Shortstops Are Hitting Like Never Before
Take a look at a 2019 WAR leaderboard and you’ll see some familiar names at the top. Cody Bellinger is having a whale of a season. Christian Yelich is hitting like Barry Bonds and is somehow second in the majors in baserunning runs as well. Mike Trout — well, you know Mike Trout. Look a little closer though, and you might notice something strange. There are four shortstops in the top 10 for WAR this year, and they’re not the usual suspects. Paul DeJong, Elvis Andrus, Jorge Polanco, and Javier Báez are all having great seasons so far, and if you had them as the four best shortstops in baseball this year, you’re a better prognosticator than I am.
Cast your eyes a little further down the board and you might see an interesting trend. Marcus Semien is 11th in WAR. Tim Anderson, Trevor Story, Xander Bogaerts, and Adalberto Mondesi are in the top 25, and Fernando Tatis Jr. isn’t far behind. Perennial stalwarts Andrelton Simmons, Corey Seager, and Carlos Correa are off to good starts. Shortstop, in fact, has produced more WAR than any other position this year.
Now, to some extent, that’s a referendum on how important shortstop is defensively. Only catcher has a higher positional adjustment than shortstop, and as a result only catchers have been worth more defensive runs this year. However, dismissing the prevalence of shortstops atop the WAR leaderboard as a defense-based illusion sells this current crop short. We could very well be looking at the best-hitting shortstop season of all time.
Let’s start at the very top with wRC+. This year’s shortstop class has produced a 107 wRC+ so far. That isn’t the actual best in baseball history, but it’s second only to 1874, and hoo boy are stats from 1874 weird. In that season, shortstops walked .9% of the time, struck out 1.2% of the time, and delivered a batting line of .305/.311/.372 in only 660 games. Let’s be reasonable here and throw out everything before the turn of the century. Cut those out, and the leaderboard looks like this:
| Year | wRC+ |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 107 |
| 1904 | 101 |
| 1908 | 96 |
| 1909 | 96 |
| 2018 | 95 |
| 1905 | 94 |
| 1917 | 93 |
| 1910 | 93 |
| 1907 | 93 |
| 2016 | 93 |
2019 shortstops are on top, and it isn’t particularly close. Strip out everything pre-integration, and the recent rise of slugging shortstops jumps out even more:
| Year | wRC+ |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 107 |
| 2018 | 95 |
| 2016 | 93 |
| 1947 | 90 |
| 2007 | 90 |
| 1964 | 90 |
| 1949 | 89 |
| 2005 | 88 |
| 2017 | 88 |
| 2002 | 88 |
Ask most baseball fans for the best shortstop-hitting season in history, and they’ll point to 2002. This was indeed a year of great shortstop hitters — Alex Rodriguez hit .300/.392/.623 on his way to a 10-WAR season, and Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, and Miguel Tejada all had sterling years. That’s all well and good — it was a top 10 season on the above leaderboard, after all — but 2002 also had 585 plate appearances of Neifi Perez’s .236/.260/.303 line, as well as a shockingly low-offense season from Rockies shortstop Juan Uribe, who hit .240/.286/.341 while playing half of his games at Coors.
This season has its fair share of laggards (Brandon Crawford is slugging .212), but it also has 16 shortstops with a batting line at or above league average. Freddy Galvis is hitting .297/.317/.485 and is the 14th-best-hitting shortstop this year. That 114 wRC+ would have been sixth-best in 2002. The depth of shortstop right now is simply stunning.
Now, as Dan Szymborski would surely remind you, it’s early in the year to make any rash proclamations. The season, after all, is only about one-sixth over. Shortstops as a whole have a .326 BABIP, and that’s not going to hold up all year — the highest single-season BABIP shortstops have recorded as a position is .304 in 2016. Well, FanGraphs has March/April splits going all the way back to 1974. Take a look at the best Aprils on record:
| Year | wRC+ |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 107 |
| 2018 | 97 |
| 1995 | 95 |
| 1996 | 94 |
| 1976 | 93 |
| 2002 | 90 |
| 2014 | 87 |
| 2006 | 87 |
| 2000 | 87 |
| 2013 | 86 |
Okay, so it’s safe to say that 2019 has been exceptional. Not only have we not had a season like this, we haven’t had an April like this. As Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller recently pointed out though, rumors of a position’s demise (or emergence) are often greatly exaggerated. Positions have good or bad years without any rhyme or reason all the time. Without anything beyond “hey, shortstops have hit well this year you dope,” it would be hard to believe that anything has really changed. What gives? Why write an article about this now?
Well, basically because of sample size. Even if that April leaderboard is impressive, it’s not enough. Heck, even if this season kept up for the year, it might not be enough. Right this minute, if you stripped DeJong and Andrus out of the data, shortstops would only have a 103 wRC+ this year. That’s almost a convenient number, because DeJong had a 102 wRC+ last year — substitute in last year’s DeJong, and he’d blend right in. ZiPS projects Andrus for a 101 rest-of-season wRC+. It doesn’t take much, in other words, to cut several points off of the position of shortstop’s overall batting line.
Luckily we’re not limited to using just this year. Take a look at the post-integration leaderboard again. 2019 is first, sure. That’s why you’re reading this article, after all. 2018 is second though, and 2016 is third. Even 2017 sneaks into the top 10 at ninth. Shortstops didn’t luck into a few home runs this April — they’ve been hitting as well as the position ever has for years. Maybe Andrus and DeJong have been getting lucky this year, but they combined for a 91 wRC+ last year and shortstops had what was then their best-hitting year ever.
A theory of how well shortstops have been hitting doesn’t have to rely on a few fluky performances. Take a look at the best hitters of 2018 and you’ll see shortstops sneaking in all over the place. Manny Machado had a tremendous year (offensively) at shortstop. Francisco Lindor was his usual spectacular self. Bogaerts broke out. None of those three players are among the best eight batting lines for shortstops this year. The position is incredibly deep.
If it’s not a fluke, what could it be? I have a few theories. First, it’s really hard to be a terrible hitter in baseball right now and get consistent playing time. Analytics has roughly quantified the value of offense and defense, and even if the specifics haven’t been ironed out, teams are far less willing to play an offensive black hole to get their glove in the lineup. To pick a random year from the defense-and-speed 80s, 1985 saw 11 players qualify for the batting title with a wRC+ below 75. Five of those eleven were shortstops. If you could field, you could play shortstop.
Fast-forward to 2018, and three players in all of baseball had a wRC+ below 75 while qualifying for the batting title. One (Alcides Escobar) was a shortstop, and he hasn’t played a game in the majors this year. Teams simply aren’t willing to devote a season’s worth of at-bats to offensive lines that poor anymore.
If you have a sneaking suspicion that terrible batters were disproportionately shortstops in the past, you’re onto something. Using OPS+ as a metric, it’s clear that from the 1970s to the early 2000s, teams were throwing some pretty awful shortstops out there. Take a look at the number of 75-and-below OPS+ shortstops who qualified for batting titles by decade:
| Decade | Seasons <= 75 OPS+ |
|---|---|
| 1950-1959 | 27 |
| 1960-1969 | 29 |
| 1970-1979 | 56 |
| 1980-1989 | 45 |
| 1990-1999 | 36 |
| 2000-2009 | 47 |
| 2010-2019 | 24 |
Maybe there’s not a definite trend, but it’s suggestive of something. As an aside, Alcides Escobar is truly remarkable. Of the 24 sub-75 OPS+ shortstop seasons since 2010, he’s contributed seven. In 2013, he slashed .234/.259/.300 for a 49 wRC+ and played 158 games. If it weren’t for Ned Yost’s belief in Esky Magic, shortstops would have been doing even better.
That reason isn’t enough to feel good about. After all, the 1950s and 1960s had few truly poor batting seasons from shortstops, and they still fell short of the gold standard of recent years. Luckily, we can turn to the modern game for another answer. Think of the old days of baseball, and you probably imagine a diminutive but rangy shortstop making a play. Ozzie Smith was 5-foot-11. Robin Yount was a slender 6-foot. Pee Wee Reese was literally nicknamed Pee Wee, and we’re just talking about some of the standouts here. As recently as 2000, only four qualifying shortstops were 6-foot-1 or taller.
Height isn’t some magic tool that unlocks hitting. Still, it’s a good proxy for looking at power hitters starting to play shortstop. If Rodriguez and Jeter had come up in the 1970s, their 6-foot-3 height might have kept teams from playing them at shortstop. Cal Ripken was a large boy who stuck at short, but teams mostly shied away from playing people that tall and large at such a demanding defensive position. Take a look at the number of qualifying shortstops who stand 6-foot-1 or taller by year:
We’re living in an era in which giants roam the earth. This effect isn’t limited to shortstop, but it’s most concentrated there. The number of 6-foot-1 or taller batters has essentially tripled since the late 40s, but at shortstop it’s more like five-fold. Weight is even more telling. Before 1994, Ripken and Andre Rodgers were the only shortstops ever listed at 200 pounds or greater. This year, 15 shortstops fit the bill. Baseball is getting bigger and stronger, but shortstops are doing so faster than the rest of the league.
There’s one reason I haven’t yet considered. Maybe there’s just a wave of great shortstops playing right now; not for some macro reason, but just by pure chance. Lindor has barely played this year, but he’s arguably a generational talent. He mostly doesn’t fit the trends I’m saying exist. He’s under six feet tall and doesn’t weigh 200 pounds. His defense would play in any era. He’s just, you know, great. Simmons is now batting well enough that he’s a creditable addition to the position’s overall line, but he’d be playable even if he were a worse hitter. There’s no trend that can account for the best shortstop defender maybe ever happening to be a competent hitter.
If that’s the case, looking for trends is missing the trees for the forest. A few great individual players can sometimes tip the balance of the big picture. Sometimes greatness just happens. However, I think that we can safely say that this isn’t the only factor. After all, one of the truly remarkable things about this season is just how many shortstops are hitting well. It’s one thing to explain away Andrelton Simmons, and another entirely to say Dansby Swanson and Marcus Semien are the kind of generational talents that can break trends.
If you want my best guess, I think it’s a mixture of everything. Shortstops are getting taller and heavier faster than the rest of the league, and teams aren’t playing offensive deadweights like they used to. At the same time, a few outliers might be filtering through the game right now. Whatever’s causing it, shortstops are hitting like never before. If you’re looking through a lineup and wondering where the weak batting link is, your instincts will deceive you. Shortstops can rake.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Is this a byproduct of teams seeing fewer balls in play and being willing to sacrifice a little on the defensive side to gain significantly on the offensive?
This makes complete sense. Just looking at the fielding side – MLB shortstops were involved in (or credited with) 2.25 plays/game in 2006. Last year, it was 1.66 and this year’s runrate is identical to last year. That’s a huge drop which since the declines are prob comparable with 3B and 2B (and with the end of basestealing as well) means you just don’t need the rangy slaphitter defense-first guy anymore (except maybe in CF).
And my guess is that the defensive metrics and the notion of the ‘replacement-player’ haven’t adjusted as fast so the best draftees (who often did play SS from Little League thru college cuz that’s where the ‘team captain’ type position player has always played and ‘tradition’) tentatively ‘slotted’ as SS-until-they-grow-out-of-it are now focused on developing at the plate not in the field.
I’ll be interested to see WHEN that fielding decline for the position will result in a team putting lefties out into the field as 2B or SS or 3B. The ‘fielding demands’ have been the sole reason lefties have been excluded from those positions for a century or more. but that rationale no longer really exists.
The lefty thing is interesting, but I just don’t see it happening. The body contortion is too difficult that a lefty shortstop would have trouble making anything but the most routine play IMO.
it’s more valuable to the team and the kid to teach a talented athletic kid to hit and throw right handed and left than it is to throw a left handed kid onto the field at SS. Even high school teams are reasonably good at fostering switch hitting and throwing, and I imagine it’s a baseline training thing for good travel teams. That, the clear loss of initial defensive solidity from a left handed infielder, and tradition make it more likely that you’ll see teams try to teach kids to throw right handed more than try them out in the field.
Most of the really good players I played with growing up who ended up playing in college hit and threw left and right, even if not very well (our best relief guy pitched left handed but played 2nd right handed, if that makes any sense). If defense becomes even less valuable, you might see more good left handed bats try fielding right handed at the keystone or even 3rd. I doubt that the training and transition will happen once they’ve been drafted, but it might. Given the “Ease” of transition and declining value of defense, my bet is people will disproportionately try to teach players to throw right handed rather then throw them out with a lefty glove on.
I would disagree with the ease of transition. Yes – ‘natural’ lefties have an easier transition to doing stuff ‘righty’ than righties do to lefty cuz this is a right-handed world. But throwing (unlike batting/fielding) is small-muscle rather than big-muscle and small-muscle is harder to transition to the other side. If that transition was easy, you’d see a lot more pitchers transitioning from one side to the other since that creates a huge advantage. But that ain’t an easy transition.
I agree, thus “ease” and not plain old ease. The only guy who had any success with it, despite everyone working on it, was our shortstop. But on 3-4 throws a game? Having another really strong left handed bat at 2B was worth it.
Well lefty-throwers HAVE existed at C/2B/SS/3B at MLB level in the past. Jack Clements, Wee Willie Keeler, Jiggs Donahue, Hick Carpenter, etc. And that was during the anti-TTO era when they might have to turn 9-12 plays/game.
That explicitly changed when the AL and NL merged in 1904. Lefties in the NL farm system were required to be listed only as OF, 1B, or P prob cuz the AL was going to be allowed to raid NL farm system as terms of the merger and they didn’t want the NL to jerk them around. The only MLB level lefty player at those positions active at the time (Jiggs Donahue) transitioned from C to 1B and since then almost literally nothing lefty in the field at those positions.
So apart from ‘tradition’ and ‘these have always been the rules’, my guess is that the lower defensive value of those posns now COULD lead to some team realizing there’s a potential untapped advantage. With a lag cuz that ‘nothing’ extends down to Little League now.
The leagues never merged back then. (It’s been a gradual process since the Commishinor’s office was created.) They didn’t even have farm systems back then, so your explanation makes no sense!
MLB was created from the ‘national agreement’ in 1903 with something called the World Series (maybe you’ve heard of that) to determine whether the AL or NL champion was better.
The Natl Assn of Prof Baseball Leagues (today called Minor League Baseball) was formed in 1901 with overt ‘classes’ or levels – and became involved in the AL/NL merger discussions in 1903 when it came to how their players would be acquired under the new NL/AL agreement – where the NL was the only surviving ‘major’ league buying ‘minors’ contracts from the PREVIOUS national agreement of 1883 or so. I call that a farm system and even in 1901 it was called a ‘draft’ with ‘reserves’ (later morphed into Rule5 draft). And yes it was NAPBL/MiLB/’minors’ that agreed to ‘reposition’ their lefties as part of that legal agreement. Just as leagues had previously agreed ‘nationally’ to refuse contracts to black players.
There is no such thing as baseline training for good travel ball teams. Travel ball teams play more than they practice.
Throwing contortion depends heavily on positioning before the play. A lefty SS going to his left (towards 2b) to field a grounder has a much easier throw to first than a righty does. It only looks like contortion now cuz it is always righties making that ‘highlight’ play (v a rather routine play for a lefty).
Not to mention that there is an entire universe of lefty players whose glovework (absent throwing) has been deemed entirely irrelevant to playing baseball since the only positions they are allowed to play is OF or 1B (which means they have to either go CF/range/speed or massive power).
IOW – it ain’t 100% of possible plays in the field that favor righties. Probably only 50% with 20-30% neutral. And my guess is even that can be quite different from day-to-day depending on the likely handedness of the pitcher and of the opposing lineup. IOWIOW – even in the field I can see the potential for a lefty utility esp if they then have an advantage at the plate that day.
just anecdata, but from taking infield as a left hander you have to “flip” your body to really gun a throw across the infield. If you’re attacking a ground ball you’re basically moving the wrong direction to do that, so you have two bad choices- take a second to gather and gun, or try to make a throw moving the wrong way. And that’s not just a couple of balls a game, that’s basically every routine grounder if you set up deep and charge. Playing shortstop as it is played right now is almost impossible as a lefty, particularly turning double plays.
You could, I think, change the way you field by standing closer and backing up so momentum isn’t working against you, but you’d get eaten up a lot. You could also stand closer to third instead of second, which might open up the field a little but second can move over to cover and third can play more like first.
Yes – charging down bunts greatly favors right-throw fielders (on throws to first). But that means the decline in bunting also disproportionally eliminates that right-handed advantage. The increasing number of lefty bats (whether ‘natural’ or ‘learned’ or ‘ambidextrous’ lefty) also changes the distribution of ground balls in the infield.
The changes in the game shouldn’t simply be assumed to have an ‘equal impact’ on fielding. And ceteris paribus having a lefty glove in the mix of possible infield shift positions (2B/SS/3B are all allowed to change positions but 1B isn’t cuz they have a ‘mitt’ not a ‘glove’) opens up many more shift/positioning possibilities also.
There are a lot more ground balls than just bunts where a fielder is required to charge the ball.
Also the lefty advantage is going away.
Last year lhh wOBA was .319 vs .312 for righties. In 2002 it was .336 for lefties and .318 for righties.
Not sure if this is better and more LHPs or an effect of the shift.
Nobody can fully explain why, but lefty-throwing catchers have never worked out, either.
Its not IYO… its pretty much everyone who has ever played baseball.
Huh? Why do you think being left-handed is not a real problem for the left side of the infield? You have obviously never seen a lefty try to turn a double play. You seem to be assuming that defense just doesn’t matter and that we will eventually come to realize what you already know. You might have that backwards. It is more likely that teams trend back towards fielding better shortstops… especially if juiced balls ever go away. I guess if balls get even more juiced, then the league could just turn into HR derby and you can have whoever play SS that you want.
Crazy idea… the reason SS are not involved in as many plays is that they have less range and that there are more guys on the pull side of the field. It doesn’t mean you don’t need them. The fact that SS are involved in fewer plays doesn’t confirm anything other than how defenses are aligned or that they are worse at getting to balls. I am sure there is at least 1 ball per game that rolls through a misaligned defense – that doesn’t tell you anything about SS either.
I have been a lefty turning double plays. A lefty SS who’s covering second on a ball hit to the 2B/1B has a much easier throw to first than a righty does. For that matter, a lefty 2B or 1B has an easier throw to that SS covering second to initiate that particular double play (4-6-3 or 3-6-3 or 4-6-1 or 3-6-1) as well. For the same reason that righties are favored in the 6-4-3 series.
ALL fielding is situational and probabilistic – which is also supposedly what sabermetrics was intended to reveal elsewhere in the game. NOTHING is 100% no matter how many cliches and ‘traditions’ say so.
It is also impacted by teams using more advanced defensive metrics that has dramatically effected positioning. If you line the guy up in the right place he doesnt need as much range. Jordy Mercer is a good example of an oversized, under bat SS that was able to start for years (with about league average defense) with reliable hands and good positioning.
Advanced spray charts and shifts are probably a factor as well. The Cardinals’ starting shortstop, Paul DeJong, played minimal SS until he got to AAA, (mostly 2B/3B/C in his college career). But he’s a sharp guy (3.74 GPA in college, and was headed toward Med School had baseball not worked out), and his study of the game has paid off as he moved up the defensive spectrum as a pro.
On one hand, it’s pretty clear that there is a multi-year trend towards bigger, nastier hitters at shortstop. Guys who would have been moved to third base because they were “too big” are now being kept at shortstop longer, either because of better defensive analytics (which show they’re fine) or because of better positioning.
On the other hand, this year’s performance is clearly an outlier. The BABIP gods are shining favorably on shortstops right now. Tim Anderson, Tim Beckham, Fernando Tatis Jr, Elvis Andrus, Javier Baez, and Paul deJong are all running bonkers BABIPs right now. Others, like Correa, and Mondesi, are running BABIPs a little higher than normal (although not unrealistic, and not impossible given their skillset). Galvis kind of fits here too.
There is room to question exactly whether this hot start for shortstops isn’t perfectly random variation. Shortstops are one of the fastest positions on the field, so we might expect some spikes in BABIP in smaller samples. Of course, we would expect the unlucky shortstops to balance out the lucky ones, but it’s possible that shortstop BABIP is more volatile in small samples than other positions.
I might be misinterpreting what you’re saying, but “better defensive analytics (which show they’re fine)” could also be defensive analytics which is positioning these players better for their strengths.
There was an article last year on how the Cards positioned DeJong closer to the second base bag, which allowed him to field plays better. I can’t recall how/why they did that (maybe it’s Oquendo magic, maybe he moves better to his right), but it helped DeJong out on his defense a fair amount.
Defensive metrics are crude. I think it is crazy to take some half-baked conclusions and run with them. The same people that create the idea to undervalue/overvalue things are also in charge of measuring their efficacy. I watch baseball every day and I am certain that more hits are given than taken away from over-shifts. You can’t really watch a real game and count more examples of the over-shift guy taking away hits than what gets given away. I have never seen any data that shows over-shifts are generally effective – I have seen that they are effective against David Ortiz, but they employ them against everyone which makes them a losing bet… or by some misguided metric a great success. The fact that BABIP hasn’t crashed tells you that it is not effective. BABIP should be trending down in a vacuum just because of the FB and HR. I don’t know that it is, which tells you that defenses are even less effective on the balls that they are trying to stop. FB stop themselves in terms of BABIP.
Your Fernando Tatis Jr link goes to two different players. “Fernando Tatis” goes to the retired dad and “Jr” goes to the active Padres SS.
Is this the new Johan Santa?
I read the part about bigger shortstops and I thought: Oneil Cruz’s day is coming! But then I unfortunately read this:
https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/pirates-oneil-cruz-suffers-serious-injury/
How much of last April’s SS wRC+ was Didi’s obscene April?
Sixteen qualifiers at SS are running 100+ wRC+ right now (and Simmons is at 99). I just don’t see Tim Anderson running a 162 all season or Tim Beckham running a 136.
Digression alert: Am I the only one who has mentally melded Tim Anderson and Tim Beckham into one person?
…………no
Before this year I couldn’t have differentiated the Tims… it’s been a struggle so far this year with both of them playing well and being relevant lol
I keep hoping for a catcher renaissance, but that seems to keep going in the bad direction year over year.
Well, catcher is not only the most important defensive position, but it’s the only other position other than pitcher where a guy is either fully developed at the position or never plays there outside of an emergency. You almost never see players transition to catcher after turning pro, so it’s a lot harder for teams to find a better bat to stick there if their previous option has trouble hitting Major League pitching.
Mr. Clemens, you are the real deal.
Recently i was talking with a friend about the evolution of the human race during our lifetimes. He is 81 and I am 77. During the 50’s the great power hitters were average sized men. Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Stan Musial were all no bigger than 6’0″ and 180 and Ted Williams was the Splendid Splinter. The pitchers were no different. Why was this the case? There simply were not many huge people around. Basketball was no different. There wasn’t a player over 6’5″ who played anywhere but inside until Julius Erving in the late 70’s. None of the first group of the great tall players could do anything more than five feet from the basket, today Giannis, at 6’10, does things that Oscar Robertson couldn’t even dream about and every Division 1 college team in the country has several players taller than 6’8″. Is it any surprise then that SS, a position traditionally played by small, quick players is now being manned by large, quick players who are better than their predecessors in all facets of the game.
well, also, childhood nutrition has improved a ton. Stunting is essentially a forgotten problem in the US. Median height has increased by 4 inches in the last century and a half.
That reminds me of how the average velocity of pitcher’s fastballs keeps increasing as the players get bigger.
I would question that. A ton of small guys throw hard. When everybody throws harder and everyone is bigger, you can’t really draw conclusions from that. If big guys threw harder than small guys, then that would be something but I don’t think it works how you think it does. Guys like Billy Wagner and Ichiro have hoses by any standard and tall Chris Young was a soft-tosser. I am sure there are some physics that help bigger guys, but the most important factor is coordination, which favors smaller players generally. Its a give and take – there is certainly a sweet spot, but bigger doesn’t mean they throw harder.
As I said in my original post, there is simply a much larger pool of very large people to draw from today than there was in the 50’s. While a larger percentage of average size people may have more athletic talent than the big guys, enough of the big guys have adequate talent that, when added to their physical advantages, gives them an edge.The physics you mention are clear. Much of any athletic endeavor is is based on leverage and it is axiomatic that the longer the lever is the more power it can generate.
Segregation had a lot to do with things as did the fact that being a professional athlete was not a career. There might have been a bunch of bigger athletic people that did not chose a better paying profession for their career. There is also the implicit biases of the period – it is pretty likely that people had ideas that big players would have some issues and they probably never got the chances – today we are on the other end of that spectrum where oversized folks get the opportunities over the average sized person. Both have their strengths and weaknesses in reality, but the decision makers control the opportunities.
Worthy observations. Thanks.
However … and I say this with helpful intent … why spend your first 3 paragraphs on WAR, which is basically unrelated to the theme and never touched on again afterward?
Later, after asking “Why write an article about this now?”, you spend the next paragraph — 7 sentences, over 100 words — NOT answering that question, instead noting why we should initially be skeptical of this April’s numbers. Only then do you reach the point, that these early results jibe with the recent trend. The segue from “Why write an article about this now?” to “Well, basically because of sample size” is really a non sequitur that made me stop and re-read.
I think the best question is “what position in baseball has improved the most statistically in the past decade?” I think the answer to that question is shortstop, but I’m not sure. As illustrated above, the floor used to be pretty low offensively. The focal question is have offensive improvements at the shortstop position offset defensive decline (if any) such that improvements in short stop quality outstrip relative improvements at other positions? My intuition is yes, they have.
Fewer balls in play means great defense makes LESS of a read difference. And the shift can put average fielders in great positions. Teams don’t need acrobatic shortstops anymore to created outs on defense. We have a rise in strikeouts and ground ball data doing that for us now. Shortstops are hitting better as a group because good hit no field is less of a problem than ever before. There is more value in multi-position guys, truth be told.
Although, the shift doesn’t do much to help out shortstops with inaccurate arms like Aledmys Diaz.
I hear you, but at the point where there are fewer balls in play – making those plays becomes more important.
I feel like understanding of how to improve what fundamentally contributes to a strong batting line, such as strike-zone judgment and launch angles, has given teams better tools for working with players. If you’ve got a great-field, no-hit young shortstop with some physical tools, maybe you stick with him knowing that within a few years you have a chance to develop him into a good hitter. Teams today might be more likely to develop a strong young shortstop over a pesky minor leaguer with similar fielding skills who can move a runner over with a well-placed bunt.
Good point about today’s lower tolerance of truly bad hitters. But it’s also worth noting that teams used to care a lot more about the offensive inputs that don’t reach OPS+, like stealing bases and moving runners along.
Shortstops did those things more than most positions. Since integration, SS ranks 4th in total SB, and 1st in sac bunts by nonpitchers.
I’m certainly not saying those views ever were sound, generally. But some of those banjo-hitting shortstops really did up their value with “small ball.” Since integration, shortstops comprise 10 of the top 35 in baserunning WAR.
As those events have declined dramatically in this era, it’s only natural that the required skillset for a regular shortstop evolve more towards batting.
Well, if you have a better hitter, then there’s less of a need for him to put down sacrifice bunts in the first place. After all, sac bunts only really make sense if the guy on deck is a significantly better hitter than the guy at the plate (or if there are runners on 1st and 2nd with no outs). Then again, our understanding of the value of sac bunts on run expectancy has changed over the years, as well.
I think it is a function of several things:
1. Larger men playing short
2. Optimized (LA) swings allow smaller guys with limited raw pop to get to more game power
3. A few guys overoerforming: the general trend is real and there is a number of legit shortstop bats (correa, seager, lindor and a few others) but guys like Anderson, polanco and even dejong should regress quite a bit
“Teams simply aren’t willing to devote a season’s worth of at-bats to offensive lines that poor anymore.”
The Tigers would like to have a word with you…
and the Bucs were willing to start the season with Erik Gonzalez as a everyday SS. Thankfully, Marte intervened and their hand was forced.
More signs that shortstop is now just another position, offensively:
— Their 10.8% share of total Ks this year would be the highest ever.
— Their 11.0% share of total HRs this year would be the highest ever, breaking last year’s record … the years 2016-18 are the highest ever for that rate.
— Their 12.0% share of extra-base hits would be the highest ever, breaking marks set in 2018 and ’17.
— Their ISO is above the MLB average this year, first time ever.
— Their share of sac bunts the last 4 years are the 4 lowest of the integration era.
This article has been written each year for several years running now. As teams field worse defensive SS, they have better bats – that is the obvious part. Another factor is that players without elite power benefit from juiced balls more – SS would be the ones to benefit. More anecdotally, the best players at making LA changes are going to be those with elite hand-eye coordination – these are also going to be SS. Juiced baseballs don’t benefit Gallo or Stanton like they do Lindor or Jose Ramirez. Perhaps what you are really finding is that players with below average pop benefit from juiced balls the most. To me the most interesting part of it all is that defensive metrics and analytics are so misguided in some regards that they have reached the conclusion that a good defensive SS is not important.
Each year, I make a point that this is not in fact a special group of SS. The real test will be how many of them make the HOF and that doesn’t look like a special group in that regard. Proclaiming a group to be special is very easy as long as you never check back in or compare them in a meaningful context – by that I mean that you use a contemporary metric, which will predictably favor the current group if desired, which it usually is. Who looks like a HOF SS? Lindor – maybe. Andrelton – maybe if he plays forever. Baez – not WAR-friendly skills. Story – not by WAR. Machado – not a SS. I don’t know who else would have a case. If they really were a special group it would be obvious. Not long ago we had ARod, Jeter, Hanley, Jose Reyes, Tulo – just to name a few. Sure, Hanley and Reyes look bad now, but so will a bunch of these current players – give them a few more years.
Was it even asserted that this is a “special” group of shortstops? I sure don’t see it in the article, which is far more about trends than individual stars.
Anyway, it’s rare to have more than 2 or 3 future HOFers at one position actually starring at the same time. With just 6 shortstops who debuted since WWII having been elected, it seems a big ask to get multiple peaks overlapping right now. The Yount / Trammell / Ripken / Ozzie / Larkin parade was extraordinary, but even there, no more than 4 of them had even 3 bWAR as a SS in the same year.
“There’s one reason I haven’t yet considered. Maybe there’s just a wave of great shortstops playing right now; not for some macro reason, but just by pure chance.” It wasn’t a major theme but it was brought up. Sure “special” doesn’t pass the control+f test, but that was my interpretation. It sounds like you agree with me on that point. As you can tell from my comment, I get that there are typically a few HOF SS at most. If this were a special group, then we would have several of them as obvious candidates right now, which we don’t. We just had Jeter, and ARod. I think the 2000s were historic as we had a bunch that were really close, but couldn’t pass the longevity test in Nomar, Hanley, Tulo to name a few off the top of my head. I think there is the additional reality that WAR does’t like SS. For example, I think Tulo was better than Larkin, but we kind of just look at WAR which is arbitrary past a certain point. Well, you can pretend WAS does like SS based on select HOF players, but their base-running and defense may a well be based on their favorite flavors of ice cream prior to a certain point. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of these guys would have a lot less WAR if they were judged by today’s standards. Honestly, that comment is more aimed at the article coming a week from now haha.
Just some more confirmation of a real long-term trend in SS hitting that goes against the longstanding norm:
— From 1968 through 2000, SS OPS never once reached 95% of the MLB average. Not even in that ‘80s period when 5 HOF SS were all near their prime.
— That 95% mark has been reached EVERY year since 2001. But not until 2016 did it reach 98%.
— It’s been at least 98% since 2016, reaching 100.7% last year, and over 105% this year.
— In the live ball era, SS or C has almost always been the worst hitting position. Taken in 5-year intervals since WWII, SS almost never came close to the next-worst position (2B).
— But over the last 2+ years, SS has easily surpassed C and 2B, and very nearly caught CF.
You might consider that prior to about he year 2000, nobody cared to take a walk. That is right about when sabermetrics made its biggest impact on the game. I am sure they could have taken more walks if it were a valued skill – so take out the OBP from OPS and you have slugging. I doubt that changes your conclusions, as these guys rack up bases along with taking walks but I won’t stop bringing up the idea that standards are always changing. There is also a reality that small-ball was a bigger part of the game – SS were table setters so they were not trying to rack up the XBH as much. I don’ t know that any of this conflicts with your point, but SS just have a different job description these days. I’ll bet characters like Barry Larkin could have hit a ton of HR in this environment. To point out the arbitrary nature of success as measured by those off the field, previous generations probably had more SB. I think a lot of people in this community are so far removed from reality that something like SB+XBH+some arbitrary throwing metric/162 wouldn’t be a lot worse than where we are for measuring SS success.
Odd to assert that no one cared to take a walk before 2000, when the absolute peak of BB/9 was from 1947-56, with 8 of the top 10 rates falling in that span.
Furthermore, the years 1999-2000 were a total outlier in BB/9, an abrupt spike followed by a fast drop back to the historical norm. There is simply no longterm trend in walks for which those years are a meaningful point.
Here’s why I think WAR clouds this topic, or at least makes it far more complicated:
This is a golden era of SS batting, but it’s hardly that for SS WAR — not unless a year plus a month equals an era.
I looked at years of 4.0+ bWAR by shortstops (min. 50% of games there), as a proportion of MLB teams.
Last year’s 30% rate (9 of 30 teams) matched the expansion high, equaled in 2006 and in 1964-65 (6 of 20). Next best were 29% in 1969 (7/24), and 27% in 1986 (7/26) and 2009 (8/30).
But:
(A) There were 6 higher years before expansion:
— 44% in 1941 and 1910 (7/16)
— 38% in 1952, 1947, 1908 and 1904
(B) 2018 is an outlier, as of now.
The prior 2 years were 20% (6/30).
Those years were clearly the start of the rise in SS batting, with relative OPS unseen since 1964 and far above the historic norm.
Yet their rates of 4-WAR SS were perfectly ordinary.
4.0 bWAR is an arbitrary threshold, but the look doesn’t change at 5.0: Each of the past 3 years had 4 such SS, which was topped in 2009 and matched 6 times in the prior 24 years.
At 3.0 bWAR, last year matched the 2006 high for the 30-team era, but again 2016-17 were right at the median.
So, it’s true that
(a) we currently have a high rate of star SS, and
(b) there’s a new normal for SS batting.
But whether those facts are related, it’s too soon to say.
Great article, though it made me think of my A’s and Profar. Though not a SS, A’s continue on with him even though his defense has been outright atrocious.
I do think this uptrend in SS batting is a real thing. But these trends can change very quickly. Two recent examples:
— Remember how 2016 was “the year of the second basemen”?
That year shattered the record for relative OPS by 2B, at 104.3% — a full 3 points above the old mark.
It also set new highs at bWAR thresholds — 9 with 4.0+, 7 with 5.0+, 4 with 6.0+.
But that turned out to be a TOTAL fluke year. Relative OPS fell sharply to 100.5% in 2017, 98.1% last year, and a sickly 95.1% this year (which would be the worst since 1996).
4-WAR count fell from 9 to 4 and 6.
5-WAR count fell from 7 to 2 and 3.
6-WAR count fell from 4 to 1 and 1..
— Catchers’ hitting surged in the first part of this decade. The 4 years 2011-14 were among the 5 best in the last 40 years. And then it collapsed; 3 of the past 4 years were below the norm, especially last year, and this year so far is subpar. (All hail “framing value”!)
I don’t think we’re going back to banjo-hitting SS any time soon … unless there’s NEW revolution in fielding metrics. Ya never know.
How to explain how CF’s are hitting this year? 96 wRC+ last year vs 83 this year