What once seemed scarce is now a surplus. Good defensive Shortstops have been around for decades, but a shortstop that could hit the ball was hard to find, until now. The league is full of young, talented shortstops and fills the best positional class this sport has ever seen. MLB columnist Mike Petriello picked his top ten shortstops for 2017, seven of which are younger than 25. The other thing to take in is that all of these shortstops have the potential to breakaway for a MVP year.
Let me just throw out some names. Francisco Lindor, Corey Seager, Xander Bogaerts, Carlos Correa, Addison Russell, Trevor Story, each of these players are as good with their bat as they are with their glove.
It is an impressive list of names especially when just five years ago the top ten offensive shortstops in the league included names like; Asdrubal Cabrera, Jhonny Peralta, Alexei Ramirez, and Jimmy Rollins. None of these players are on the same team they were in 2012. It is a changed game now and the shortstops might fill in as the best all-around positional players on each team.
Rewind the Clock
Let's just take a step back real quick. We have definitely had seen great shortstops before. There is no question about that. Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken Jr., Nomar Garciaparra all won the Rookie of the Year award as shortstops. On Petriello's list of top ten shortstops, only two of the players took home the Rookie of the Year award (Seager and Correa).
While it is something to take note of, it truly is utterly pointless. To add to that, most of these shortstops came up in the same year together. Lindor and Correa were even the two finalists to win the award back in 2015.
What does this mean?
Well, it means the game of baseball will be especially exciting for the near future.
Most of these shortstops will be with us for a long time and their dominance should not waver too much. It will be great to see a player be able to make a diving stop with an incredible throw to gun out a runner and then proceed to hit a home run the next inning. It is miraculous the amount of talent floating around in the league right now.
And there is so much below the surface that still has to make an impact. Dansby Swanson has started his career in the Major Leagues along with prospects Christian Arroyo and Chris Owings recently getting the call up.
Yes, Major League Baseball is an ever-changing sport. New prospects are born everyday. Who knows, maybe the next generation of superstars will be first basemen or possibly even catchers. But, as for right now it is the shortstop position that is changing the game. These shortstops will be names you will not stop hearing about for years to come.