Are Second Basemen Finally Getting Their Due? What Drafting a 2B No. 1 Says About the Position’s Changing Value

In a first, the Guardians took 2B Travis Bazzana with the No. 1 pick in last week's MLB draft.

Travis Bazzana of the Oregon State Beavers became the first 2B to ever go No. 1 overall in the MLB draft. (Amanda Loman/Getty Images)

When Travis Bazzana’s name was called first overall at the MLB draft last week, it was a pick that few would have thought possible just a handful of years ago.

Bazzana is a native of Sydney, Australia, and he played cricket in high school (in addition to baseball) while dreaming of coming to the U.S. and joining the major leagues. Even after getting a scholarship from Oregon State — a rare D-I path for an Australian prospect — and earning All-Pac-12 honors as a freshman and sophomore, Bazzana didn’t know where he would land in the draft: "I never really knew if [going No. 1] was possible,” he said, “and at least a couple years ago I didn't really think that that was going to be in the picture."

Bazzana says his performance at the 2023 Cape Cod League, where he led all hitters with a .375 batting average, started to bring his dream closer to a reality. But the other factor still working against Bazzana was the fact that a second baseman had never gone first in the draft before — part of a long-running trend by which second base is not traditionally considered a premium position. But Bazzana’s selection, which helped him join Rickie Weeks in 2003 as the only 2Bs ever drafted among the Top 5, may represent a changing perception for the position.

For a position that has been home to some of the greatest players in history — names like Jackie Robinson, Rogers Hornsby, Joe Morgan, Rod Carew and Ryne Sandberg, to name a few — second base has seldom been viewed as a glamour position. It owns a below-average number of Hall of Famers — 20, the most recent of whom (Craig Biggio) was inducted in 2015, nearly a decade ago — and has had fewer MVPs than any position except designated hitter:

That wasn’t necessarily without justification. Despite some of the superstar names listed above, the position was more often stocked with weak-hitting, mediocre talent — the types of players caught in the middle between having enough range or arm strength to play shortstop (a more prestigious defensive position) and enough power in the bat to play a more prestigious offensive position like a corner infielder or in the outfield. Not only does the average height for second basemen remain the lowest of any position, but it’s the only position where the average is below 6-feet.

Because of these limitations, second basemen produced just 5.9 percent of total leaguewide Wins Above Replacement over the first four decades of MLB’s amateur draft era (1965-2004). Among non-DH positions, only catchers (5.8 percent) and shortstops (5.2 percent) made up a smaller share of leaguewide value than second basemen. And on average, only 3.8 of the Top 40 position players in MLB by WAR (or 9.5 percent) were second basemen, with only 0.9 making the Top 10 per year on average. If elite players were only rarely lining up at second, why would teams spend top draft picks on them?

But the 20 years that followed saw the position undergo a major transformation, from a place to stash your afterthoughts to a cornerstone of modern team-building.

The decade from 2005-2014 was the greatest in modern history for second basemen, with the position collectively producing 6.9 percent of leaguewide WAR and yielding such talents as Chase Utley, Robinson Cano, Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, Weeks, Brandon Phillips, Placido Polanco, Brian Roberts, Ben Zobrist (for a few seasons), Matt Carpenter, Howie Kendrick and Brian Dozier, plus others. When Pedroia was named 2008 AL MVP, it was the first time a second baseman won the award since Jeff Kent in 2000 — and only the second time since Sandberg in 1984.

The next decade continued that trend, with 6.7 percent of WAR coming from second basemen and an average of 5.4 Top-40 players per year at the position. The greatest of these was Houston’s Jose Altuve — a player who, at a tiny 5-foot-6, upheld the position’s tradition of short statures, but who also could hit as many as 30 homers a year while still providing solid defense. Joined by Marcus Semien, Ketel Marte, Andres Gimenez, Ozzie Albies, Jean Segura, DJ LeMahieu, Ha-Seong Kim, Brandon Lowe, Jake Cronenworth, Tommy Edman and Jeff McNeil, Altuve helped continue the upward trajectory set by the previous generation of second basemen.

The path hasn’t been perfectly linear — fewer 2Bs have produced truly elite (Top-10 in WAR) seasons this past decade than in the previous two. The position seems to have settled into a spot where more players are among the best few on a good team, even if it’s still rare to see an MVP bid from one of them. (Although we see you, Ketel Marte.)

But with the help of teams like the Dodgers, who experiment with different players at different spots on the field constantly — shoutout to Mookie Betts, who passed through second base en route to shortstop — the position has also evolved into one of the most versatile. The “tweener” nature that was a negative before has actually turned into a positive in recent seasons, as teams move toward positionless baseball.

Among players who produced at least 4.0 WAR per 162 team games in a season since 2015 — so, basically, good players — those whose primary position was second base have also spent 16.1 percent of their appearances at another position, and 6.2 percent at another position that is considered “premium” on the defensive spectrum.¹ Putting aside left and right fielders, who most frequently shift to center field as their secondary position, no other spot on the diamond sees players do double-duty at other positions as much as second basemen do — nor spend that duty at equally demanding positions:

All of this is why it was about time for a player like Bazzana to come along and be taken first overall in the draft as a second baseman.

Bazzana might even be the latest evolution of the position: Yes, he actually clears 6-feet (unlike Altuve), and he possesses power and speed to go with the position’s traditional contact-hitting skills. As Guardians GM Chris Antonetti has said, Bazzana also has the athleticism to play positions other than second when necessary — and that may be the case in the near future, with the 25-year-old Gimenez locked in as Cleveland’s starting 2B right now. But no matter what happens there, this looks like the latest sign that second base is no longer the forgotten position on the diamond that it once was.

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Filed under: Baseball

1. Meaning among the top half of positions in perceived defensive value/importance: Catcher, shortstop, second base or center field.