Hot stove league: Free agent second basemen. 14 comments


Unlike their counterparts at first, some quality free agent second basemen are available. Enough that if you are looking to plug a hole up the middle, you can find a player who just won a gold glove at second in either league (Ian Kinsler, D.J. LeMahieu). You can find a guy who as recently as 2016 won a batting title (LeMahieu), hit 42 home runs (Brian Dozier), and led his league in OPS (Daniel Murphy).

There is quality to be had.

Depending on how you look at it, the Rangers are either set or stuck at second. After his 2018 season, it’s fair to characterize, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Rougned Odor as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

In his past thirteen months of baseball, encompassing all of 2018 and 2017 and the last month of 2016, Odor has had four brilliantly jaw dropping months at the plate and nine embarrassing dropping-the-steak-in-the-dirt months at the plate. But he did turn around what had been a bad case of Michael Jackson-itis (“why do I have a glove on my left hand?” syndrome) into a gold glove third-place finish in 2018. So, there’s that.

Available free agent second basemen:

Daniel Murphy
Ian Kinsler
Josh Harrison
D.J. LaMahieu
Brian Dozier

Asdrubal Cabrera
Jed Lowrie
Logan Forsythe
Neil Walker
Daniel Descalso

Gordon Beckham
Adam Rosales
Tony Renda
Brandon Phillips
Eric Sogard

(Players in bold are former Rangers.)