The 2024 Replacement-Level Killers: Second Base

Today, we turn our attention to the second base Killers. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 9.5%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin; as you can see by the table below, four of the six teams listed here project to receive more than a win from their current cast of second base options. Even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look, and the incumbent may no longer appear to be the best option.

Particularly in light of those projections, I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the July 30 deadline, though I’ll note that some of the players cited within for their poor performance are themselves change-of-scenery candidates; one team’s problem may be another team’s solution, albeit not necessarily an ideal one. Either way, I’m less concerned with those solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than I am with the problems. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Sunday.

Red Sox

Acquired in the Chris Sale trade, 23-year-old Vaughn Grissom appeared on track to serve as Boston’s regular second baseman, but he battled hamstring soreness early in spring training, then suffered a groin strain that sidelined him for the duration of the Grapefruit League season. He didn’t make his season debut until May 2, and played just 23 games — with a .148/.207/.160 (1 wRC+) slash line — before being knocked out again, this time by a right hamstring strain.

In his absence within an infield that’s also been destabilized by the injuries to Trevor Story and Triston Casas, Enmanuel Valdez and David Hamilton have done most of the work, with the latter also in the shortstop mix with Ceddanne Rafaela. Hamilton has hit a respectable .273/.327/.414 (105 wRC+), but Valdez just .226/.282/.402 (85 wRC+). The Red Sox are hopeful that Grisson can help them at some point, but there’s no timetable for him to start a rehab assignment. Particularly given the team’s defensive woes up the middle — their shortstops have combined for -10 FRV and -9 DRS, their second baseman -6 FRV and -3 DRS — they could really use a competent addition, but they’re reportedly focused on acquiring a starting pitcher and a right-handed power bat. The guess here is that they’ll roll with a Hamilton-Rafaela middle infield, at best making a lower-impact depth addition while waiting for Grissom to provide them an alternative.

Cardinals

Nolan Gorman enjoyed a nice breakout last year, clubbing 27 homers and posting a 118 wRC+ in his age-23 season, but like Paul Goldschmidt, Lars Nootbaar, and Jordan Walker, he was among the many Cardinals who struggled at the outset of this season. He hit just .196/.261/.363 through the end of April, chasing 34% of pitches outside the zone, striking out 34.2% of the time, and averaging just 85.5 mph when he made contact. He’s been somewhat better since then, hitting .212/.288/.438 (104 wRC+) with an average exit velo of 89.5 mph, and he’s started July particularly hot, but he now owns the majors’ highest strikeout rate among regulars (37.5%) to go with a .279 on-base percentage, and his defense, well, it’s never been his strong suit.

The Cardinals do have alternatives in-house, in that Brendan Donovan and Tommy Edman can both play second, but the former is already holding down left field, while the latter is about to begin a rehab assignment after missing the entire season thus far due to inflammation in his surgically repaired right wrist, then spraining an ankle. The team does also have César Prieto, a lefty-swinging 25-year-old infielder who was acquired from the Orioles in last year’s Jack Flaherty trade; he’s a 40-FV prospect who ranked 15th on the Cardinals’ list and is hitting .308/.355/.500 at Triple-A Memphis, but his chase rate there (44.8%) is off the charts, and that’s before facing major league pitching. Given that Edman won a Gold Glove at second base in 2021 and played 51 games there last year while also seeing time in center field, the most likely scenario for a change — if the Cardinals do make one, which isn’t a guarantee — is an outfield reshuffle that brings one of those aforementioned two into the infield, with Gorman either sent to Triple-A à la Walker or used as a possible trade chip, albeit a particularly costly one given his four remaining years of club control.

Orioles

Number one overall prospect Jackson Holliday appeared on track to break into the majors at the keystone, but the Orioles surprisingly sent him down to Triple-A Norfolk despite a strong spring, instead opening the season with Jordan Westburg and Jorge Mateo sharing the position. On April 10, Holliday was recalled, but he went just 2-for-34 with 18 strikeouts before being demoted two weeks later. He’s hit .273/.442/.471 (144 wRC+) at Norfolk but has been limited to DH duty since returning from a mid-June bout of elbow inflammation.

With Holliday out of the picture, the 25-year-old Westburg has hit .271/.318/.496 (129 wRC+) while splitting his time between second (with Mateo) and third (with Ramón Urías); for whatever reason, he’s managed just a 100 wRC+ while playing second, and his defense there has been shaky to say the least (-6 DRS, -4 FRV, -2.9 UZR in 284.2 innings). Mateo hasn’t hit much (.234/.273/.413, 92 wRC+) but has swiped 13 bags and played steady defense. With 24-year-old prospect Connor Norby — who played second base four times during a brief cup of coffee in early June — also in the mix, and with the Orioles needing pitching, pitching, and more pitching if they’re to retain their slim division lead, it’s difficult to see the team going outside the organization to spruce up second base. More likely, they give Holliday another look when his elbow is ready. With enough warm bodies to get by, Mateo could expendable, a useful stopgap/utility player for another team given his speed and versatility.

Mariners

Acquired from the Twins in exchange for four players in late January, Jorge Polanco appears to have left his bat in Minnesota. Like so many other Mariners, the 31-year-old second baseman has struggled mightily at the plate, hitting just .197/.285/.282 thus far; his 69 wRC+ represents a 49-point drop-off from last year. He’s actually been even worse lately, managing just a 45 wRC+ in 15 games since returning from a four-week absence due to a strained right hamstring. He’s connected for just eight extra-base hits overall; his 6.7% barrel rate is less than half of last season’s 13.8%, and his strikeout rate has spiked to 32.6%, representing his third straight season of setting a new career high. His performance against four-seam fastballs has collapsed, from .291 AVG/.620 SLG to .171 AVG/.243 SLG, with his exit velocity against the pitch falling by three ticks and his whiff rate increasing five percentage points, to 21.4%. Defensively, he’s below average in all three major metrics.

When Polanco went down, utilityman Dylan Moore and rookie Ryan Bliss did the bulk of the work. Both have easily outhit Polanco, with the 31-year-old Moore batting .211/.313/.404 (107 wRC+) and seeing time at shortstop, third base, in left field, and even at first base (where Ty France made the Killers list). The 24-year-old Bliss, chosen in the second round out of Auburn by the Diamondbacks in 2021, came to the Mariners in last year’s Paul Sewald trade. He’s a 5-foot-6, 165-pound dynamo who “makes impressively hard contact for a hitter his size, and he does so in what appears to be a short mechanical distance,” as Eric Longenhagen wrote while ranking him 13th as a 40-FV prospect on the Mariners’ list just last week. Bliss has hit .247/.382/.445 (108 WRC+) at Triple-A Tacoma and .224/.297/.362 (92 wRC+) in 66 PA thus far for the Mariners, albeit with a 30.3% strikeout rate.

Given the extremity of Polanco’s collapse, it makes sense for the Mariners to take a closer look at both alternatives, though a bigger bat would certainly be welcome in a lineup that’s second-to-last in the American League in scoring. If president of baseball ops Jerry Dipoto is aggressive, an upgrade could be along the lines of Rays’ Brandon Lowe (who has two affordable club options remaining), the Reds’ Jonathan India, or the Marlins’ Jazz Chisholm Jr. (both of whom have two years of control remaining).

Mets

I touched upon this one the other day in my roundup of the worst defenses on contenders. Jeff McNeil has had some very good seasons for the Mets, making two All-Star teams and winning a batting title, but he’s now 32 years old and has slipped from a 141 wRC+ in 2022 to 100 last year to 73 (.216/.276/.314) this year. With the banning of the shift, he’s pulling the ball with greater frequency, but the tradeoff hasn’t been worthwhile because he gets under so many balls; his wRC+ to his pull side has dropped from 205 in 2022 to 128 last year and 112 this year, which isn’t helpful when the major league average is 174. His 1.6% barrel rate lands him in the first percentile — he recently went six weeks between barrels — and his 30.2% hard-hit rate is in the 13th percentile. Defensively, he has -3 FRV and -2 DRS in 81 games at second base. His offensive problems are even more glaring when he’s used in an outfield corner.

On May 31, the Mets recalled 34-year-old Jose Iglesias, a former All-Star (2015) who played for half a dozen teams from 2018–22 but was out of the majors last season. Never a player for whom offense was a calling card, he’s nonetheless hit .380/.417/.582 (184 wRC+), a slash line so sizzling that it’s almost comical given his glove-first reputation. His average exit velocity is just 86.9 mph, but his 40.3% sweet spot would place somewhere around the 90th percentile if he had enough batted ball events to qualify. His three homers in 79 PA matches the total he hit in 467 PA with the Rockies in 2022. Though the small-sample defensive metrics are in the red, the Mets are 21-9 with him in the lineup, which lately has been more often than McNeil — he’s started nine of the team’s past 16 games at second and two at third base. What’s more, he’s got another kind of hit single in “OMG,” a pop song that he’s going to perform at the Home Run Derby on Monday night.

Logically speaking, there’s no way this can continue. Then again, Iglesias is clearly living a charmed life, and even his career .281/.321/.386 (89 wRC+) line is more potent than McNeil’s bat this year. With McNeil under contract for two more seasons, it seems unlikely the Mets will make a wholesale change, but if they’re looking for a way to cut payroll, they could eat some of his remaining salary and ship him elsewhere for a change of scenery.

Yankees

The team in Queens hardly has a monopoly on the underperforming second basemen within the New York metropolitan area. Gleyber Torres has been something of an enigma ever since he bopped 38 homers in 2019, his age-22 season; he’s had good seasons, but his 2021 was mediocre (9 HR, 96 wRC+, 1.4 WAR), and he’s had enough ups and downs that the Yankees never bothered to lock him up with a long-term extension. Now he’s in his walk year, and that decision looks justifiable given his .230/.307/.347 (90 wRC+) slash line and 0.6 WAR. He dug himself a particularly deep hole in April (.220/.295/.254, 64 wRC+) and didn’t hit his first homer until May 2. Though he’s managed a 103 wRC+ since the start of May, his 6.3% barrel rate is his lowest since 2020, and his 34.9% hard-hit rate is a career low. Meanwhile, his 22.6% strikeout rate matches his highest mark since his 2018 rookie campaign, and his -4 DRS and -3.4 UZR stick out like a sore thumb on a team whose defense has been one of the majors’ best.

For all of that, Torres has started 91 of the Yankees’ 98 games, in part due to injuries elsewhere within the infield. DJ LeMahieu, who played nine games there last year and 41 in 2022, didn’t make his season debut until May 28 due to a nondisplaced fracture in his right foot. Jon Berti, who played 15 games there last year for the Marlins, has played just 16 games between stints on the IL for groin and calf strains. Oswald Peraza suffered a subscapularis strain in his right shoulder in March and was optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre once he rehabbed; his .210/.325/.251 (59 wRC+) in 44 games isn’t exactly making a case for the 24-year-old former top-50 prospect’s return. Oswaldo Cabrera, who has played seven games at the position, has been overexposed while getting the bulk of the third base duty, hitting .238/.288/.341 (80 wRC+) in 234 PA. Jahmai Jones, the only other Yankee to play second, has hit a respectable .263/.333/.421 (117 wRC+), albeit in just 43 PA while striking out 32.6% of the time; given that he played more second base than outfield with the Triple-A affiliates of the Dodgers and Brewers, it’s unclear what he’s doing on the roster if manager Aaron Boone won’t give him more of an opening.

Given the Yankees’ lack of productive hitters besides Aaron Judge and Juan Soto — Ben Rice is the only non-injured regular with a wRC+ of 100 or better, though Austin Wells is close (98 wRC+) — this is a spot where the Yankees could really use a bat. A month ago, The Athletic’s Jim Bowden reported that the team was targeting Gorman, India, and the Twins’ Edouard Julien, all of whom have their warts, but with pitching, first base (where Anthony Rizzo is injured and Rice quite green), and third base also concerns, the Yankees may try to gut it out with Torres and hope that he figures out where his power went.