MLB's $957M Free-Agent SS Class Is Off to a Nightmare Start

There's a story. It begins with four shortstops raking in $957 million on MLB's 2022-23 free-agent market, with a footnote about how the position didn't do as well the prior winter. How it ends, nobody knows.

But it's not going so great early on.

The Philadelphia Phillies, San Diego Padres, Minnesota Twins and Chicago Cubs set the bar high with the contracts they issued to Trea Turner (11 years, $300 million), Xander Bogaerts (11 years, $280 million), Carlos Correa (6 years, $200 million) and Dansby Swanson (7 years, $177 million). And per certain numbers, the bar was appropriately measured.

It's not just the combined nine All-Star selections, six Silver Sluggers, two Gold Gloves and five World Series rings. It's also the foursome's robust total of 22.0 rWAR for 2022. Or what ZiPS projected their WAR to be in 2023, which was 0.1 points off that exact figure.

But now, roughly 30 percent of the way into the '23 season, the foursome is only about 20 percent of the way there with a combined 4.4 rWAR. Alarm bells are ringing and villagers are trying to remember where they left their pitchforks.

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Easier to Sugarcoat: Bogaerts and Swanson

Let's abide by an ancient custom and start with the good news: of the aforementioned 4.5 rWAR, 3.9 belongs to Bogaerts and Swanson.

This is to say they're doing fine at their jobs, especially on the defensive side. Swanson, who won his first Gold Glove last year, leads National League shortstops with 6 Defensive Runs Saved. Bogaerts is also in the black for DRS, and his league-leading 8 Outs Above Average that does him an even greater kindness.

As there usually is, though, there's creeping bad news.

After slamming 52 home runs across 2021 and 2022, the 29-year-old Swanson only has five long balls in 2023. His slugging percentage is down 29 points from '22 to '23.

Bogaerts, meanwhile, is dealing with a 51-point drop in slugging, not to mention a 53-point drop in batting average and a 30-point drop in on-base percentage.

This information will surprise anyone who just awoke from a nap that began in mid-April—geez, Rip Van Winkle much?—but, hey, even hitters as accomplished as Bogaerts can go into slumps. In his case, we're talking a .190/.299/.302 slash line over 31 games.

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Harder to Sugarcoat: Turner and Correa

For anyone who hasn't already done the math, Turner and Correa have contributed 0.5 rWAR to this foursome's total. The two of them are thus less than one Brenton Doyle, which we swear is not a made-up name.

The Twins must hope that Correa's molasses-like start to the season is owed to his left foot, which they revealed Thursday to be the victim of plantar fasciitis and a muscle strain. Not ideal, but at least it's not the same leg that cost him $150 million on the open market.

The Twins would otherwise have to confront more damning explanations for why Correa is MLB's fifth-biggest loser in average and eighth-biggest loser in OBP from 2022 to 2023, not to mention he's in Year 2 of a fielding slump. Like, say, the possibility that the 28-year-old is on his way out of his prime after being their best player last season.

As for what's up with Turner, no explanation is more succinct than how the 29-year-old bluntly put it: "I'm honest with myself, I've sucked."

The bright side is that Turner's average and OBP haven't fallen off as far as Correa's, but a 83-point drop in slugging is enough to terrify Phillies fans. In a related story, Turner is also among the biggest gainers in strikeout percentage.

The record should show that it's not just Phillies fans booing Turner. His mom is, too.

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So, Who Should Be Worried the Most?

There is, of course, a big difference between 50 or so games and six, seven and 11 years' worth of games. It's too soon to apply full-on panic to these deals.

But varying degrees of concern? That's fair game, so let's rank how worried the Phillies, Padres, Twins and Cubs should be.

4. Hardly Concerned: Chicago Cubs

Even without his usual power, Swanson still ranks third among shortstops in rWAR. As in, the same place he occupied last season.

Plus, it's not like any other Cubs hitters are doing better.

3. Mildly Concerned: San Diego Padres

The defense has been nice, but Bogaerts' bat is what the Padres signed him for and what they need to show up again if they're ever going to escape MLB's run-scoring dregs.

His peripheral metrics are encouraging to this end, but there's also the looming specter that Bogaerts' offensive brilliance between 2018 and 2022 was a Fenway Park thing all along.

2. Increasingly Concerned: Philadelphia Phillies

Speaking of peripheral metrics, elite sprint speed is the only thing that jumps off the page on Turner's profile these days:

And while we don't disagree with Eno Sarris of The Athletic's assessment that Turner is simply pressing, it does bear noting that Turner's tendency toward poor swing decisions and whiffs took root last season.

1. Very Concerned: Minnesota Twins

This is simple, right? Of the four shortstops we've discussed, Correa is the one who is A) having the worst season statistically and B) looking at a potentially lengthy injury absence.

Yet there's also the more existential threat that the Correa catastrophe presents to the Twins.

He's taking up 22 percent of their payroll, compared to 8, 6 and 5 percent for Swanson, Turner and Bogaerts. Though the Twins have played their way into first place in the American League Central anyway, having Correa produce just 1 percent of the team's total WAR is the opposite of sustainable on a longer timeline. This is a legit bad omen, in other words.

Granted, initial failure to justify massive contracts from what was a record-setting winter of spending is not exclusive to these four shortstops. The list also contains Jacob deGrom (5 years, $185 million), Carlos Rodón (5 years, $185 million), Willson Contreras (5 years, $87.5 million) and Andrew Benintendi (5 years, $75 million), and that's just the start.

It's easy to read "free agency is risky, actually" as the moral of the story but, well, duh. It's a market where the only available stocks are ones whose values have already peaked, making down the most likely trajectory going forward.

Rather than teams shunning the market or the league doing away with free agency entirely—good luck getting the MLB Players Association to agree to that—the reform that should happen is one that would make it less of a risky marketplace. Say, one that all players, not just erstwhile Rookie of the Year contenders, are allowed to reach closer to the peak age of 26 rather than when they're running out of prime years in the late 20s and early 30s.

Just a thought for when the current collective bargaining agreement expires in 2026.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.