TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals pickoff combination of catcher Yadier Molina and first baseman Albert Pujols continued its monopoly of one of baseball’s fast-rising awards for defensive play. The Fielding Bible is in its fourth year of handing out awards for the best defensive play at each position in an attempt to do what the Gold Glove sometimes fails to do with its annual leanings toward incumbency and offense.

Four years of Fielding Bible Awards. Four times Pujols has won.

The Fielding Bible, founded by John Dewan at Baseball Info Solutions, presents one award per position, drawing candidates from both of the major leagues. Pujols has won the award at first base all four years it has been presented. Writes Dewan:

What’s left to say? Four Fielding Bible Awards in four years. When Pujols first came up I envisioned him as what Miguel Cabrera is now: a great hitter struggling to find a position he can play well defensively. Albert played left field (not so well). He played right field (not so well). He played third base (not so well). Then he discovered first base and has been the best in baseball, both offensively and defensively, ever since.

This is the third consecutive year that the catcher award has gone to Molina, who is a favorite to win his second consecutive Gold Glove this winter. About Molina, Dewan writes that he was one of the near-consensus winners this season, what with twice as many pickoffs as the next-closest catcher in the league and a high score in a new stat used this season for the panel:

Yadier was the third “most popular” vote getter in 2009. He was named first on eight ballots, finishing with 96 points. Everyone knows about Molina’s incredible throwing arm. Well, maybe not the eight guys he picked off this year (the most by any catcher-next most was four). But one thing that hasn’t been measured until recently is a catcher’s ability to prevent bad pitches from getting past him, allowing baserunners to move up. We measured this stat this year and shared it with our voters. No surprise, Yadier is one of the best.

The Fielding Bible Awards are an offshoot of the Fielding Bible, a book that has two editions and has aimed to reshape and enhance how defense — the last frontier of sabermetrics — is measured statistically. The Fielding Bible Awards are decided by a panel of 10 voters, a panel that includes Dewan, Bill James and Sports Illustrated writer and chronic blogger Joe Posnanski. The panel uses a point system to rate the top 10 players at each position and the winners are the players who score the highest on the 100-point scale. The Rawlings Gold Glove Awards, still the standard in the field of fielding, are voted on by manages and coaches from each league.

All of the Fielding Bible winners can be found here at the official site for the Fielding Bible.

Among the winners this year is first-time winner Mark Buehrle, the St. Charles native and Chicago White Sox lefty. Jack Wilson, who played for Seattle and Pittsburgh, won the award at shortstop, though it will be interesting to see the complete voting eventually and check where Brendan Ryan finished. Ryan was second to Wilson in runs saved at the position, 27 to 19, and Ryan played 86 fewer innings than Wilson at the position.

UPDATE: Ask, and ye shall receive. Ryan finished fourth in the panel’s voting, behind Wilson, Troy Tulowitzki of Colorado and Elvis Andrus of Texas. Other Cardinals who received votes of interest were Matt Holliday (fifth at left field), Joel Pineiro (fourth among pitchers) and Colby Rasmus, who received 14 points. The complete breakdown of votes from the panel is available by clicking here and following the menu tabs to THE VOTING and “complete vote tally”.

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