elly-de-la-cruz-reds-imagn-images.jpg
Imagn Images

You want to get every position right when you draft, but nailing your shortstop is especially important, given how many true superstars are available. That doesn't always mean you have to draft a shortstop early -- nailing late-round dart throws on Geraldo Perdomo and Jeremy Pena worked out pretty well this season, I'd say. You do want to make sure you're identifying players with that kind of difference-making upside, because you don't want to be left behind here. 

Let's continue our first, way-too-early 2026 preview series by looking at the five toughest players to rank at shortstop -- and in case you missed it, here are the toughest players to rank at catcher, first base, second base, and third base from last week: 

Elly De La Cruz, Reds

He hasn't been healthy. I think that's the answer for why De La Cruz has been such a massive disappointment. It hasn't been enough to keep him out of the lineup, but it's clearly impacting him – his 90th percentile sprint speed for the season is still a near-elite mark, obviously, but when you spend the first two seasons of your career at the literal top of the chart, that's a huge drop. De La Cruz has reportedly been playing through a quad injury for much of the season, and you see it in the stolen base totals (17 through the end of May, 19 in four months since), and I think you can see it in the lack of power (just two homers since the All-Star break). 

De La Cruz was a top-seven player in Fantasy last season, and it sure looked like he was taking a step forward in the first half when he hit .284/.359/.495 with a downright manageable 24.3% strikeout rate. But with his second-half slump, he's down to the No. 6 spot just among shortstops and barely a top-20 overall player. That could just be the variation inherent to his skill set, which has been all over the place in his MLB career. But the depth and length of this slump has me thinking it has to be more than that. 

And, though I've been a De La Cruz skeptic at times in the past, I think I'm mostly willing to write his struggles here off. De La Cruz will be just 24, and while progress is not always linear for player development, the sudden step back for De La Cruz feels like it's going to go down as a bump in the road. Take the plate discipline gains he has made this season and combine them with the prodigious physical gifts, and this remains a player you want to bet on, even with a first-round pick coming off a disappointing season. He'll be my No. 2 shortstop in Roto leagues.

If I have to point to one thing I do think is actually concerning for De La Cruz, it remains his performance, or lack thereof, against lefties. Despite being a switch-hitter, he has consistently been worse against left-handed pitching. His .610 OPS against left-handed pitching this season is actually a slight improvement over his career marks, but it's still unplayably poor. I don't think that means De La Cruz is going to lose playing time – his elite defense and baserunning help make up for it – but it's a big hole in his game that will hold him back from reaching his full potential until he finds a way to fix it. 

Geraldo Perdomo, Diamondbacks

The only reason to be skeptical about what Perdomo is doing this season is, well, he's never done anything like this before. If you take the underlying data as representative of his skills, Perdomo looks about as legit as anyone right now. His .371 wOBA is backed up by a .362 mark, and while there's a bit of a gap there, it's actually smaller than the gap for the first three seasons of his career – and is explained away by his healthy pulled-air percentage and bat control. He has 19 homers compared to 18 expected homers, and his .284 xBA is right in line with his .290 actual mark. 

Perdomo has, in other words, earned his breakout here. It's not a fluke. He's hitting the ball harder and to the right parts of the field more often than ever before without sacrificing his elite contact skills; if anything, he's gotten better at putting the bat on the ball while also walking at a career-high 13.3% rate. And he has gotten better as the season has gone on (if that matters to you), putting up a .330/.425/.538 line since the All-Star break while pushing his xwOBA to .384 – a top-20 mark in baseball, right behind Corbin Carroll and just ahead of Cal Raleigh. 

The problem isn't that he's never done anything like this before. His best wOBA for a full season at any level before his current .371 mark came back in 2019, when he was a 19-year-old in A-Ball putting up a .366 mark. That was back in 2019, and he hasn't had a mark above .333 since, including maxing out at .319 in the majors. The underlying numbers back it up, and his .301 BABIP and 9.8% HR/FB are well within normal ranges. It's just that Perdomo has never really done anything like this before.

Which means there is probably a buying opportunity here. I don't expect Perdomo's breakout to be taken at face value, because that would require him to be drafted as a second-round pick at worst. I'm not sure Perdomo is likely to be drafted in the top-100 in most drafts, though that's just a guess right now. I'm debating whether to rank Perdomo sixth or seventh at shortstop at this point, which would probably make him at least a top-50 player. That's discounting what he's done this season by a lot. 

Mookie Betts, Dodgers

The other candidate for the No. 6 shortstop is Betts, who has come on strong after a pretty miserable first half of the season. He was hitting just .244/.315/.381 before the All-Star break, and it was genuinely hard to know how much of that collapse was just natural aging from a 32-year-old, and how much was the result of the stomach virus he dealt with prior to the season that led to him losing 15 pounds right before Opening Day. I was open to the idea that we were near the end of the line for Betts as an impact bat for Fantasy, but this second-half resurgence has me rethinking things. 

That's not to say I think the Mookie Betts of old is ever coming back. His 39-homer 2023 season looks like a huge outlier, as he has followed it up with just 39 combined over the past two seasons. But can he get back to what he was doing in 2024, when he was a very solid all-around player and a good pick in the third round? Yeah, I think that's a reasonable expectation. In the second half, he's back up to a .360 xwOBA, right in line with what he managed in 2024. There's plenty of risk in making that bet on a 33-year-old avoiding further slippage in his skills, of course, which is why I'd probably be more comfortable if he went in the fourth or fifth round range.

But penciling Betts in for a .280 average, 20-plus homers, and a ton of runs and RBI in that elite offense still seems reasonable to me. I might still prefer Perdomo, but it's close enough that they should be ranked in the same tier. 

C.J. Abrams, Nationals

Actually, Abrams might be really easy to rank. He's heading for a second straight season of almost exactly 20 homers and 30 steals, with his average and runs ticking up but neither into real difference maker territory. It's a fine profile, one that has him en route to finish the season as a top-12 shortstop and a top-60 hitter overall.

But doesn't it feel like he should be better than that? Maybe that's unfair – maybe I'm holding what I think Abrams should be capable of against him rather than just taking him for what he is, which is a very good player. But each of the past two seasons has seen him look like a potential first-rounder in the first half of the season, only to fade down the stretch. He is capable of more than this, just not consistently over the course of a full season. 

And maybe that's okay! There's nothing wrong with a shortstop who hits .260 with 20 homers and 30 steals – even at a position like this, that's a very, very useful player. It's just, maybe we need to treat him like he's more of a fringe top-12 option than giving him the benefit of the doubt that he might make that leap to top-five status. He still might, but it's no longer worth baking that into his price. 

Jacob Wilson, Athletics

Wilson is an inherently hard player to value. He isn't quite as much of a one-category specialist as Luis Arraez, but he's not far off – his 18 combined homers and steals in 120 games are equal to Arraez's totals in 149 games this season, and his run and RBI numbers are comparable in nearly 30 fewer games as well. But Arraez is the obvious reference point for a guy whose batting average prowess accounts for most of his value. That may not always be the case – he is just 23, after all – but there isn't much in Wilson's underlying numbers that suggests he's likely to hit for considerably more power than Arraez. 

In fact, the underlying data suggests exactly the opposite; Wilson's expected slugging percentage is just .364, right in line with Arraez's .356 rate this season and lower than any previous Arraez season. Wilson's excellent home park will help, but still, we're talking bottom-of-the-barrel power skills without an outlier pulled-air rate to overcome it. 

Wilson is still young enough to expect there to be room for improvement, but we notably have not seen that as the season has gone. In fact, while he had a .333 expected wOBA at the end of May, that number has dropped to .288 in his most recent 250 plate appearances. Which leaves us with Wilson, where we've been with Arraez for years, where he's extremely dependent on being an outlier in batting average to carry his value. Wilson might be the single best bet to lead the majors in batting average in 2026, but if he doesn't and hits .295 instead – still a very good mark! – he'll be a fringe-y Fantasy option. He ranks as the No. 16 shortstop on the season despite missing around 30 games, but his limited skill set makes it hard to rank him too much higher than that at this point. 

And now here's what you need to know from Monday's games around MLB:

Monday's standouts

Chris Sale Braves vs. WAS: 5 IP, 3 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 6 K 

This was an ugly start for Sale, but I really don't think there's anything to take away from it. He had a 1.75 ERA and 0.74 WHIP in four starts since returning from the IL and remains in the discussion to be the No. 4 starting pitcher in the rankings in 2026. 

Ronald Acuña, OF, Braves: 1 for 2, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 2 R, 3 BB

There was some panic around Acuna a few weeks ago, and it wasn't just Fantasy players worrying: Acuna was moved down to seventh in the Braves lineup at some point. Given his injuries, it was somewhat reasonable to be concerned, but it was also perfectly reasonable to expect him to bounce back … and, of course, that's what he did. Acuna's homer Monday was his fourth in the past 14 games, and he is hitting .360 in that span. It has his OPS for the season back up to .923, with a full-season pace of 34 homers and 14 steals. He's still a first-rounder for me in 2026. I don't think that should be a hot take. 

Freddy Peralta, Brewers @ SD:5 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K 

Peralta is finishing off the best season of his career on a high note, having allowed two or fewer earned runs in eight of his past nine outings. And that's despite his velocity being down a bit over the past month or so, though that hasn't really seemed to affect him. Barring something disastrous, Peralta is going to finish the season with an ERA below 3.00, though with peripherals in the 3.60 range, suggesting there's been quite a bit of good luck on his side. Peralta was a nice buy-low option in 2025 drafts, but I think he's more likely to disappoint than anything else in 2026.

Nick Pivetta, Padres vs. MIL: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 5 BB, 5 K 

Pivetta is running out of steam down the stretch, with six runs allowed over his past two starts. He still had a 2.87 ERA and 0.99 WHIP in a breakout season, so I don't think there's much to take from this one either. I'm more inclined to fade Pivetta coming off his first ever season with an ERA below 4.00, but I don't necessarily think this is a fluke, either – he has built on the gains he made in recent years while taking advantage of by far the best ballpark of his career. I'd bet on an ERA above 3.50 next season, but with Pivetta's strikeout and WHIP skills, that should still make him a must-start pitcher for Fantasy. Just not one I'm necessarily willing to pay face value for. 

Mackenzie Gore, Nationals @ATL: 2 IP, 4 H, 4 ER, 4 BB, 3 K

The flashes of upside are tantalizing, and pitchers rarely follow straightforward development paths, so we're going to keep chasing Gore. My inclination is to just treat him like he is more or less a finished product at this point – he continued to tinker this season, adding a new slider to his arsenal, but the end result has been as much frustration as ever. Gore will rack up big strikeout numbers and could find his way to a 3.50 ERA, but at this point, I think I'm done treating him like a breakout candidate. Draft him as more of a mid-to-end-of-rotation starter with upside, and you might be able to avoid disappointment. 

Ivan Herrera, C, Cardinals: 1 for 3, 1 HR, 1 R, 2 RB, 2 BB

We learned over the weekend that Herrera is expected to play catcher again for the Cardinals in 2026, and that's a big deal for his Fantasy value. Herrera might be a good enough hitter to matter for Fantasy as a DH-only player, but he'd go from someone you might consider with a late-round pick to a potential top-five option at catcher once eligible. That won't be to start the season, but if he's the primary backup and serves as DH the rest of the time, he could get there after a couple of weeks, and it's not overstating things to say he would have top-five upside – he's on a near-30-homer pace while hitting .281 this season, and the underlying data mostly backs it up. Do not forget about Herrera when preparing for 2026. 

Justin Verlander, Giants vs. STL: 4.1 IP, 9 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 3 K

The problem with relying on streamers is that you are typically relying on pretty mediocre pitchers, with everything that comes with it. Verlander was facing incredible matchups this week, but we're still talking about a flyball pitcher with mediocre strikeout skills at this point in his career, so results like this are always possible. I still like his chances against the Rockies in San Francisco later this week, but it's by no means a guarantee.