Attend any high school or college baseball game and odds are you'll discover the shortstop is one of the team’s most-talented players on both sides of the ball.
This is because playing shortstop requires relatively elite athleticism. And, in a general sense, it would stand to reason that a team’s best athlete would not only be one of their better defenders but also one of their more adept hitters.
Throughout the history of Major League Baseball, however, this has not been the case.
Among all-time leaders in OPS+, a rate statistic that stacks a player’s OPS against the league average for that year and adjusts for ballpark factors, only one player in the top 100 or so was a shortstop.