Projected 2026 Plan at Shortstop: Brayan Rocchio and Gabriel Arias
The first couple of teams we’ll encounter on this list are considerable long shots for financial reasons.
Cleveland, in particular, might be less likely to spend than anyone, considering it won the AL Central in spite of trading away Josh Naylor, Andrés Giménez, Eli Morgan and Myles Straw before the season, trading away both Shane Bieber and Paul Sewald during the season, waiving Carlos Santana in late August and losing two key pitchers to a gambling scandal.
That said, aside from José Ramírez, Steven Kwan and the weekly Kyle Manzardo home run, its offense was kind of terrible, ranking dead-last in the American League in runs scored. And between Arias, Rocchio and the occasional Daniel Schneemann appearance, the Guardians got a .204/.263/.321 triple-slash from their barely replacement-level shortstop brigade—even with Rocchio’s regular-season ending walk-off home run factored into that math.
This franchise has never invested more than $60 million in a free agent, so tripling that out of nowhere for Bichette almost certainly isn’t happening. But if they felt like investing in their offense for a change, shortstop is the low-hanging fruit where they stand to gain around 100 points of batting average.
