Shortstop: Francisco Lindor, Cleveland Indians
2018 fWAR: 7.6
The shortstop position is deep in young and elite talent, and that’s reiterated when looking at the fWAR leaderboard. There were four players who registered at least 5.0 fWAR (Lindor, Manny Machado, Andrelton Simmons, and Trevor Story), but this wasn’t even really a contest.
Lindor’s hard-hit rate progression has been fascinating to watch since debuting in 2015, too. He finished that year with a 25.5% hard-hit rate, but did improve it slightly the following season (27.5%) before making leaps and bounds in this department (35.2% in ’17, 41.6% in ’18).
His incredible offense is enough to provide plenty of value, but it gets better when combined with elite defense. Lindor posted 14 Defensive Runs Saved, along with an Ultimate Zone Rating of 14.1. His final pre-arbitration salary settled in at $623,200, yet his production was worth a whopping $60.9 million, per FanGraphs.
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