When It Comes To Winning A Gold Glove, First Baseman Ty France Is A Self-Made Man

The San Diego Padres have multiple players they signed before the season who have been lifesavers for the team, and first baseman Ty France is one of them. He’s given the Padres Gold Glove-level fielding at first, and France has also provided plenty of pop at the plate. 

Plenty of people assume that France’s fielding prowess was always there, but it turns out that’s not the case at all. He talked about his learning process in a fascinating piece by Dennis Lin of The Athletic that began with France saying he was “metrically the worst first baseman in the league” when he signed with the Minnesota Twins back in 2025. 

France started his overhaul by finding his fielding savior in Carlos Correa, who was the Twins’ start shortstop. 

“Carlos Correa was super helpful as far as understanding the metrics,” France said. “He’s really big into that, and what it takes to be elite at all your metrics.”

The model here was fellow first baseman Carlos Santana, who also did a worst-to-first kind of transformation. According to Lin, Santana went from minus-7.2 DRAA in 2023 to plus-0.9 with the Twins in 2024, which resulted in the then-38-year-old’s first Gold Glove.

“I didn’t feel like I was the worst first baseman in the league,” he said. “I made one error that year, so I was trying to understand how I was so bad metrically. Seeing how they transformed (Santana) defensively, I wanted to understand what it took to get there.”

Correa gave him several key tips.

“He told me the main way for (right-handed) first basemen to get points is to go get balls to your backhand,” France said.

Before that, France had played close to the bag, and close to the base line as well. He said he felt he needed to “cheat” toward first, which left him vulnerable on routine ground balls hit to his right. He also met twice a month with analysts who gave him informaiton about his defensive success and areas where he could improve. 

“Now you’re making those plays instead of those balls getting by you,” said France, who cited then-Twins bench coach Jayce Tingler as a “huge help” before France was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in July 2025. “A lot of it was positioning, and there were a couple other things, but for the most part, it’s where you position yourself.” 

Of the problems, according to France, is the lack of good metrics about playing first. This is still a work in progress, he said, as he’s talked to at least one writer for FanGraphs as well as staffers from the MLBPA about how this information is acquired and presented. 

“It’s a weird system, and I feel like first base is very undervalued,” France said. “A lot of teams and organizations think you can just stick anyone there, and they’re going to do a good job when it’s not as easy as that.”

France is definitely an outlier, and he also notes the input he got during his time with the Toronto Blue Jays as well as the Twins. 

“That was pretty special,” France said when he talked about winning the Gold Glove. “A lot of work, a lot of time put into trying to master it. Yeah, very grateful for the Twins and Blue Jays.”