2026 Positional Power Rankings: Shortstop

I think we can safely say that Bobby Witt Jr. has met his prospect hype. When your drop-off in play leads to “only” an 8.0-WAR season, you know you’re in quite rarefied air. If anything, he’s exceeded the early scouting reports. While the prevailing belief was that he would stay at shortstop, he didn’t just linger at the position; he became an elite defensive player. Similarly, the worries about his free-swinging ways back when he was a prospect were overblown; he’s not Luis Arraez, but he makes enough contact — and does more than enough damage on contact — that it’s not an issue that he still doesn’t walk much.

The Royals managed something they haven’t in a while, extending him to a big contract that keeps him in Kansas City at least through his age-30 season, when he reaches the first of four opt-out opportunities.

With Witt never having landed on the IL, the Royals haven’t really prioritized finding a specific Plan B at shortstop among their reserves. If need be, Maikel Garcia can more than handle shortstop during a Witt absence, as the Royals are well-stocked with players who can take over at third base in the interim.

While it looked for a time like Adley Rutschman would be the straw that stirs the drink for the Orioles offense for the rest of the decade, Gunnar Henderson has seized that role and firmly established himself as Baltimore’s best position player since Cal Ripken Jr. He looks set to spend the next decade battling Bobby Witt Jr. for AL shortstop supremacy, much like Ripken and Alan Trammell did in the 1980s. All Henderson needs now is a younger brother who plays second base and has an expletive written on his bat knob.

There aren’t any notable weaknesses in his game. He’s not the defensive player that Witt is, but there’s a good chance a 40-homer season lurks somewhere in his bat. A lefty hitter this good at short is quite rare; Henderson’s already in the top 10 for career home runs by a left-handed-hitting shortstop. The Orioles should be offering him a blank check to stay in Baltimore for the next 15 years.

I suspect that given Jackson Holliday’s defensive issues at second base, a significant Henderson injury would result in the O’s going with Blaze Alexander at shortstop, rather than shuffling the infield around too much. Alexander is a pretty good player, and a reasonable stopgap at three infield positions, but obviously it would be a massive drop-off from Henderson to him.

Francisco Lindor continued to burnish his Hall of Fame credentials last year, posting his fourth straight 5-WAR season and third consecutive campaign with at least 30 home runs. Now 32, he hasn’t shown many signs of slowing down yet. His defense was merely very good in 2025, rather than Gold Glove-worthy, but it’s too soon to say that represents the start of a trend given the sample size required for defensive data. Nor has he suffered more frequent injuries as he’s aged; he hasn’t been on the injured list since 2022. There’s nothing in the Statcast data that suggests trouble ahead. Lindor is currently working his way back from a stress fracture to his left hamate bone, apparently the new hotness among injuries this spring, but that’s not expected to be an issue beyond maybe handful of missed games to open the season.

Lindor ought to stay on his current plateau for a few more years and remain the centerpiece of the lineup alongside Juan Soto. Unlike the rest of the Mets, Lindor had his best months of 2025 in August and September, so he bears little responsibility for the team’s late-season collapse.

There was never any chance that Bo Bichette would play shortstop and boot Lindor off the position this winter when the Mets signed the former Blue Jay to be their starting third baseman. That said, Bichette could still see some time at short if Lindor gets injured, as he remains a far better overall player at the position than Ronny Mauricio or Vidal Bruján, and the Mets have options like Brett Baty or even Jacob Reimer at third.

For occasional fill-ins, it’ll be Mauricio and, if he makes the roster, Bruján.

I remain tickled that Mookie Betts is a shortstop, as a contending team moving a 30-year-old star corner outfielder to the most important defensive position on the field is an unusually gutsy decision. Even if you don’t buy into Sports Info Solutions’ +17 DRS for Betts in 2025, the Statcast fielding data indicate that he is at least an adequate defender at shortstop, a pretty impressive win for both him and the Dodgers.

While the successful defensive transition is encouraging, there were definitely concerns about his 2025 season. Betts had one of the worst offensive seasons of his career, hitting .258/.326/.406, a far cry from his MVP-contending 2023 season. There are some mitigating factors, however; he lost nearly 20 pounds right before the season started due to illness, played through a broken toe in June, and mourned his stepfather, who died suddenly in July.

But computers are unfamiliar with any of these factors, so it’s promising that the projections all believe he’s about to enjoy an comeback season. Even with a wRC+ of 130 instead of 150, Betts is still a major star at shortstop. Given his age, though, it’s certainly worth watching his hard-hit rate in the early going to see if it improves from his mark of 35.8% in 2025, a career low.

Should Betts miss time with an injury, the Dodgers have a number of role player types who can handle the position in Miguel Rojas, Santiago Espinal, and Tommy Edman. Los Angeles likes to use its role players all over the field, so it’s not obvious which member of that trio is the team’s favorite Plan B, though I suspect it’s Rojas. Alex Freeland could eventually motivate the Dodgers to move Betts back to second base or the outfield, but that’s probably not an imminent event.

A raw, high-upside prospect, Elly De La Cruz broke out in a major way in 2024 and spent most of the season as a serious MVP candidate. His performance fell back to more mortal levels last season, in part due to a quad strain he played through in the second half.

In any case, De La Cruz firmly established himself as the player the Reds should build around. He’s a poor contact hitter, though this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that he’s not an ultra-aggressive swinger, meaning he’s not whiffing himself into too many extra outs. A 25-homer, 40-steal threat, EDLC is a multifaceted offensive contributor who plays shortstop capably. He is going to be an extremely wealthy man very soon.

On the rare occasions when the Reds have needed another starter at shortstop, they’ve shifted their starting second baseman, Matt McLain, over. That pattern is likely to persist in 2026, even in the event of an extended De La Cruz absence, as the Reds are largely devoid of viable alternative starters at shortstop.

Geraldo Perdomo had a massive breakout in 2025, going from “solidly average” territory to MVP candidate in one fell swoop. After amassing only 14 homers over his first three full seasons in the majors, Perdomo lapped himself, hitting 20 round-trippers last year. It wasn’t just that he mashed more home runs, either; he posted career-best marks in batting average (.290), walk rate (13.1%), slugging percentage (.462), stolen bases (27), and WAR (7.1).

At age 26 and with a team-friendly deal that could keep him on the roster through at least the 2029 season, Perdomo is unquestionably the team’s franchise shortstop. He might even still be underrated; I’m surprised at how little attention was given nationally to his elite performance in 2025.

What’s good news for Perdomo is probably bad news for Jordan Lawlar, who once looked like Arizona’s shortstop of the future. The Nolan Arenado trade likely shuts him out of a starting third base job, too, so the Diamondbacks have now been giving him reps him in center field. Still, Lawlar remains an option at shortstop, if he should be needed there.

Arizona must be happy with Ildemaro Vargas, as they’ve kept bringing him back; he’s now on his third stint in the organization. He’s a career utility guy, a role that he’ll continue to fill. If the Diamondbacks need a spare shortstop for more than a week or two, they’re more likely to turn to Lawlar than Vargas.

Remember when it looked like Trea Turner was entering his decline phase? Oops, never mind. OK, time is coming for Turner, just as it eventually comes for all of us. But if the Grim Reaper was starting to peek around the corner, Turner’s 2025 season ought to shoo him away for the moment to scout other, more promising candidates. It wasn’t so much that Turner’s season was different with the bat, but that he seems to have completely arrested what appeared to be his defensive decline. I wrote about it last year, but sudden turnarounds in Statcast defensive performance are fairly sticky.

While the Phillies should worry a bit about how the end of Turner’s deal, which goes through his age-40 season, might turn out, there are other, larger concerns involving the team’s aging core. Although we don’t project Turner to quite match his +11 FRV from last season, it now seems far less likely that Aidan Miller will force him to a lighter defensive position anytime soon.

The Phillies would rightly prefer that Miller be playing shortstop full-time in the minors, rather than backing up Turner in the majors, so that task will fall to the extremely useful Edmundo Sosa, who is more than capable as a short-term starter at the position.

The question with Corey Seager has never really been about how good he is, but about how often he is able to take the field. While his injuries tend not to be season-ending, he often accumulates a collection of nagging ailments that cause him to miss a lot of time in scattered absences, and 2022 stands out as his only fully healthy season in recent years.

Like Henderson, Seager is a rarity as a high-quality left-handed-hitting shortstop (and the all-time lefty-shortstop homer leader). Southpaws have given him more trouble in recent years than they have previously, but that’s still too small a sample size to furrow your brow about.

There are risks with Seager. He turns 32 next month, and one has to worry if these minor injuries will start to become a bigger problem as he ages. But on the plus side, it doesn’t look like he’s anywhere near needing to be moved off shortstop. Really, the Rangers are only this low on the rankings because the competition at short is absolutely brutal, and also because Seager’s injury history limits his playing time projection.

That said, Texas is well-equipped to deal with Seager’s short-term IL trips, as both Ezequiel Duran and Josh Smith are clear steps above your typical utility infielder. Sebastian Walcott may eventually complicate what the Rangers do at shortstop, but that’s a problem for later.

While he’s obviously not going to have seasons on par with peak Mike Trout, Zach Neto has emerged as the new best player on the Angels. The franchise has had decidedly mixed results in its attempts to boost the current roster by drafting advanced college players who reach the majors quickly, but Neto has to be taken as an unmitigated success.

He is merely an average defensive shortstop, but he’s one of the best power hitters at the position in baseball, and there might be even more power to come than we’ve seen. His improvement from 23 home runs in 2024 to 26 in 2025 is smaller than one would expect based on his bump in barrel rate and hard-hit rate. The Angels are at the point where they should seriously consider buying out some of Neto’s eventual free-agent seasons.

Vaughn Grissom had a solid debut for the Braves in 2022, but was disappointing enough in 2023 and 2024 that he’s spent most of his time since then in the minors, including the entirety of 2025. He hasn’t exactly excelled at Triple-A the last two seasons, but he’s still young enough to improve and at least become a useful role player in the majors. He’s more effective at second base than he is at shortstop, however, so he probably wouldn’t be the first choice to replace Neto in the event of a serious injury.

Instead, that role would likely fall to Oswald Peraza, now in the post-hype phase of his major league career. He didn’t hit at all in a utility role in 2025, but I have to believe he’s not as bad as his 32 wRC+ from last year. He’s probably a better option defensively than Grissom would be.

The Giants signed Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182 million contract in December 2024, and the early returns on the deal were fairly concerning. He finished his first three months in San Francisco with a slash line of .210/.297/.339, nine home runs, and an 81 wRC+. From that point on, though, the shortstop came to life. He swatted 21 homers over his final 76 games and put up a .242/.341/.512 line, good for a 137 wRC+, bringing his overall numbers up enough to resemble a typical Adames season: .225/.318/.421, 30 HR, 108 wRC+, 4.0 WAR.

He probably won’t ever hit for a high enough average to join the ultra-elite tier of shortstops in most seasons. The Giants certainly were aware of this when they signed him; a top-five shortstop in his prime isn’t usually going to come up short of $200 million in free agency. He has 30-homer power, draws walks, and plays reasonably good defense, and that’s enough to make him a solidly above-average shortstop, if not a superstar.

Fortunately, Adames is durable, so it’s not as much of an issue that the Giants aren’t carrying an obvious Plan B shortstop on the roster. Casey Schmitt is more comfortable defensively at second base and third base, but he’s capable enough to play shortstop once in a while.

Jeremy Peña had easily his best season in the majors in 2025, achieving personal bests in all three triple-slash categories (.304/.363/.477), as well as wRC+ (135) and WAR (5.7). He also belted 17 home runs, the second-highest total of his career, behind the 22 he hit as a rookie in 2022. This, despite playing in a career-low 125 games because of a fractured rib over the summer and an oblique strain that cost him the final four games of the regular season. He represents an interesting quandary for the Astros, in that they should be talking about an extension — he’s only two years from free agency — but it’s really hard to gauge right now whether 2025 represents a career peak or the establishment of a new plateau.

Naturally, the projection systems take the middle route, projecting a slightly lesser season from Peña in 2026, but one that would still be the second-best year of his career. The batting average especially will come back down a bit, as neither xBA nor the ZiPS version, zBA, is buying his .345 BABIP from 2025. He’s currently out with a broken ring finger, but it’s not expected to keep him out long past the start of the season.

The Astros are that rare team that has two above-average players available to start at shortstop. The team’s previous franchise shortstop, Carlos Correa, returned to Houston in 2025 via a deadline trade with the Twins, and he has a lot to prove in 2026. At 31, he’s not obviously deep into his decline years, but his .276/.332/.402 line last season was well off what he has done at his best. He’s certainly not taking the job from Peña, but he will begin the season at shortstop, until Peña is ready to return to the lineup. Otherwise, he’ll be the starter at third, with Nick Allen the more traditional utility option.

On a team devoid of true stars, Masyn Winn is the closest thing the Cardinals have to one at the moment. While he didn’t improve on his rookie performance with the bat — in fact, it dropped off a bit — Winn’s glove was even better than it was in his 2024 rookie season, ranking among the elite in baseball. Last year’s level of defense can make up for a lot of offensive sins, but given that +17 FRV is hard to maintain, the Cards are certainly hoping Winn can at least return to his 2024 form at the plate.

Winn’s a fairly disciplined hitter, and is above average when it comes to making contact, but he doesn’t generate much power. He’s quick, but not actually fast, so going the Willie Mays Hayes route and probably won’t help much. Unlike most hitters, I think Winn might fare better eschewing launch angle to a degree, and focusing more on hitting liners, like pre-breakout Christian Yelich.

I was a bit surprised that the Cardinals played JJ Wetherholt so much at shortstop in the minors in 2025, long past the point when it should have been obvious that he’d probably need to shift to second base or third base to play for them in the majors. (RosterResource projects him to be their starting second baseman to open the season.) He’s a suitable backup for Winn, however.

Thomas Saggese will probably see time in St. Louis at some point in 2026, and he’s mildly interesting if he rediscovers the power he had in the minors. José Fermín strikes me as more likely to start the season with the Cardinals, though, as he’s an older player and not really a prospect, so there’s little concern about having him ride the bench a lot.

Dansby Swanson is my favorite player with a name that sounds like a character from the Great Gatsby. His fairly ordinary offensive talents keep him from being a superstar, but he’s the centerpiece of a strong Cubs infield defense that makes their pitchers look more impressive than they actually are. His defensive performance lagged a bit in 2025 compared to previous seasons, but that still left him as a solidly above-average performer.

Swanson is entering his age-32 season, so it’s more than possible that his slight drop-off in 2025 represents the start of his decline from an impressive peak. He ought to still be a more-than-adequate starter at shortstop for the four years remaining on his contract, and Jefferson Rojas is still a year or two away from being talked about as the shortstop of the future.

Like several teams whose shortstops lack a significant injury history, it appears the Cubs won’t carry a dedicated shortstop among their reserves, and would likely shift Nico Hoerner over from second base, with Matt Shaw taking over at the keystone in the event that Swanson misses time.

Jacob Wilson is a real throwback of a player, an extreme contact hitter in a baseball world where the quality of contact is considered far more important than the frequency. It worked out marvelously for him in 2025, as he hit .311/.355/.444, his season only marred by a fractured forearm that cost him about a month over the summer. During the offseason, he signed a seven-year, $70 million extension with a club option for 2033, putting top prospect Leo De Vries on notice that if his future is with the A’s, it will have to be at another position.

Wilson’s challenge is to avoid the pitfall that sometimes hinders extremely gifted contact hitters: resisting the temptation to swing at worse and worse pitches for the simple reason that you can put them into play. David Fletcher fell into that trap, as has Luis Arraez over the last two years. But if Wilson can avoid the lure of not letting anything ever land in the catcher’s mitt, he’ll be a fine shortstop for the A’s for a long time.

Darell Hernaiz showed a solid ability to get on base in the minors, though he struggled in Sacramento filling in while Wilson was hurt. He’ll likely have to punch his meal ticket by being versatile. Max Muncy has the misfortune of being the third- or fourth-best shortstop in the organization, and I think he’ll eventually end up as a utility guy somewhere else, though the team is going to try him at third base. Hopefully, he ends up with the Dodgers, so we can get a starting lineup with both Max Muncii at some point.

De Vries is a terrific prospect who held his own at Double-A at age 18, a rare feat. The A’s may not need to particularly hurry to add him to the big league roster, but his bat may make the decision for them, and he’s been playing very well this spring. It seems likely he’ll end up at third base, where nobody’s blocking him.

As the Tigers appear to tiptoe closer to committing to Kevin McGonigle at shortstop — if not on Opening Day, then fairly soon — they have steadily moved up the Depth Charts rankings at the position. He is arguably their best position player prospect in a generation, and you would be hard-pressed to find more complete offensive players in the minors, even before considering that he’s only 21 years old.

McGonigle’s ceiling might come down to how good he turns out to be defensively at shortstop. There’s no indication that he’s a liability there, in the way that, say, Hanley Ramirez was, but at such a deep position, simply being an average defender can really hurt you in the rankings. Players can surprise you here; while there were many opinions on Bobby Witt Jr.’s defense as a prospect in 2021, not many saw him becoming the best shortstop in baseball.

Detroit has fallback options if McGonigle is injured or disappoints. Javier Báez is no great shakes, and a poor summer last year took the air out of any comeback-player storylines, but he can still play the position, and when he actually makes contact with the ball, he can put it in the stands. Zach McKinstry is another solid option, and Trey Sweeney might also see some playing time at short, depending on the state of his shoulder.

Xander Bogaerts was healthier in 2025 than he was in 2024, which was good news for the Padres since he’s under contract for approximately a billion more seasons. No longer playing home games in the batting average-friendly environment of Fenway Park, Bogaerts has seen his usual .290-.300 averages slink down into the .260s, something unlikely to change at this point.

Never a great defender, Bogaerts spent most of 2024 at second base with Ha-Seong Kim starting at shortstop. But with Kim gone last year, Bogaerts reclaimed the position and proceeded to put up the best Statcast defensive performance of his career, at age 32. The offensive decline makes his glove more important than it was earlier in his career.

Whether or not Bogaerts repeats his excellence with the leather, the Padres are committed to him, both in the financial sense and the fact that there’s nobody who could really push him to another position in 2026. Jake Cronenworth only dabbles at shortstop, and Mason McCoy is unlikely to provide any contribution with the bat. The Padres have also been experimenting with Sung-Mun Song, who had a .917 OPS in the KBO last year, at shortstop, but he hasn’t actually played the position since middle school.

Unless something very weird happens, Konnor Griffin will seize firm control of the shortstop job in Pittsburgh before everyone’s cranking up their air conditioners 12 hours a day. The top prospect on both our Top 100 Prospects list and the Top 100 ZiPS Prospects list, Griffin absolutely terrified minor league pitchers across three levels in his first professional season.

Griffin’s 165 wRC+ in the minors would be exciting for a 22-year-old first base prospect, but the 2024 first-rounder was a 19-year-old shortstop, which turbocharges his outlook into phenom territory. The 2026 projection may not be eye-popping, but it’s quite a robust one for computers to make for a player who only has a month of Double-A ball under his belt. If he works out as expected, he could eventually be a 40/40 shortstop with a Gold Glove and challenge Witt, Henderson, and Lindor for shortstop supremacy.

Until Griffin reaches the majors, it appears likely that Nick Gonzales will man the position. He’s a reasonable enough role player or stopgap solution, but realistically, he’s simply at shortstop as the equivalent of a jacket reserving a seat for someone who has not yet arrived.

While the Blue Jays and Bo Bichette don’t seem to have parted on bad terms, it never felt like Toronto was anywhere near as committed to keeping him as it was with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Part of the reason was probably Bichette’s defense, which typically was below average with the Jays and bottomed out at -10 FRV in 2025. Along those lines, with Bichette gone, Andrés Giménez will play shortstop full-time to upgrade that defense, with Ernie Clement taking over at second base.

Giménez hasn’t played a lot of shortstop in recent years, but he admirably filled in down the stretch and through the postseason after Bichette injured his knee in September. Even though Giménez has been playing the keystone, elite second basemen tend to be pretty good shortstops, and he was originally a shortstop prospect for the Mets. He’s also one of the harder throwing second basemen in baseball, so his arm shouldn’t be an issue throwing from the hole.

The big question is if Giménez can ever make good on his early offensive promise. After a 141 wRC+ in 2022, his first full season in the majors, he dropped to 96 in 2023, then slipped to 83 in 2024, and last year was only at 70. The Steamer and ZiPS projections still see him as young enough to have hope, pegging him for a mark of 94. If the slide continues, the Jays will slip even further down the rankings, and may want to start considering other approaches at the position.

Clement will be available to pitch in at shortstop when the need arises, and Leo Jiménez is the team’s most traditional utility guy, though Toronto may leave him in the minors and carry non-shortstop Davis Schneider as the roster’s only infield backup.

The Colorado Rockies only have a few starting position players who are actually…well…good. Ezequiel Tovar is one of them, and though he has yet to take the steps needed to become an actual star, one can actually look at the next good Rockies team and see him as the starting shortstop.

In Tovar’s defense, a hip injury and a sore oblique played some role in his rather meh 2025 season. He’s only 24, an age when many good players are still breaking into the majors, so the projections are fairly positive about his chances to regain his home run swing from 2024, when he knocked 26 into the stands. And Colorado’s hope is that his defense will get back to his 2023-2024 level, which earned him a Gold Glove in the latter season and serious contention in the former.

But where Tovar really needs to make progress is his plate discipline. He swings at too many pitches and actually connects with too few of them. Coors Field isn’t the home run park it once was, but it remains a terrific batting average/BABIP park. Coors incentivizes putting balls in play, since balls in play do more damage there than anywhere else in MLB history, so whiffs for strike three are especially damaging. This is the one place I do care about batter strikeouts!

Ryan Ritter has the inside track on the utility infield job, and will likely be the backup for Tovar. Willi Castro, signed to a two-year contract this winter, will start at third base, but could make some appearances at short, as well.

Is CJ Abrams a shortstop? That’s the million-dollar question for the Washington Nationals. He has developed about as expected offensively, with a power-speed combination that keeps him near the top of the lineup. But his defense has always lagged behind his bat, and now entering his fifth season in the majors, it looks unlikely that he’ll ever be a plus with the leather. Despite his athleticism, he’s never displayed good range at shortstop, and the whispers that he’ll eventually move to the outfield get a bit louder every year.

For now, however, with the Nats stocked with more outfielders than replacement shortstops, Abrams remains the starter. He’s now entering his arbitration years, and Washington’s rebuild means he’ll probably be playing shortstop or the outfield on another team within the next year or two. Eli Willits, not Abrams, is the player the Nationals hope will be their franchise shortstop.

Realistically, the Nats don’t have any candidates ahead of Willits to challenge Abrams at shortstop in the short term. Nasim Nuñez and José Tena are at best fill-in options, and both of the likely Triple-A shortstops, Sergio Alcántara and Levi Jordan, are organizational depth rather than actual prospects.

Colson Montgomery is kind of a difficult player to get a read on, simply because of the cognitive dissonance caused by his profile. He’s mixed some terrific minor league seasons with some absolutely terrible play at times, and in 2025, he performed the rather odd feat of being unable to hit Triple-A pitchers effectively (.215/.295/.416) while feasting on the supposedly superior major leaguers (.239/.311/.529).

Take the middle lane and you get a low batting average shortstop with some impressive power upside, who was surprisingly solid with the glove during his time with the White Sox in 2025. The good news for the Sox, when it comes to Montgomery anyway, is that they’re still far from contention and don’t have to make any firm decisions about him yet; they can simply play him and see what happens.

Luisangel Acuña, acquired from the Mets in the Luis Robert Jr. trade, has mostly played shortstop professionally, certainly enough to make him a reasonable option. But he’s needed more in center field than anywhere in the infield. Chase Meidroth is another former shortstop prospect, but he has always seemed destined for second or third base. As with Montgomery, the White Sox have the luxury of seeing Meidroth in the majors at short once in a while, for the science.

I have some sympathy for players like Otto Lopez, who would be considered a minor star if he played back when I was a tyke. But teams are far more willing to keep their stars at shortstop until they conclusively prove they can’t handle the defensive requirements than they used to be. So Lopez, a very ordinary offensive talent with a very average glove, is going to be hard-pressed to stand out from the pack among shortstops.

Lopez is a decent contact hitter who is willing to draw the occasional walk, but as with other aspects of his game, he doesn’t really excel at either of these things. In a lot of ways, he’s a template for “Average Shortstop.” That’s enough to have a successful career in the majors, and to hang onto the starting spot in Miami until the Marlins have to pay him something resembling market value or develop a legitimate star.

That’s unlikely to be Javier Sanoja, who isn’t all that dissimilar from Lopez. He is four years younger and could probably give the Marlins 90% of what they’re getting from Lopez. Sanoja also has a year less service time, which the team likely appreciates. (Imagine some universally understood gesture that evokes dollars here.) But there’s no way to Voltron them together into a four-win player or a sword-fighting robot. Maximo Acosta is a similarly unexciting-but-adequate shortstop candidate who is likely headed for a utility role.

Remember when power-hitting shortstops were rare? In the 1970s, only a single player we characterize as a shortstop hit 75 homers over the course of the entire decade (Toby Harrah with 128). Nowadays, being a competent shortstop who does not have much power mostly keeps you from even being above average.

Crawford had what looks like his magnum opus season in 2023, hitting .266/.380/.438, for 4.9 WAR, but an oblique injury and a broken finger contributed to a fairly weak follow-up campaign in 2024. Much healthier last year, Crawford was good, but not on the level of his big season. The offense matters a great deal for him, as his defensive stats have slipped to the level where you can characterize him as below average at the position.

Colt Emerson is pushing fairly hard from behind, and as the future of the position for the Mariners, with Crawford entering the final season of his contract, he could steal some playing time later on this year.

In the event of a short-term injury to Crawford, Leo Rivas is likely to be the fill-in, and he’s a really interesting role player. After a relatively uneventful minor league career, he became a human walk machine a couple of years ago. That continued in the majors, and a .244 batting average was enough to support a .387 on-base percentage. He doesn’t have much power, but good teams find ways to use players like Rivas.

Several years ago, it looked like the Yankees had an impressive stable of shortstop prospects, with Anthony Volpe, Oswaldo Cabrera, and Oswald Peraza all appearing capable of starting at the position. Fast-forward to 2026, and the question is whether any of them are going to work out. Peraza’s already gone to Los Angeles, and the Yankees have given up on Cabrera as a shortstop, leaving Volpe the winner by default.

Volpe’s offense disappointed in his first two seasons in the majors in 2023 and 2024, but he was solid defensively and not really a problem for the Yankees. But that pattern didn’t hold in 2025, as the same underwhelming offensive performance was paired with a huge defensive step backward, putting Volpe’s long-term status in serious jeopardy.

On the other hand, there’s a reasonable possibility that, while it doesn’t explain the lack of development for Volpe offensively, that the partially torn labrum he played through for most of 2025 hindered his performance both at the plate and in the field.

Volpe will miss most of April as he recovers from offseason shoulder surgery. He’ll still have to turn things around quickly after he returns, especially defensively, or he might find himself losing playing time to José Caballero, who played well for the Yankees last year after they acquired him from the Rays at the deadline. Caballero doesn’t have anything resembling Volpe’s power, but he eats fewer outs at the plate than Volpe.

Cabrera is still theoretically an option at shortstop for short stints once he returns from his ankle injury, and Paul DeJong was signed to a minor league contract just in case a dysentery outbreak in the Yankees’ clubhouse necessitates an emergency replacement.

Joey Ortiz enters 2026 with a lot to prove, following up a solid 2024 debut with a .230/.276/.317 line, good for only a 67 wRC+. His saving grace is that he was excellent defensively at shortstop, ensuring he was able to salvage his season and avoid losing playing time to someone such as Andruw Monasterio, who has since been traded to the Red Sox.

The good news is that Ortiz’s 2025 line looks out of place compared to his rookie season and minor league career, and the projection systems forecast a bounce-back performance. It’s not enough to get him and the Brewers ranked highly against such fierce competition at the position, but if he hits his projection, Milwaukee will be very happy.

Even so, Ortiz shouldn’t completely ignore his rearview mirror, as Jett Williams, acquired in the Freddy Peralta trade, represents scarier competition than Monasterio ever did. If Williams excels in Triple-A this year and Ortiz’s bat doesn’t perk up, there’s at least a chance that Williams grabs some playing time down the stretch.

David Hamilton appears to be Milwaukee’s utility infielder of choice, so he should see some scattered playing time at short. Brice Turang is entrenched at second base, but if the Brewers needs a longer-term fill-in, and they’re not ready to promote Williams, he could see some time at shortstop, too.

Following two injury-plagued seasons, Trevor Story was as healthy in 2025 as he’s ever been, playing 157 games and hitting 25 home runs, his most since 2019. Projections, however, are skeptical that he will match his 3.0 WAR. While the homers were nice, especially for a team that doesn’t have a ton of pure home run power on the roster, Story is also a rather mediocre contact hitter, and the drop-off in his walk rate last year resulted in his on-base percentage just barely getting over the .300 mark.

Also hurting Story’s projections is the fact that he’s now 33, a dangerous time when the performance of many otherwise adequate middle infielders drops off a cliff. His poor recent defensive numbers are an additional cause for concern, as it would mess up Boston’s depth chart if Story needs to move off shortstop.

In the event that Story misses time, the Red Sox brought in Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Andruw Monasterio this winter, with Marcelo Mayer likely to play mostly second base. I still think if the Red Sox need to replace Story for large chunks of the season, moving Mayer back to shortstop and making other arrangements to split time at second base with Romy Gonzalez would be a better solution than either of these backups.

Since Dansby Swanson signed with the Cubs after the 2022 season, shortstop has been one of Atlanta’s weaker positions, and that’s not likely to change in 2026. Ha-Seong Kim was very impressive with the Padres in 2022 and 2023, but his 2024 season was rather lackluster, and his 2025 was ruined, first by the shoulder injury that knocked him out of the 2024 postseason, and then by a rather lousy performance that led the Rays to place him on waivers.

The Braves appeared to have little interest in paying Bo Bichette’s asking price, leaving Kim as the probable best alternative option available in free agency. He signed a one-year, $20 million deal, but just weeks later, he slipped on a sheet of ice and tore a tendon in his middle finger, requiring hand surgery. As a result, Kim will be out until at least the middle of May. When he returns, he ought to be a boringly average shortstop, which is precisely what the Braves are looking for at that price.

The short-term replacement at shortstop is highly useful utility infielder Mauricio Dubón. A good role player, Dubón is stretched as a full-time starter, though his defensive numbers in limited time at shortstop are far more impressive than you’d expect from his reputation. Jorge Mateo is likely to be the utility infielder while Dubón is starting, but he will need to improve from a very poor 2025 season to stay on the roster past Kim’s return.

Given the depth of the competition at shortstop, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see a team starting a player with a .284 on-base percentage projection land near the bottom of the list. For the Guardians to rank much higher, Gabriel Arias would need to have either a phenomenal glove or significant power; he has neither.

It’s hard to see much offensive upside for Arias. He’s one of the worst contact hitters in the majors — his contact rate is just 63.6% for his career — and with a 36.2% out-of-zone swing rate, he swings at more bad pitches than the producers of Sharknado rip-offs. Arias is mainly the starting shortstop because he’s inexpensive and has a better arm than Brayan Rocchio. Cleveland simply hasn’t come up with a better idea yet. The Guardians’ short-term plan here is probably crossing their fingers and hoping that Angel Genao has a big season in the minors in 2026.

Rocchio’s .165/.235/.198 line to start last season punched his ticket to Triple-A Columbus, where he got his bat back on track enough to get the nod at shortstop again when Arias sprained his ankle. He played second base after Arias returned, and that’s probably his most comfortable defensive home. He’ll still be called into service at shortstop if Arias misses significant time due to injury.

Shortstop has been a tough position for the Rays since August 2023, when Wander Franco was first placed on the restricted list; as a team, Tampa Bay ranked 25th in baseball in WAR at the position in 2025. Taylor Walls is a good utility infielder who is far too stretched offensively to be a viable starter, and José Caballero was dealt to the Yankees at last year’s trade deadline.

Carson Williams is an interesting prospect, but one would be lying if they said that 2025 didn’t negatively affect their assessment of his future. Coming off a 142 wRC+ season at Double-A ball in 2024, Williams wasn’t particularly impressive against Triple-A pitching last year, hitting for power but just barely crossing the Mendoza line. He then looked overmatched in his stint in the majors, batting only .172/.219/.354 after being promoted in August.

He is probably better than the 54 wRC+ he put up in his first taste of the big leagues, but that’s still enough for us to temper our expectations considerably, especially over the short term. If Williams continues to have problems with major league pitching, Walls will likely be called back into service as the starter.

Another possible option is Ben Williamson, a terrific defensive player at third base whom the Rays have been looking at as a possible utility option. Gavin Lux could grab an occasional start at short, too, but he isn’t generally thought of as a consistent option at the position.

And thus we’ve reached the lowest-ranked team at shortstop, the Minnesota Twins. It’s got to be more than mildly annoying for a team to rank last in baseball at a position while having players who are actually pretty good at baseball expected to see playing time there, but that reflects a baseball world in which teams are determined to keep their most talented players at shortstop as long as possible.

Brooks Lee is a serviceable stopgap, but he lacks any standout quality that would get the Twins ranked any higher. Middling power, middling plate discipline, middling contact ability, and middling defense add up to a player who deserves a role in the majors, but one who doesn’t really push a team toward October baseball.

Ryan Kreidler, claimed off waivers in October, will continue to fill the utility role he held with the Tigers the last few years. Orlando Arcia’s around as the Veteran Option© after signing a minor league deal coming off a year in which he recorded a wRC+ of 33(!) for the Braves and Rockies. ZiPS is a big fan of Kaelen Culpepper, and if that prognostication is accurate, there’s a non-zero chance that he could start to look like the team’s best immediate option at shortstop by the fall.