Buster Olney's 2026 top 10 at every MLB position: Shortstops - ESPN

Spring training camps are underway, which means it is time to look at the state of baseball. As part of our 2026 MLB season preview, ESPN's Buster Olney surveyed those around the industry to help him rank the top 10 players at every position as part of his annual positional ranking series.

Today, we rank the best of the best at shortstop.

The objective of this exercise is to identify the best players for the 2026 season, not who might be best in five years or over their career. We will roll out a position per day over the next two weeks. Here's the rest of the schedule: starting pitchers (Feb. 16), relief pitchers (Feb. 17), catchers (Feb. 18), first basemen (Feb. 19), second basemen (Feb. 20), third basement (Monday), corner outfielders (Wednesday), center fielders (Thursday), designated hitters (Friday).

Cal Ripken Jr. seemed to break the mold for what shortstops could do offensively, hitting home runs and winning two MVP Awards while playing Gold Glove-caliber defense. Later, the trio of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra was referred to as the Holy Trinity of Shortstops because they were outliers in how good they were offensively.

Those stars paved the way for this era, in which players at this position are more likely than not to excel as hitters. In the NFL, it's really hard to win without a good quarterback, and in MLB, few teams are satisfied with good-fielding, light-hitting shortstops anymore. Consider those who just missed out on the top 10 list below: Jacob Wilson, who flirted with a batting title; Dansby Swanson, a metronome of production; Willy Adames, who signed a $182 million contract with San Francisco just last winter; Andres Gimenez, who helped Toronto reach the World Series; and