ST. LOUIS — Influential members of the St. Louis Cardinals coaching staff spent the last couple months of the regular season stumping for the defensive ability of their battery — the pitcher and catcher combination that they felt was worthy of the Gold Glove treatment.

They got their wish.

It’s just not who they expected.

The National League Gold Glove award winners were announced this afternoon and catcher Yadier Molina has won his second consecutive Gold Glove and pitcher Adam Wainwright has won the first Gold Glove of his career. Molina’s win is a signal of his arrival as the annual favorite for an award that often goes to incumbents and often continues going to incumbents barring injury or significant decline in play. Wainwright’s win is an unexpected upset. The retirement of Greg Maddux opened the way for a new winner this year, and the Cardinals publicly advocated for nimble fielder Joel Pineiro to win. Pineiro — who manager Tony La Russa calls “a cat on the mound” — is regarded as one of the finer defensive players at his position in the league.

Wainwright, however, probably had more name recognition. He also had the most chances in the NL without an error. In a league-high 233 innings, Wainwright had 56 fielding chances and a flawless 1.000 fielding percentage.

This is the sixth time that a pitcher and catcher combination from the same team has won Gold Gloves. It is the fifth different combination to have won in tandem, and it is just the second time in the NL that a pitcher and catcher on the same team have won. The last battery to win Gold Gloves in the NL was Rick Reuschel and Tony Pena with Pittsburgh in 1985. Reuschel also won in 1987, the same year that Pirates catcher Mike LaVelliere won, but Reuschel did not spend that entire year with Pittsburgh.

Wainwright is the first Cardinal pitcher to win a Gold Glove award since Joaquin Andujar in 1984. Like Molina, Mike Matheny won the Gold Glove at catcher in 2003 and 2004. The Cardinals have had at least one Gold Glove winner in every season for the past decade except 2007.

Research I helped do last year confirmed that the Cardinals have won more Gold Gloves than any team in baseball since the beginning of the award in 1957.

The Rawlings Gold Glove Awards are determined by a vote of coaches and managers throughout the league.

The other winners in the NL were:

1B Adrian Gonzalez

2B Orlando Hudson

3B Ryan Zimmerman

SS Jimmy Rollins

OF Matt Kemp

OF Michael Bourn

OF Shane Victorino

There are four first-time winners this year — Wainwright, Kemp, Bourn and the extremely deserving Zimmerman. Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols is a previous winner of the award for fielding at first base and he set the all-time assist record this season, but he also led the team in errors with 13. Brendan Ryan, a candidate at shortstop, didn’t have enough innings likely to catch the eye of the coaches and managers. That said, Colorado’s Troy Tulowitzki had plenty of time as a superior shortstop this season and Rollins still won. Rollins, after all, led the NL in fielding percentage at his position.

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