So, imagine you’re sitting in any one of the hundreds of places it’s legal to gamble these days, and the dealer drops you an ace and a jack. You yell “blackjack!,” and before you get a chance to scoop up your chips and go straight to the cash bar, the dealer drops you another ace and a ten. Imagine that happens five times in a row and you’ve got an idea of what it’s like in the BBA today, or at least it’s like that on the shortstop position, where twenty-one seems to be the magic year.
Don’t believe me?
It’s arguable that five of the top ten shortstops in the league this year are exactly 21 years of age as I speak. And at 21, it’s possible that these five guys may well define the position for years to come. The question on most fans’ minds is, which one is best—and the way you answer that question is probably highly correlated with where you do your gambling.
Folks down Carolina way will certainly focus on Chip Puckett. The legacy kid is an aged veteran at this point, having broke into the league at 18. He’s been an All-Star, and he’s won a Landis. Barring something unforeseen, he’s on his way to posting his second-straight 5+WAR season. The kid’s six-foot-three and has that movie star dimple thing going on. Dude can do it all, too. Steal like half a Raider. Drop leather like a Zimmer candidate. Lead off like a whiz. His 3.56 WAR today leaves him second in the league to only a guy named Gillstrom (who is playing more second base than shortstop so far), so, yeah, he’s a popular candidate for the best 21-year-old shortstop in the league.
But cats living in the flatlands of Kansas can be forgiven if they don’t come up with this kid Alex Ramirez at the top of their ballots. Ramirez is in his rookie season, and is already a local legend for almost single-handedly raising the Aviator’s profile to be in the playoff hunt. While the kid they call “Mirror” isn’t quite as kind with the glove as some of the other guys, he’s got 30 HR pop, and his 21 steals show he can get it done with his feet, too. Give the glove a half-notch improvement this off-season, and it wouldn’t be hard to see him at the top. In fact, while Puckett has Ramirez in WAR, Ramirez’s 130 wRC+ tops Puckett’s 116 value, lending support to those around Wichita who aren’t waiting to get on the Ramirez bus today. It’s still too early to call, but Ramirez has got to be a name in the hunt for this seasons’ Johnson Gillstrom Newcomer of the Year.
Of course, if you’re going with wRC+ as your go-to stat, the fans in Valencia have a bone to pick, as Angel Zalapa, who was second in last year’s Gillstrom voting, made his first All-Star appearance this year.Zalapa’s glove is currently clearly up on Ramirez’s, and he can match Ramirez’s power stroke. His time this season has been hampered by a couple injuries to his shoulder and elbow, so there’s some question whether he’ll make the counting stat limits for eligibility in some award categories, but Zalapa’s 131 wRC+ is tops in the league of anyone not named Gillstrom (insert standard “secondbaseman caveat” here). Zalapa dropped 34 homers on the league as a rookie, and his bat can reach the gaps. Given that scouts think he has even more lightning left to grow, you can see why some fans would put him at the top of the heap.
But, then, cheese-head fans in Madison can be excused for their focus on Jharod Thealer, who is perhaps the most mature of the five when it comes to plate discipline and the ability to manage an at-bat. That comes at a bit of a cost, however, because Thealer is admittedly still working out his relationship with the glove. That said, he’s getting on base at a .390 clip, and adding in 20 doubles in just over half a season. His 116 wRC+ is in Chip Puckett territory, and his 2.3 WAR to date makes this a career season. Yes, we can say this is a career season because Thealer came up as a 19 year-old and has been a mainstay with the Wolves ever since. He’s an entertaining guy: all bat, no glove.
On the flipside, if you watch baseball in the rain forest of Mexico City, you’ve got Dashiell R. Faireborn to put at the top of your list. To get an idea of what you get in Faireborn, maybe take Zalapa’s bat, and Thealer’s glove, then use Ramirez’s mirror image to flip those around. I’ve recently waxed poetic about what Faireborn is doing with the glove. His +14 ZR is a thing of all-time leaderboard material, and while his bat is almost non-existent, it’s possible he’s a generational player who can dominate a game from the field alone. This is Faireborn’s second season, and given that his ZR last season was a then-stunning +14, it’s clear that this seasons’ performance is no fluke. So, yeah, if glovework is your thing in shortstops, you couldn’t be harangued too hard for posting the name Dashiell Faireborn at the top of your list of 21-year-old shortstops.
So, yeah…it’s the year of the shortstop…or the age of the shortstop, anyway. The debate rages as to who is the best, and you can weigh in with your own two cents here.
But at the end of the day I think the big winners are BBA fans around the globe, who are going to get the pleasure of seeing what these guys are going to wind up doing over the rest of their careers.
