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by TFIR
This article had civ's name all over it
The past, present and future of the shortstop position in Cleveland
By Zack Meisel Jan 19, 2021 21
CLEVELAND — On a blustery Saturday afternoon in April of 1994, the unreliable glove of Cleveland’s new shortstop cost the club a game against Kansas City.
Omar Vizquel’s three errors contributed to seven unearned Royals runs, with his third gaffe — a dropped pop-up with the bases loaded and the score deadlocked in the eighth inning — handing Kansas City the victory. It was a season’s worth of miscues for the reigning Gold Glove Award winner in a span of three hours, and just nine games into his tenure with his new team.
Vizquel remembers a fan shouting, “Send this guy back to Seattle!” Kenny Lofton once told me: “The first thing we said was, ‘Who is this guy?’”
Turns out, Vizquel would man the shortstop position for the Indians for 11 years, during which he claimed eight Gold Gloves. That’s a lengthy term at a premium position, but that has long been the norm for the Indians.
Before Vizquel arrived, Julio Franco and Félix Fermín handled shortstop for much of the previous decade. Vizquel eventually passed the baton to Jhonny Peralta, who after four years at short, shifted to third base to make room for Asdrúbal Cabrera.
When the club dealt Cabrera to the Nationals in 2014, they offered José Ramírez a nearly year-long audition until Francisco Lindor joined the big-league roster in June 2015. For the most part, though, the Indians have enjoyed stability at shortstop since they played in their cavernous lakeshore venue. It’s especially true when comparing it to other areas of the diamond. They used 26 different starting outfield combinations in 2020, after all. And they called upon 32 different second basemen to start a game between Roberto Alomar’s departure prior to the 2002 season and Jason Kipnis’ debut in 2011. (Who could forget Jayson Nix and Joe Inglett and Lou Merloni?)
Since Vizquel’s Cleveland debut, four players — five if we’re including Ramírez’s trial in 2014-15 — have essentially covered shortstop for the last 27 years.
Now, though, it’s time for another transition, and this one’s a bit more complicated.
The present
Lindor started 678 of the team’s 708 games at shortstop the last five seasons. He now resides in New York.
The two shortstops the club obtained from the Mets, Amed Rosario and Andrés Giménez will have the first opportunities to follow in the perennial All-Star’s footsteps. Giménez is the more gifted defender. Rosario’s metrics at shortstop are not suitable for younger audiences, but he occupied the spot for the Mets the last few years until Giménez debuted for the club in 2020. Yu Chang, who rose through Cleveland’s system as a shortstop, seems more likely to land at second base or in the utility role.
Several others could soon push for a chance, including Gabriel Arias and Tyler Freeman, two of the organization’s top prospects, who figure to join the conversation at some point in the next 18 months.
Attempting to predict the club’s shortstop for Opening Day 2024, for example, is a difficult task. It could be one of many candidates. And that’s precisely the way the Indians want it.
The future
Though he skipped Triple A and didn’t turn 22 until September, Giménez logged a .732 OPS (and a 105 wRC+, or 5 percent better than league average at creating runs) with a solid defensive showing in the middle infield. Baseball America ranked him No. 66 on its top 100 prospects list for 2021. Plenty of teams would acquire him and believe they have their long-term answer at shortstop.
That may be the case in Cleveland, too, but it’s not so simple.
Sure, it’s possible Rosario settles at a different position and Arias slides over to third, Freeman goes to second, Chang and Owen Miller and Ernie Clement carve out their own roles and Nolan Jones sticks in the outfield. And, as is usually the case, some of these young players will prosper and others will flop. Freeman owns a .319/.379/.441 slash line in three minor-league seasons. He’s a contact hitter — the organization’s favorite hitting trait at the moment — who has struck out in only 8.8 percent of his plate appearances. Arias was the crown jewel of the Mike Clevinger trade. He hit for both average and power (17 homers and 21 doubles in 120 games) at High A in 2019, though he also struck out 128 times.
But there’s a long line of shortstops in Cleveland’s rising farm system, which is one of the deepest and youngest in the sport. It’s a pivotal year for those attempting to cement their status as can’t-miss prospects, guys who aren’t even of legal drinking age, such as Brayan Rocchio, José Fermin, Gabriel Rodriguez and José Tena. After last year’s minor-league season was scrapped because of the pandemic, they could start to climb through the system in 2021, to Lynchburg and Lake County, where they could land on more evaluators’ radars.
And that group doesn’t include an even younger crop of shortstops. The Indians nabbed Carson Tucker, the brother of Pirates outfielder Cole Tucker, with their first-round selection in 2020, and Milan Tolentino, the son of former big-leaguer José Tolentino, in the fourth round. There are well-regarded teenagers who have only appeared in the Dominican Summer League or in rookie ball at the club’s complex in Arizona, such as Yordys Valdes, Angel Martínez and Junior Sanquintin.
Oh, and the organization signed 15 players on the first day of the international signing period on Friday. Eight of them are shortstops, headlined by Angel Genao and Fran Alduey, who ranked No. 23 and 25, respectively, on MLB Pipeline’s international prospect rankings. Paul Gillispie, the Indians’ vice president of international scouting, described both as switch-hitting shortstops who routinely make hard contact at the plate. He referred to Alduey as “a compact, athletic, quick-twitch type of player” who possesses the physical tools to remain at shortstop, while Genao is “a leaner, longer” player who “could potentially grow into some power.”
(For more on individual players’ scouting reports, check out Keith Law’s prospect rankings)
So, why all the shortstops? Gillispie noted tryout camps in Latin American countries often have long lines of participants at the shortstop position. Teams typically begin scouting international players as they reach the ages of 12 and 13. Ramírez dropped out of school at that age so he could solely focus on baseball and capture scouts’ attention. The pandemic complicated the scouting process this year, as evaluators devoted more time to studying players’ skills via video and interviewing them remotely.
There’s certainly strategy behind Cleveland’s infatuation with shortstops. The Indians value versatility, and if a player can conquer the complexities of shortstop, he can probably handle another position. So if Cleveland collects shortstops by the bushel, those who prove they can hit can eventually move to other spots on the diamond based on the team’s needs.
Jones, for instance, was drafted as a shortstop out of Holy Ghost Prep High School outside of Philadelphia. He shifted to third base during his first season in the organization and, thanks to his athleticism — he comes from a family of hockey players — he’s now learning corner outfield and first base so he can make a more immediate transition to the major-league roster. The Indians can follow a similar plan with other shortstops as they climb through the system. (The bevy of shortstops also provides the team with trade ammunition.)
The organization has cultivated a widely envied starting-pitching pipeline, but it continues to search for a comparable formula on the position-player side. This is one calculated attempt to remedy that. As a result, as the Indians search for their next long-term solution at shortstop, they certainly won’t be lacking candidates.
(Top photo of Amed Rosario, left, and Andrés Giménez: Alejandra Villa Loarca / Newsday RM via Getty Images)
"I've suffered a great many tragedies in my life....most of them never happened". Mark Twain
