Meet the New Shortstop, Moderately Different From the Old Shortstop
While the top of the celebrated free agent shortstop market has yet to roll into motion, the end of last week saw a flurry of action a little lower on the positional power rankings. The Yankees agreed to a one-year, $6 million deal with Isiah Kiner-Falefa, locking up his final season of team control. And as Friday afternoon progressed, four other teams linked up for an exchange of shortstops. A shortswap, if you will.
Gio Urshela went from the Twins to the Angels for 19-year-old pitching prospect Alejandro Hidalgo, Kyle Farmer went from the Reds to the Twins for minor league pitcher Casey Legumina, and Kevin Newman went from the Pirates to the Reds for reliever Dauri Moreta.
Let’s deal with the Kiner-Falefa re-signing first, and then tackle the trade carousel. Kiner-Falefa could probably be less popular among Yankee fans, but only if he ran for mayor. He came up with the Rangers as a catcher before moving to third and then shortstop, and the Yankees hoped to get the best version of him: An aggressive, high-contact hitter who could hit for a reasonably high average. He could make up for a near-total lack of walks or power (in five seasons in the majors, he’s never had an ISO of .100 or better), with good stolen base numbers and excellent defense. (After watching Gleyber Torres at short the previous few seasons, that last bit was a non-trivial concern.) He’s never been a great player but he’s usually been adequate.
That, right off the bat, is a little underwhelming — the Yankees normally have higher standards than merely “adequate” — and IKF had an up-and-down season. He didn’t take a leap forward offensively the way Urshela did in his first year with the Yankees; while Kiner-Falefa posted the third-highest contact rate among 130 qualified hitters, he hit just .261/.314/.327. And the defense? Merely average by OAA, but above-average by DRS. By the time the Yankees were imploding in the playoffs, Kiner-Falefa had been benched in favor of rookies Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza.
The Yankees obviously have the money to pursue one of the top free agent shortstops, just as they could have signed Corey Seager or Marcus Semien last year. But bringing IKF back indicates a belief that their long-term shortstop will be an internal option. It seems like the Yankees view Kiner-Falefa as a one-year stopgap, keeping the seat warm for either Peraza or Anthony Volpe, who should probably change his first name to some derivative of Oswald if he wants to fit in. At $6 million, Kiner-Falefa is a bit expensive for a backup infielder, but if one of the kids plays well enough to claim the starting shortstop job in spring training, that’d be a nice problem to have. If not, Kiner-Falefa is a safe pair of hands for a year, or at least the Yankees seem to think so.
The Yankees went with a known quantity, but if they’d decided to play around in the trade market, it turns out they had options:
| Player | Previous Team | New Team | Proj. 2023 Salary* | Proj. 2023 WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gio Urshela | Twins | Angels | $9.2 million | 1.3 |
| Isiah Kiner-Falefa | Yankees | Yankees | $6 million | 0.8 |
| Kyle Farmer | Reds | Twins | $5.9 million | 1.4 |
| Kevin Newman | Pirates | Reds | $2.8 million | 1.2 |
Sharp-eyed readers no doubt have already noticed that I’ve grouped Urshela in with the shortstops, even though he played just three innings there in 2022, and has made nearly 13 appearances at third base for every appearance at short over the course of his career. Part of that has to do with being blocked by bigger names — Carlos Correa last year, Torres during his time with the Yankees, and Francisco Lindor when he first came up with Cleveland.
Over the past few seasons, Urshela has been an impact hitter; since 2019, he’s hit .290/.336/.463, good for a 118 wRC+. With the Angels, he’s once again slated to play next to a big-name infielder, but a third baseman this time in Anthony Rendon. Or, because you’ll never go broke betting on Rendon to get hurt, Urshela can fill in at third if and when Rendon is on the IL.
With Correa likely on his way out, now seems like an odd time for the Twins to divest from an infielder with an above-average bat. And while Hidalgo has shown lots of promise in the past, he’s a 19-year-old who just missed half the season with a rotator cuff issue and came back for instructs throwing in the high 80s; this is not some elite pitching prospect Minnesota’s getting back.
But the Twins have options across the infield. Jose Miranda impressed as a rookie, hitting .268/.325/.426 in 483 plate appearances; that’s basically the same line Urshela put up last year, though Miranda is the inferior defensive third baseman. Luis Arraez won the batting title last year mostly playing first and DHing, but he can still play second, which could push Jorge Polanco back to shortstop if the Twins feel like taking the defensive hit. Nick Gordon can play all over the diamond, and while Royce Lewis is recovering from a torn ACL, he’ll be back at some point this coming year.
Which brings Farmer into the equation. Minnesota sent Legumina, a 2019 eighth-round pick who profiles as a potential one-inning middle reliever, to Cincinnati to pry Farmer loose. Farmer is basically the midpoint between Kiner-Falefa and Urshela; he’s a capable defensive shortstop, but not a spectacular one. And while he’s a below-average hitter, topping out at a wRC+ of 91 this year in the best season of his career, he’s not an automatic out. In fact, he killed left-handed pitching in 2022 to the tune of a .309/.380/.568 line. Maybe there’s a platoon in the works with Gordon, who had a 125 wRC+ against righties but just a 57 against lefties last year. Or maybe the Twins are freeing up money to make a bigger move, since Farmer stands to be about $3 million cheaper than Urshela this year.
But he’ll cost about twice as much as Newman, a former first-round pick who at age 29 is being displaced by the next generation of Pirates prospects. Oneil Cruz already supplanted Newman this season, and Newman’s hold on second base is likely only temporary with Nick Gonzales approaching major league readiness and Termarr Johnson not too terribly far behind him. Newman had his best offensive season since 2019 this season, hitting .274/.316/.372 in 309 plate appearances. Project that over a full year and that’s an honest-to-goodness average shortstop, for the cost of an unremarkable reliever in Moreta.
The daisy chain of shortstop trades to end last week carries the faint scent of the red paper clip project. The Angels, a team that whatever its other faults does spend money, sent a pitching prospect to Minnesota for one year of a solid infielder. Minnesota, a team with fewer resources but similar ambitions, replaced said infielder by trading a slightly worse pitching prospect for a slightly worse, slightly cheaper shortstop. And so on down the line, until the sequence reached a Pirates team that’s open to trading just about anyone.
None of these four infielders were good enough to be central to their teams’ plans, which made them expendable and not particularly valuable in trade. But neither were they bad enough or expensive enough to get non-tendered, or to tempt their teams to find replacements in a non-tender market that’s shaping up to be pretty uninspiring for middle infielders.
Better to pick up a surefire big league-quality shortstop in a trade. Even if he costs a young pitcher and a little more money. Everyone toss your keys in the bowl — you’re going home with a shortstop, maybe just not the one you came with.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
Come for the trade analysis, stay for the swinger party jokes.
And vice versa
There are cases of players who were better defensively at shortstop than at third base, but I’m guessing the list is pretty short. This is almost certainly the reason why the Twins traded Urshela–because they didn’t think he could handle short. He makes more sense for an Angels team that is worried that Rendon is never going to play a full season again.
FWIW, I think the Twins’ hope is probably that Royce Lewis will be the long-term solution at short, and if not that Brooks Lee will stick there. But I’d be skeptical of Lewis’s health and Lee’s long-term home. I suppose Noah Miller or De Andrade might get stronger, but the early returns have not been promising.
Between Urshela, Rengifo, and a full season of Fletcher, the Angels won’t need to wave the red flag offensively for the three non-1B infield positions the way they did last year. Getting a solid 70-100 games out of Rendon would be a nice pick-up too, but now they don’t have to count on him to keep the middle of their lineup from being an offensive black hole.
As for Royce Lewis, I’m rooting for the guy to get and stay healthy, to see if he can become a poor man’s Barry Larkin. Sure seemed like he was on his way before reinjuring himself last year.
There’s zero analysis behind this, but he definitely doesn’t look like a SS. A bit on the chunkier side
Just imagine if David Eckstein had ever attempted to play 3B and had to (attempt to) throw it across the entire diamond with regularity…
The Urshela one still doesn’t make sense to me.
This article points out the need for a “Value Above Non-Tender” metric. For example, Kevin Newman would be roughly at the upper range of the margin of error around 0.0 VANT, just enough to get a warm minor-league body in return during the offseason.
Newman’s a little interesting. It seems like he figured out that there was more to life than avoiding Ks at all costs this year, and saw a significant bump in LA. As dumb as it sounds, if he can keep striking out more instead of selling out for weak contact there may be some upside
I think IKF gets traded for a couple of prospects this winter and then they’ll have the two rookies (Volpe + Peraza) + Oswaldo Cabrera battle out for SS in spring training. If they stink throughout the year, they can trade for someone or swap one out for the other. I don’t think the Yankees plan on having more than one rookie start for them this year. It’s just the nature of the Yankees to not rely on rookies.
Teams don’t sign free agents to guaranteed contracts and then trade them a month or two later before the season starts.
IKF wasn’t a free agent though, this was his final year of arb.
Maybe not, but there have been cases like Rollie Fingers and Mike Piazza who have been traded twice in the same offseason.
Much like IKF was last year.
It’s very early in the offseason to project the NY roster. There’s a lot more uncertainty and a dearth of quality options outside the org if the first few dominos don’t fall their way.
I’m broadly in agreement, though I’m not totally sure that NYY will go with the rookie battle.
I think it’s fairly unlikely IKF comes back just because he’s such a flashpoint for a certain segment of Yankee fans who seem compelled to scapegoat him for everything that went wrong for the team in 2022. He should bring back decent value, too.
I don’t think the Yankees move IKF right now – at this point you’d be lucky to get back what the Reds got for Farmer. If he regains his luster a bit, they might move him to a contender in an old-fashioned need-for-need type trade.
They brought Joey Gallo back for 4 months of the season after basically admitting that trading for him was a mistake. They’re either really bad at or don’t care about changing the narrative about the teams they put together. I’d still put it at close to 50% that Kiner-Falefa gets most of the starts at shortstop through, say, June or July.
That’s… a really good point. I think you’re right.
It helps, obviously, that the Yankees’ FO seems to earnestly, honestly believe that IKF is an excellent defensive shortstop. IIRC from last offseason, his defense is viewed pretty positively across most MLB FO’s, though I wonder how much this season might have changed that. Maybe most front offices use metrics that are closer to (obviously much more advanced versions of) DRS?
I think there are clearly some internal metrics that say different things about Kiner-Falefa’s defense than the publicly available ones. Something I noticed in the middle of the season is that not just Kiner-Falefa, but every player who started a game at SS for the Yankees in the 2022 season played a few feet deeper than most of the league. check out the rankings here: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/visuals/fielder-positioning-all?teamId=&season=2022&position=6&attempts=10
It’s a team pattern. The Dodgers’ shortstops all played deeper than league average too, although their angle was different. What I suspect that means is that these teams basically draw up their defensive schemes much more intricately than you’ll see discussed in public, and their grading internally is probably in relation to those schemes rather than the league. I know OAA is designed to account for positioning, so maybe I’m totally misguided, but it seems to me like there’s something there.
IKF also gives them space to trade Torres and break the Oswalds in one at a time
Who’s giving up prospects for IKF?
I think the Yankees’ plan is to have IKF penciled in at SS in case Paraza and Volpe both look unready. Can’t hurt to have contingencies.
I don’t believe the Angels acquired Urshela to play SS, at least full time. His last two teams — the Yankees and Twins — both assessed his skills as NOT being able to handle SS. Solid fielder at 3B, although his range is iffy to one side, hence why he often makes spectacular looking plays, but ones that other 3B’man make with ease.
Still, a solid addition. Provides coverage for 3B as the Angels don’t know what they’ll get from Rendon. They can move him about the infield, although the limitation on shifts means he might be even more exposed in the middle infield.
Baseball is strange where we’ve gone from a world where Urshela was once viewed as a slick fielder with no bat, to now a good bat with questionable range in the field.