MLB Network unveiled The Shredders’ “Top Ten Shortstops Right Now” list, and Francisco Lindor was outside the top three, but here’s why he deserves to be ahead of the third-ranked shortstop, Xander Bogaerts.
It’s almost the start of Spring Training, so this is the time of year when MLB Network releases their top ten lists at each position. On Tuesday evening, they released the top ten shortstops list.
Trevor Story and Fernando Tatis Jr. came in at #1 and #2 respectively, but the one puzzling selection was Bogaerts at #3 over new Mets star Lindor–who came in at #4.
Lindor deserves to be higher than Bogaerts at this point in his career and it seems pretty obvious when you look at the numbers. To be fair, the list was based on the last three years but both haven’t had extremely long careers yet so here are a few comparisons of their numbers so far.
Francisco Lindor Xander Bogaerts
138 HR 118
496 K 756
.488 SLG .454
.833 OPS .805
28.7 WAR 23.0
17.3 WAA 9.0
22.8 AB/HR 31.8
Key: HR= Home Runs, K=Strikeouts, SLG=Slugging Percentage, OPS=On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging Percentage, WAR=Wins Above Replacement, WAA=Wins Above Average, AB/HR=At Bats per Home Run
Both are great but Lindor is more valuable
We all know that Bogaerts is a great talent and is a player that most organizations would build around, but the bottom line is Lindor has better numbers in just about every major category there is.
Wins Above Replacement is the biggest statistic used nowadays and he’s worth five more wins than Bogaerts in a shorter career (and therefore fewer opportunities to improve his WAR). That’s the difference of a whole season’s worth of wins for a superstar player. For more context, Lindor had a WAR of 5.0 in 2019–the last full season that was played. Even if Bogaerts did that in 2021, he would still be 0.7 wins short of Lindor if he didn’t play at all in 2021.
Bogaerts has played more games than Lindor, but all that means is we have a more complete picture to judge Bogaerts on than Lindor.
Performance in the postseason matters as well, and Lindor has been the better postseason player. To be fair, Bogaerts has played in more games than Lindor, but Lindor still has more home runs, more RBI, and an OPS (.790) that is over 100 points higher than Bogaerts’ OPS (.633).
Red Sox fans would say they would rather have Bogaerts while Indians and Mets fans would say they would want Lindor, but the career numbers say Lindor (ranked #4) is a better shortstop than Bogaerts (ranked #3).
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