor-leaguers about positioning and pre-pitch movement. But to have it acknowledged publicly with the Gold Glove “meant a lot.”

Especially since the publicly available defensive metrics view Walls so differently. His 21 defensive runs saved, per fangraphs.com, tied for third most of all players, but in Statcast’s Outs Above Average he was tied for 85th at minus-3 and in Fielding Run Value tied for 81st at minus-2.

Walls acknowledged the “crazy” difference, saying that the best he can tell OAA and FRV don’t acknowledge and even penalize him for his “elite” ability to anticipate where the ball is going and to move before it is hit.

Also special was beating Royals superstar Bobby Witt Jr., who won the last two Gold Gloves. Walls said one of the Rawlings officials told him “nobody thought that anybody would beat Bobby Witt out for the next 10 years.” Toronto’s Andres Gimenez was the other finalist.

Walls will attend the Gold Glove banquet in New York this week, get a cool trophy and have his name added to the wall at the Rays’ Port Charlotte complex that lists all their Gold Glovers, which has been a point of teasing over the years.

But he is most excited about a small benefit, which is the shiny gold patch that will replace the usual red cloth patch on his Rawlings gloves for the rest of his career.

“It feels like kind of a flex, but just to have that gold patch on your gloves, that’s something that’s always special,” he said. “You see a glove and it has a gold patch on it, and it’s just different. There’s something about it, just a different feeling. And it just kind of says how I viewed the award growing up.”

Rays players and staff, who routinely tout Walls as the best shortstop in the majors, obviously were thrilled to see him honored.

“How great for him, right?,” ace pitcher Drew Rasmussen said. “I think because we get to see it every single day, it’s just one of those things we assumed would happen at some point, and happy it actually has come to fruition. Just for him to have the opportunity to be honored by the entire industry and everyone else gets to see the greatness that he is as a defender is truly special.”

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