State of the Position: Shortstop
The Atlanta Braves are in a dire place at shortstop, with not many quality options in the organization
The Atlanta Braves have a major league roster that’s the envy of baseball - full of cost-controlled long-term contracts, it’s relatively easy to project out almost every single starter for multiple seasons and know exactly what they’re going to make in the process while giving you above-average production.
The lone exception, however, is shortstop.
Incumbent Orlando Arcia is signed through 2025 at a cash salary of just $2M and a cap figure of $2.43M, with the team holding a club option for 2026 at another $2M. It’s a fantastic deal for a quality defender, with Arcia putting up a +5 Run Value defensively and 7 Outs Above Average up the middle this season.
From an offensive perspective, however, Arcia’s been a disappointment. He’s batting just .217 this year, repeating last season’s 17 home runs but with a corresponding 47-point decrease in batting average. Situationally, it’s even more dire: Arcia’s batting just .161 with a .413 OPS this season with runners in scoring position, striking out 36 times and successfully executing the sacrifice just eight times.
(He’s shown flashes, mind you: Arcia hit .294 in the first half last season, earning his first career All-Star nod, before slumping in the second half.)
What options do the team have to replace Arcia at shortstop and what is the future of the position? Let’s dive into it.
MLB: This is likely a position battle next season
We got a brief glimpse of Nacho Alvarez Jr. in Atlanta this year after Ozzie Albies went down and Whit Merrifield was still unable to play the field after requiring stitches in his first day with the team.
It didn’t go well.
Nacho was just 3-30 with the Braves across his eight games of action, all singles, with one run scored and ten strikeouts. He just wasn’t ready.
That’s not to say he won’t be ready next spring, however. Nacho’s 2024 in Gwinnett was productive, with the infielder batting .297/.398/.463 with ten homers and ten stolen bases in 64 games.
Under the hood, the inputs match the production - a 89.4% zone contact rate this season is virtually elite, while a 23.3% chase is more than five points better than MLB average.1 While his power isn’t ever going to be exceptional - his 101.5 mph EV90 is below the MLB average of 103.2 - I do think he’ll be able to run into enough to keep defenses honest. He’s not completely power deficient, he’s just not a slugger. That’s fine in this lineup. 2
The differentiator is going to come down to defense: For all the flack that Arcia gets at the plate, his glove keeps runs off the board. And I’m not sure that Alvarez can quite keep up there. Most of the components to shortstop defense - his reads, his hands, the fluidity of his actions - are sufficient, but his range is a bit suspect. Can he do it? Of course he can. The question here is if he can hit well enough for Atlanta to take the small hit to the overall defense, as this is an organization that has really prioritized up-the-middle defense.3
Prediction: Spring training battle between Nacho Alvarez Jr. and Orlando Arcia. If Arcia wins, Nacho goes back to Gwinnett, but if Nacho wins, Arcia’s your primary backup at the MLB level.
Wild Card: An offseason acquisition at shortstop. I do not expect Atlanta to be heavily involved in the bidding for pending free agents Willy Adames or Ha-Seong Kim, as that’ll likely go over what they want to pay on either a years or AAV basis, but a trade could be made here. Nico Hoerner of the Chicago Cubs could be someone moved, as they have a lot of infield prospects they could promote to replace him.
There’s not much of a “next wave” of talent at the position
As I talk about frequently, Atlanta has heavily prioritized pitching in the MLB Draft, being the only organization to devote over 60% of all available MLB Bonus pool funds to arms from 2019-2023.
What they haven’t prioritized is the shortstop position, with very few draft picks being made with future MLB contributions in mind at the position. Here’s a list of all shortstops selected in those same drafts:
2024 R13 (401): Colby Jones, Juco
2023 R03 (126): Sebin Ceballos4, Oregon (traded)
2023 R12 (369): Brady Day, Kansas State (didn’t sign)
2023 R18 (549): Cam Magee, Washington State
2022 R05 (155): Nacho Alvarez Jr.,5 Juco
2021 R04 (126): Cal Conley, Texas Tech
2021 R05 (157): Luke Waddell, Georgia Tech
2021 R14 (427): Caleb Durbin, Washington (traded)
2019 R01 (21): Braden Shewmake, Texas A&M (traded)
2019 R02 (60): Beau Phillip, Oregon State (released)
Oof. As you can see, there were some notable misses earlier in the tenure of this current front office (Shewmake) and then they essentially punted on the position, only using picks in the first half of the draft on players they were attempting to push from third base or second base over to short (Ceballos and Alvarez).
While both Conley and Waddell are in the organization, neither is on common prospect lists for the organization and the belief is that they’re destined for utility roles at best in the future. Both have struggled to produce offensively, with Conley batting .242 this season in a repeat of Double-A and Waddell batting .235 at Gwinnett this year while also filling in at second (19 starts) and third (10 starts).
Could an international free agent eventually take the position?
The Braves have taken a different approach to international free agency ever since the John Coppolella penalties ran their course.6
Atlanta has been in the mix at the very top of the international market in the last few signing classes, paying top dollar for one of the best prospects in each period. Two of these are shortstops, with Ambioris Tavarez and Jose Perdomo joining the organization.
Tavarez was signed in January 2021 for $1.5M but has dealt with injuries during his professional career. He played in only 17 games in 2022 thanks to thoracic outlet syndrome, while his 2024 season was significantly interrupted due to a fractured hand.
Outside of that, he’s been slow to develop at the plate. His best offensive season was 2023, where he hit just .216 in 108 games with Single-A Augusta at age 19. He took a slight production hit in High-A Rome this year, batting just .194 before the injury in May. He returned in late August, getting eight games before the end of the season and ending on a high note with three muti-hit games to wrap his 2024 campaign.
Over his time on the field, he’s shown that he can stick at shortstop and potentially play the position at an above-average or maybe even plus level, but the offense is behind owing to the lost development time. It’s unlikely he’d be in the infield mix within three seasons.
Perdomo, signed this spring for a class record $5M, got in just eight games for the team’s Dominican Summer League affiliate after a hamstring injury delayed the start to his year. He’s not going to be a factor at the major league level for quite some time.
What does Atlanta do now?
The Braves are at a bit of a crossroads right now - there’s not a lot of help coming at shortstop from the farm, with all of the team’s eggs in the Nacho Alvarez basket. It feels like a trade is the most likely scenario if the front office wants to give themselves more options, but this is probably the most shallow position in the entire organization.
I wouldn’t be opposed to a top draft pick being used on the position in the future - even in a week 2024 class, there were several options that Atlanta could have gone to in the top two rounds that would have given them another potential contributor at the major league level.7
But if anything’s should be clear from this, it’s that shortstop is the hardest position to fill at the major league level. If you’re going to pick a one-dimensional player, pick a quality defender and hope to find a way to get some offense out of them.
28.5% for 2024
When injuries haven’t taken 2/3rds of the lineup out of commission, obviously
Not just at shortstop, mind you, but also in centerfield (Michael Harris II) and behind the plate (Sean Murphy)
Ceballos was a Rawlings Gold Glove at third base in college and was told over the offseason he’d work at shortstop this season. He didn’t get into a single game with Atlanta at short, however, and was traded to the San Francisco Giants at the trade deadline in the Jorge Soler deal.
Similar to Ceballos, Alvarez was predominately a third baseman at Riverside Community College prior to being drafted and moved to shortstop
Atlanta’s former GM before Alex Anthopoulos, he was eventually banned for life from baseball for multiple international signing violations and attempts to obstruct MLB’s investigation. His ban was lifted in 2023.
I was in on prepster Caleb Bonemer, who went to the Chicago White Sox at pick 43, while there were early pre-draft reports linking the team to prepster Carter Johnson, who went to Miami at pick 56. Kellon Lindsey was my realistic wish for a prep shortstop at 24, but he went one pick before to the Los Angeles Dodgers (and the team’s plans worked out with the Cam Caminiti selection, as they got him at slot and he’s considered one of the team’s top prospects.)