Have you noticed how one by one the other teams with deep pockets are solving their SS needs without going into the FA market? The supply is shrinking slowly and demand is shrinking rapidly.
For sure, but he's still a hall of famer and the face of a champion. My point is "only 8 RBIs" is significant number. Being in a the middle of the top 10 list for postseason RBI in your mid 20's is quite the accomplishment. He's in the spot right below Pujols(guaranteed hall of famer and Astros fan's worst nightmare)
Yeah, he was. And offensively, too. 20 bombs for a SS--in the 80s--in the Astrodome. Thon was one of the few good things about '83.
Stock up, stock down: Tracking hitters from the upcoming star-studded MLB free-agent class — Inside Baseball https://theathletic.com/2773042/202...studded-mlb-free-agent-class-inside-baseball/ Carlos Correa, Astros shortstop Correa, who’ll turn 27 in September, started the season near the top of many teams’ free-agent wish lists but wasn’t without concerns. When he’s on the field, he’s a force offensively and defensively, but staying healthy has been an issue. Correa played more than 110 regular-season games just once over his first six seasons with the Astros. His hitting also fell off in 2020, batting .264 with little pop. So far in 2021, Correa has quieted any doubters. He’s played in all but 10 games this season, hitting .268/.361/.469 with 18 home runs, good plate discipline and elite defense (despite declining sprint speed). Correa is young enough to command a lengthy, lucrative contract in free agency. He’s one of the best players on the market. All he needs to do is stay healthy. Stock: Up Spoiler Corey Seager, Dodgers shortstop We go from the 2015 AL Rookie of the Year to the 2016 NL Rookie of the Year. Seager, 27, was ranked No. 1 in this class of free-agent shortstops by The Athletic’s Jake Kaplan and Nick Groke in May. And with good reason. Seager’s 162-game average over his first six seasons was .295/.362/.500 with 27 homers, 92 RBIs and a couple of down-ballot MVP votes. Unlike Correa, he was coming off of an excellent 2020 season. Seager started this season slowly, batting .265 through mid-May before breaking his hand. He has hit well in the three weeks since returning from the injured list, but his season numbers — while still above average for a shortstop (116 OPS+) — are south of what we’ve come to expect from Seager. Though it’s nothing that will totally tank his stock, Seager surely would rather have walked into free agency after a season that didn’t showcase an injury, his defensive deficiencies and a slow start at the plate. Stock: Down Starling Marte, Athletics outfielder Signing a contract extension with the Pirates in 2014 meant Marte wouldn’t reach free agency for the first time until this fall, when he’ll be 33, but it doesn’t mean he’ll miss his payday. He’s been off to the races in Oakland, collecting base hits and stolen bases left and right. This season, split between Miami and Oakland, he’s batting .323 with an .879 OPS, nine homers, 33 steals in 36 tries(!), and has doubled his career walk rate. Marte had the 16th-fastest sprint speed in the majors six years ago, and now he’s slipped to 105th, according to Statcast. But Marte can still fly. He’s smart and instinctive on the bases, and he plays center field as well as almost anyone. Stock: Up Marcus Semien, Blue Jays second baseman/shortstop When the Blue Jays gave Semien a one-year, $18 million contract last winter, it looked like either an incredible bargain (for one of the best players in baseball in 2019) or an outrageous overpay (for a below-average hitter in his other seven seasons). Toronto’s bet has paid off. The Blue Jays’ second baseman and part-time shortstop now leads all position players with 5.4 bWAR. Semien, who will turn 31 next month, is batting .272 with 27 homers, a league-leading 33 doubles and an .864 OPS. More and more, it seems that his 2019 season, when he finished behind Mike Trout and Alex Bregman in AL MVP voting, was no fluke. Stock: Up Javier Báez, Mets shortstop Báez wasn’t really considered to be in the same class as Seager, Correa and Trevor Story, despite his ability to smack moonshots to Mars, but the gap has continued to widen. It’s past time to accept that Báez is who he is. He does what he does. Don’t expect to get the good without the bad. He’s all power, low on-base. He swings hard. He whiffs hard. This season, Baez is batting .241. He leads the league in strikeouts. He has more home runs (24) than walks (17). Exactly 39.3 percent of his hits are for extra bases. It all comes out in the wash as a 102 OPS+, where 100 is average. That’s a pretty solid picture of Báez, the hitter. It’s not bad, so long as you know what you’re getting ahead of time. Stock: Down Nick Castellanos, Reds outfielder Of the many opt-outs and player options in play this fall — J.D. Martínez, Charlie Blackmon, Jackie Bradley Jr., Brett Gardner, et al — Castellanos seems most likely to test free agency again. He can opt out of the last two years (and $34 million) of his contract, and I’m betting he does. A first-time All-Star, Castellanos is putting together the best full season of his career, batting .315 with a .937 OPS, 30 doubles and 20 homers. He is not a good outfielder, but he barrels the ball with the best of them. Maybe he winds up as a designated hitter in the near future, but the odds he makes more money in the long run for opting out of his Reds contract are high. (By the way, if Martínez opts out of $19.375 million in 2022 and leaves Boston, his stock is way up, too.) Stock: Up Michael Conforto, Mets outfielder It always felt as if Conforto was underappreciated early in his career. He just hit. I mean, he played two-thirds of the season in 2017 and hit 27 home runs. He was an All-Star. Then he hit 28 homers in 2018 and 33 in 2019. His 162-game average entering 2021 was .259/.358/.484 with 31 homers, 88 RBI and an .843 OPS. He had the makings of an interesting free-agent case. But that train lost steam. Conforto was hitting .230 in May when a hamstring strain knocked him out for a month. He went a couple of weeks without an extra-base hit. He flirted with the Mendoza line. Now he has a .220/.341/.367 line and eight homers. Stock: Down Andrelton Simmons, Twins shortstop It takes a special talent to carry a .696 career OPS (91 OPS+) over nine seasons in the majors yet receive MVP votes not one, not two, but three times. Simmons is, of course, an incredible talent, winner of four Gold Gloves and a Platinum Glove. He plays defense so well you forgive the below-average hitting and give him $10.5 million to start at shortstop, as the Twins did. Very little has gone well for the Twins this season, and that contract is one of them. Simmons’ defense is as advertised, but his offense has drooped so dreadfully that it’s no longer such a smart trade-off. He’s batting .217 with a .558 OPS. Stock: Down
Spoiler Freddie Freeman, Braves first baseman Not sure it’s possible for Freeman’s stock to be any higher than it was this past offseason, coming off an MVP campaign in which he hit. 341 with a 1.102 OPS, but Freeman’s stock certainly hasn’t gotten lower. Freeman, like Simmons, turns 32 this month, and at this point, we all should be wondering why everyone on this list has a September birthday. Freeman is one of the most feared hitters in the NL. He leads the majors in intentional walks. Since June 10, he’s batting .353 with a .981 OPS, helping keep Atlanta’s season alive. Stock: Steady Chris Taylor, Dodgers corner infielder/outfielder Taylor, a member of the Los Angeles chapter of baseball’s swing-reinvention revolution, continues to bounce all over the field for the Dodgers and rake at the plate. His 131 OPS+ in 2021 is the highest of his career. The swing-and-miss is still present, but so is the speed (90th percentile, per Statcast) and power. His 17 homers are four off his career high. Taylor turns 31 on Aug. 30. Stock: Up Anthony Rizzo, Yankees first baseman Rizzo is exiting his prime, and so expecting him to be the .285-average, .900-OPS, 35-double, 30-homer, 105-RBI hitter he was from ages 24 to 29 isn’t reasonable. Rizzo knew when he signed an extension with the Cubs that he’d be reaching free agency at 32 and looking at shorter deals, depending on how he’s hitting. (He didn’t know he’d be a Yankee.) At this point, Rizzo is still a productive first baseman. After a rough 2020 season, he has rebounded with 17 home runs and an .807 OPS, and he continues to be one of the better defensive first basemen in the majors. Stock: Steady Kris Bryant, Giants outfielder/third baseman It’s only right to follow Rizzo with Bryant. When you begin your career by winning Rookie of the Year one season and MVP the next, the bar is high. It always has been high for Bryant. So, batting .206 over 34 games in 2020 was a little shocking. In his walk year, Bryant, 29, has come back in line with his career numbers, batting .270 with an .852 OPS and 19 home runs. Stock: Up Eddie Rosario, Cleveland outfielder This spot initially went to Angels shortstop José Iglesias, bringing up the back end of the shortstop crop, but I figured we should’ve seen his regression coming. Instead, consider Rosario. The Twins baffled some folks when they non-tendered Rosario last winter, cutting ties with a plus hitter (and minus defender) who’d received MVP votes in the previous two seasons. He signed with Cleveland for $8 million. Rosario, who’ll turn 30 in September, had a .685 OPS (84 OPS+) over 78 games in Cleveland before being traded to Atlanta. Stock: Down Trevor Story, Rockies shortstop Story’s stock was down — low enough that the Rockies decided to hold on to him, for no reason, at the trade deadline — but what about now? Story has gone 18-for-47 (.383) with 10 extra-base hits and a 1.154 OPS since the trade deadline, which has helped normalize his season hitting numbers. It’s still not vintage Story. His batting line from 2018 to 2020 was .292/.355/.554 with 37 homers per 162 games, and this year it’s .258/.333/.461 with 15 homers. But it’s improved enough to think that he could end September with what looks like a pretty nice season at the plate. Like several of the shortstops in this class, Story might not stay at shortstop long term, but his combination of speed and slugging can be valuable elsewhere. His stock’s down a bit, but steady enough. Stock: Down Kyle Schwarber, Red Sox outfielder/designated hitter When the Nationals gave Schwarber $10 million after he was non-tendered by the Cubs, they knew it was a prime buy-low bargain. They did not expect he’d hit 25 homers in 72 games. Washington flipped Schwarber to Boston for a pitching prospect, and now he calls Fenway Park home. The next month will be an important audition for Schwarber, who’s coming off of an injury and has an opportunity to showcase what he can do as a DH. If he ends the year with 30 homers and a .900 OPS, there’ll be a team out there wanting to bet on his future. Stock: Up
Is this the one good year of health for his career? Did he fix the back with better training/stretching? Hopefully the current upswing will carry the team for the stretch drive. Nobody has seen him play this much since 2016, so ups/downs fully are the norm with him as long as he's healthy. Defense still elite for now. He can't get Lindor money, although Lindor is not worth Lindor money.
As the season progresses, I keep seeing more and more other areas of need greater than a all-star SS. A TOR starter is the most obvious, but our lack of depth has been exposed several times evidenced by the need to play Robel, Jones, Wilson and the like. If Graveman isnt resigned, there is another.
It may not mean so much with the COVID season, but doesn't this make consecutive seasons in which Carlos has led the team in games played? Of course this year isn't over, so I may be premature.
I just bought a couple of things here for fun and for cheap: https://www.academy.com/shop-whataburger
I think a deal gets done. 8 years, $200M to $220M. Pay him $30M/yr til he's 30. Give him an opt out after 4 years. Tack on extra years at a reduced rate. If some other team offers more, wish him all the best.
