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The past few years have certainly shown that Just like we live in the golden age of shortstops.
The first, 22-year-old Fernando Tatis Jr., who had 143 big league games at the time, signed a 14-year, $340 million contract extension with the San Diego Padres. This was his third-largest contract in the history of Major League Baseball. That lasted a month before being overtaken by Francisco Lindor’s 10-year, $341 million extension with the New York Mets, signed on the eve of the opening of 2021.
Lindor’s long-term commitment has preempted one of the top players from the free agent market. Nonetheless, the ensuing lockout-divided offseason was headlined by Javier Baez, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, Trevor Story, and (longtime shortstop turned primarily second baseman) Marcus Semien. decorated the Seager, Story, Semien and Baez earned his four of the top seven contracts by total value that offseason. Correa signed a short-term contract with the highest average annual value of any player.
A year later, free agency was back on the market, once again dominated by the All-Star shortstop class of Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, Dansby Swanson and Correa. He performed enthusiastically and signed more contracts than anyone else.
With the exception of Tatis, all of these players are nearing or past 30, but that’s not the only wave of potential players to base the franchise on. The top prospects were shortstops — Tampa Bay’s Wonder Franco and Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. — and both graduated from the majors.Last season’s World Series MVP was a rookie shortstop — and No one of those two.
Of course, this is mostly anecdotal evidence, but it deserves further scrutiny. Money is not the perfect barometer of production, but it is significant that eight of MLB’s top 30 contracts (ranked by total guaranteed value) currently belong to shortstops. This is about one third of the nine positions. Recent mega deals reach new heights by working on length. Perhaps the team is a more comfortable proposition when it comes to shortstops who can leave the position with age and remain productive.
And, in fact, some already have. Semien became a full-time second baseman when he joined the Toronto Blue Jays in honor of Beau Bichette. The role was cemented when the Texas Rangers signed Semien and Seager within days. The story goes that Bogaerts was short when he spent 10 years with the Reds when he joined the Sox where he finished second. Bogaerts replaced Tatis as he left Boston for San Diego this winter. With Tatis’ injury history and long absence, it seems likely that he’s already moved to the outfield. Talk would have been short-lived had it not been for the surgery that kept him off the field in early 2023 — certainly to the frustration of many Red Sox fans over the lack of better defensive options. The winner had planned to hand over the position to Lindor when it looked like he was going to be the Met.
In some ways, “shortstop” seems like an overly broad designation, and that’s how it managed to include so many notable players and contracts. But the fact that teams like the Padres are willing to stockpile shortstops and pay them big to play out of their positions or play deep in their 30s is a new breed of star. It shows the defining characteristics of a shortstop. source of serious crime.
Six years ago, the AP wrote about the disappearance of glove-first shortstops amid the proliferation of power forward bats at the position. That article highlighted the number of home runs hit by a wide range of shortstops in 2016. The group of young guys driving that trend includes many players who have reached free agency in the past two years.
Looking at the number of home runs by shortstops in each season, 2016 was the 5th all-time, with the top 5 in 2019, 2021, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 6th in 2022. Of course, this is influenced by the increased emphasis on home runs across MLB and the physical state of baseball in recent years (although 2022 was meant to reverse that effect). .
But when we shift our focus to more relative and contextual offensive stats, this trend continues. The top five shortstop seasons by WAR are 2021, 2019, 2018, 2022 and 2016. The first year before the year 2000 was 1993 at number 18. Last season, ten teams, his third of the league, were shortstops as the highest-ranked players in WAR.
Shortstops, of course, benefit from positional WAR adjustments on the defensive side. So let’s take a look at the purely offensive stats, scaled to account for the run-scoring environment. am. Excluding the shortened 2020, the list is for 2019, 2021, 2018, 2022 and 2016.
This is probably more notable, since the best players in baseball aren’t shortstops. Also last season, Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs. In fact, the shortstop has not won an MVP in either league since Jimmy Rollins won MVP in 2007. His position isn’t top heavy, but overall he’s a stack.
So to speak, the trend toward middle shortstops in the lineup has definitely been enabled and favored by improved defensive positioning. In an era where you can afford to take advantage of optimized starting points and shifts, players don’t need to possess that much range to successfully place in the infield.
However, some of that will change in 2023 with new rules restricting infielder positions. Perhaps that would put positional priority back on defense, but I would be careful not to overstate the effect. A more salient question is whether the current highly productive crop of shortstops will be superseded by yet another wave of stars in the position, or Is this really the golden age of unique shortstops?
So, after being tasked with ranking the top 10 shortstops in the game right now on the MLB Network (list coming out next week!), I think it’s fair to say that I was given the most difficult task. A thankless job guaranteed to infuriate fans of all the very good shortstops pushed out by all the even better options.
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