The 2026 Replacement-Level Killers: First Base & Second Base

Today, we have the first of several Killers two-fers, with a pair of lists covering the right side of the infield. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (Playoff Odds of at least 10%, a criterion that 22 of the 30 teams meet) and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot is worth a look. All statistics are through July 12.

Diamondbacks

Ildemaro Vargas was sensational early in the season, opening with a 24-game hitting streak (27 games if you count the tail end of last season) and batting .378/.398/.689 (195 wRC+) with six home runs through the end of April. It was a completely unexpected heater given that in parts of nine previous seasons, the 34-year-old journeyman had managed just a 75 wRC+. Sure enough, Vargas quickly cooled off. Since May, he’s hit for a 40 wRC+ (.201/.259/.254) with just one homer and a 2.3% barrel rate, and since mid-June, he’s been bumped back to a utility role.

Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks have jettisoned a couple of first base alternatives. Carlos Santana, who signed a one-year, $2 million deal with the team in early February, and who strained his groin after playing just eight games — thus opening the door for Vargas — was designated for assignment in late June and is now in the Braves organization. Pavin Smith — the seventh pick of the 2017 draft, and a competent DH/first base option for stretches over the previous two seasons when he wasn’t injured — was DFA’d this past weekend after hitting just .141/.236/.192 in 89 plate appearances. Since cutting ties with Smith, the team has been using Tim Tawa, a 27-year-old utilityman with a career 76 wRC+, at first. That’s a stopgap solution, and as Arizona’s major league-worst 0.1-WAR rest-of-season projection suggests, this is a team that absolutely needs to come up with a better alternative if it’s going to navigate the NL Wild Card free-for-all.

Guardians

Last year, in his first full major league season, Kyle Manzardo slugged 27 homers and hit a respectable .234/.313/.455 (113 wRC+) while spending more time at DH (84 games) than at first base (56 games), finishing with 1.2 WAR. This year, he’s spent more time at first (68 games) than DH (17 games), and has hit a limp .215/.310/.359 (91 wRC+) with just 10 homers and -0.2 WAR. His strikeout rate has spiked from 25.4% to 31.0% as his performance against breaking balls has fallen off the table. Last year, he hit .271 and slugged .561 against curves, sliders, sweepers and such, averaging a 91.6 mph exit velocity when he made contact with those pitches and whiffing on 34.7% when he didn’t. This year, he’s down to hitting .167 and slugging .333 against breaking balls, with an average exit velo of just 86.4 mph and a 35.2% whiff rate against them. His performance against offspeed pitches has slipped, as well.

But Manzardo is only part of the problem. Righty-swinging platoon partner Rhys Hoskins has hit just .178/.316/.364 (95 wRC+) while playing brutal defense (-4 DRS, -4 FRV in just 343 1/3 innings). On June 13, in a game where the Guardians lost Chase DeLauter, Angel Martínez, and José Ramírez to injuries, they even stuck Hoskins in left field, a position he hadn’t played since 2018, when he had -18 DRS and -18 FRV. Sure enough, he was a run below average by both metrics in just three innings, helping to push him to -0.4 WAR overall (that left field contribution isn’t counted here, to be clear). The 33-year-old slugger has the majors’ highest pop-up rate at 20%, just a .312 expected slugging percentage, and a career-high 31.6% strikeout rate. Did I mention he’s hitting just .139/.273/.329 (70 wRC+) against lefties, which falls a wee bit short of the mashing component of his primary job? A better platoon complement for Manzardo can’t be more than one or two phone calls away.

Tigers

Since reaching the majors in 2022, Spencer Torkelson, the no. 1 pick of the 2020 draft, has alternated bad seasons that have earned him refresher courses in Triple-A with serviceable ones that have offered fleeting hope that he could live up to his potential. This year falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, in that he has yet to be exiled to Toledo while alternating good months with bad ones en route to a .208/.305/.413 (101 wRC+) line. While his 14.3% barrel rate represents a career high, so does his 32.9% strikeout rate; the latter is about six percentage points above his career mark. On the other side of the ball, his -7 FRV is already a career low, and his -8 DRS is on pace to shatter his previous low of -10, set in 2023. He’s netted 0.0 WAR.

That defense is bad enough to be DH-caliber, and while the Tigers could probably park him there — I’ll be checking in on Kerry Carpenter during this series, too — at this point, it’s fair to wonder if the 26-year-old Torkelson and the Tigers would benefit by parting ways. He could get a fresh start with a new team and a new set of coaches, and the Tigers could find a first baseman whose every up and down isn’t a referendum on the choice they made six years ago.

Mariners

The Mariners made this list in each of the past two seasons, but trading for Josh Naylor ahead of the 2025 deadline shored up their first base production and helped them secure their first AL West title since 2001. Naylor then went on to become one of the 2025 postseason’s breakout stars, and his re-signing via a five-year, $92.5 million deal added another layer to the feel-good story. Alas, he’s hit just .252/.317/.354 (95 wRC+) with eight home runs. His bat speed is down, as are his average exit velocity, barrel and hard-hit rates, expected stats, and so on. While he’s basically replicated last year’s exorbitant 37% chase rate, his out-of-zone contact rate has climbed from 64.3% to 71.7%; he’s slugged just .300 when making contact with 101 batted balls outside the zone, down from .382 on 112 such batted balls for all of last season. While his defense has been pretty stable from year to year according to FRV, it’s a different story when it comes to DRS, where he’s dipped from -1 to -7.

Given his long-term contract, Naylor isn’t likely to be supplanted at first base, and it’s not like the Mariners have a viable in-house alternative. If they’re going to meet or exceed the heightened expectations raised by last season’s run, they need Naylor to get going — perhaps not as badly as they need Cal Raleigh (who has a 71 wRC+ but good enough defense and backup support to avoid the Killers catcher list) to get going, but that isn’t an either/or proposition.

Blue Jays

At 45-51, the Blue Jays have their problems, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s hitting a thin .262/.346/.357 (99 wRC+) with more stolen bases (seven) than homers (six) is one of them — hardly their biggest one in the short term, but a rather sizable one when you consider he still has 13 seasons remaining on his contract. Vladito has lost two miles per hour of average exit velocity from last year (and 3.8 from 2024 to ’26), with his barrel rate dropping from 12.2% to 6.9% and his xSLG from .506 to .406. He’s swinging at too many bad pitches; his 31% chase rate is 9.6 points above last year’s mark and 3.8 point above his career rate, while his 72.8% out-of-zone contact rate is 8.8 points above last year’s mark and 11.8 points above his career one. He’s slugging just .299 when making contact with those out-of-zone pitches, which account for 78 of his batted balls; by comparison, he slugged .362 against 80 such batted balls all of last season.

Guerrero is actually playing pretty good defense at first base (5 DRS, 3 FRV), and so he has still turned in 1.0 WAR, and it’s worth noting that he has the majors’ highest rest-of-season projection for any player at the position. What’s dragging the Blue Jays into Killer territory is that somehow, in the 17 games where he hasn’t batted as a first baseman — either while DHing or getting the occasional breather — four other fill-ins led by Lenyn Sosa (33 plate appearances) have combined to go 7-for-66 with just one extra-base hit (a Kazuma Okamoto home run) and -1.0 WAR. Guy takes a day off and everything just goes to hell.

Rays

After trading Brandon Lowe to the Pirates in December, the Rays dealt for Gavin Lux in January with the plan that he would take over the long half of a second base platoon. He has yet to play a regular season game for them due to injuries, however. He began the season on the injured list due to a right shoulder impingement, then missed a couple of weeks during a rehab assignment after rolling his left ankle in April, and in mid-May got pulled off another rehab assignment due to left shoulder inflammation.

In his absence, Richie Palacios and Ben Williamson have done the bulk of the work at second. Both have been subpar on the offensive side, with Palacios hitting .237/.333/.338 (93 wRC+) and Williamson .253/.321/.338 (87 wRC+) overall, with the latter producing just a 66 wRC+ during his time at second. With Lux now on a rehab assignment, the Rays will try to shore up this weakness from within, likely by platooning him with the righty-swinging Williamson, though righty Ryan Vilade — who’s played four innings at second this year and has 41 games at the position in the minors — offers another alternative.

Orioles

Jackson Holliday has struggled to live up to his no. 1 prospect billing, though he did improve from a 62 wRC+ and 0.0 WAR in 2024 to a 96 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR last season. He fractured his right hamate bone during batting practice shortly after camp opened, requiring surgery and delaying his 2026 season debut until May 19. In his absence, Jeremiah Jackson and Blaze Alexander combined to hit just .259/.280/.397 (87 wRC+), albeit with solid defense.

Since returning, Holliday has hit .210/.324/.378 (100 wRC+), representing slight gains in OBP and SLG despite a 32-point drop from last year’s batting average. His walk rate has spiked from 8.6% to 14.8%, which might suggest that he’s avoiding swinging due to discomfort, but a quick look at his plate discipline stats shows that pitchers are according him more respect; his zone rate has dropped from 53.8% to 45.7%. His barrel rate has improved from 7.8% to 10.7%, but most of his contact stats have fallen off a bit, which does rate as a concern. Likewise with respect to his defense, which is more or less on track to replicate last year’s unappealing -10 DRS and -6 FRV. He’s still just 22 years old, and it’s not like the Orioles are about to give up on him, but they really could use some further growth here.

Astros

Jose Altuve has a reasonable shot at winding up in Cooperstown some day, but the past two seasons have not been pretty. An attempt to shift him to left field last season stalled in part because his defense was even worse there — hey, you try learning a new position at age 35 — than at the keystone, and his 113 wRC+ was his lowest full-season mark since 2013. This year, his bat has fallen off further; he’s hitting just .235/.307/.404 (98 wRC+) while striking out 22.1% of the time, not just a career high but nearly nine percentage points above his career mark, and more than five points above what he posted last year. His quality of contact has suffered to the point that he’s got a .342 xSLG, his lowest in the Statcast era.

Meanwhile, Altuve’s defense has been worse on a rate basis than it was in the years leading up to the abortive position change. Even having lost three weeks in May and June to an oblique strain, in 588 1/3 innings he has -9 DRS and -5 FRV, with the latter metric already tying a career low. His bat does seem to be coming around — with three homers in his past six games, he’s got a 138 wRC+ so far in July — but unless the Astros want to try him in left field again, or have him at least share the position and DH duty with Yordan Alvarez, they’re pretty much locked into his ups and downs here.

Tigers

When he’s been available, Gleyber Torres has hit a robust .280/.395/.395 (127 wRC+) with atypically solid defense (6 DRS, 1 FRV), but due to a recurrent oblique strain, he’s played just 13 games since the start of May, and 43 total on the season. Unfortunately, neither Hao-Yu Lee nor Zach McKinstry, who have filled in for Torres, has hit much, either while playing second base or another position. Lee is batting .255/.288/.389 (87 WRC+) with -0.2 WAR, including slightly below-average fielding at second, while McKinstry, an All-Star last season, is hitting an anemic .197/.278/.298 (61 wRC+), with solid defense while spending time at five different positions propping him up to 0.1 WAR.

With the team eight games below .500, the Tigers might very well decide to trade ace Tarik Skubal, and if they do, Torres — like Skubal, a pending free agent — could also be a trade candidate. In a vacuum, he’d represent an upgrade for most of the other teams here, but fitting him onto a roster and a payroll (given that he’s making $22.025 million) is less of a sure thing for teams with a longer-term interest in their current second basemen.

Red Sox

Marcelo Mayer began the year as Boston’s regular second baseman, then moved to shortstop when Trevor Story was sidelined by surgery to repair a sports hernia. Overall, Mayer has hit a meager .220/.282/.312 (63 wRC+), and on June 26, he landed on the IL due to a stress reaction in his left ulna. At that point, he said he had been battling discomfort in the arm for two months. Coincidentally enough, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who did a fair bit of the second base work after Mayer shifted to short, was sidelined by the same injury just six days earlier — an injury he attributed to swinging at maximum effort every time, which produced gains in swing speed and a 97 wRC+ (.277/.344/.361), a career high despite his lack of power. That’s a tough trade-off.

Both players are expected to return to the resurgent Red Sox sometime after the All-Star break, but neither has a clear timeline. In their absence, Boston has turned to Anthony Seigler, a 27-year-old rookie who came over from the Brewers in the Caleb Durbin deal, and who prior to that was a switch-pitcher in high school and then a catcher in the Yankees’ chain. Seigler has hit a promising .257/.333/.419 (106 wRC+), albeit in just 85 plate appearances. While the Red Sox can hope to get by with him in the short term, particularly once Story returns later this month, an upgrade would stabilize the situation.