Buster Posey understands the value of a good shortstop.
For nearly his entire playing career, Posey shared the field alongside Brandon Crawford, whose elite defense made him the Giants’ best shortstop of the modern era. As Posey starts his tenure as San Francisco’s president of baseball operations, finding his shortstop of the future is, unsurprisingly, one of his top priorities.
“If we could find a shortstop that’d be great,” Posey told reporters at the GM Meetings in San Antonio this week. “Tyler Fitzgerald did a great job at short last year. I think he has value and in multiple spots on the field. I do think it’s hard to play multiple spots at the same time during the season. Whether he’d be better suited to play second base long-term is a discussion we’re having.”
At a glance, Fitzgerald played well enough as a rookie to enter next year as the favorite for starting shortstop, hitting 15 homers, stealing 17 bases and posting an .831 OPS over 96 games. But there are some concerns with Fitzgerald under the hood, namely in his strikeout rate (31.7%) and below-average exit velocity (22nd percentile), among other metrics. Following a year where he played every position except pitcher, catcher and right field, San Francisco could potentially use Fitzgerald in a super-utility role.
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As far as Marco Luciano? Following a rocky season where he was a below-average hitter (.562 OPS) and below-average defender (-3 defensive runs saved at shortstop) while bouncing between San Francisco and Triple-A Sacramento, the 23-year-old’s future will be in the outfield, according to Posey. Luciano has exclusively played either second base or shortstop in the majors and minors.
The most straightforward route to acquiring a shortstop is the free-agent market, the two biggest names being Willy Adames and Ha-Seong Kim. Adames is set up to receive the bigger deal of the two, likely in the neighborhood of Matt Chapman’s six-year, $151 million extension. The payday will be well earned.
In a golden age of shortstops, Adames, 29, has quietly been one of baseball’s best over the last half-decade, ranking ninth among all shortstops in WAR (20.1, per FanGraphs). …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
