All-Star Shortstop Picks

It’s time to look at the best shortstops in baseball today, as the Notebook completes the infield portion of the final season-ending All-Star team. You can scroll down the blog for explanations of the other selections, which are as follows…

1B: Miguel Cabrera (Det)/Joey Votto (Cin)
2B: Robinson Cano (NYY)/Brandon Phillips (Cin)
3B: Adrian Beltre (Tex)/Aramis Ramirez (ChC)

There’s little doubt who the best shortstop in baseball is. Throughout a lot of the year it seemed like Colorado’s Troy Tulowitzki wasn’t having his best year. Maybe some of that was just projecting the struggles of his team onto him, but perhaps a lot of it was expectations that have just become so high. Tulowitzki does everything well—he hits over. 300, he draws walk, he’s popped 30 home runs and he’s driven in 105. His grades on the defensive metrics are tops in the league. The numbers alone make the case for him as the best. We’ll still give honorable mention to what’s a very strong position, at least in the National League. Jose Reyes may have cooled down a bit after a hamstring injury, he’s still hitting .331, and Chicago’s young Starlin Castro is a .300 hitter and a rising star. Reyes and Castro join Tulowitzki as the best three shortstops in all of baseball, not just the National League.

The NL trio is the best overall not just on their own merits, but through the weakness of the American League group. While Derek Jeter’s second half of the season has been strong, his extremely poor start, lousy defensive grades and fading power can’t make him an All-Star anymore. Cleveland’s Asdrubal Cabrera has slumped along with his team, with an on-base percentage down to .328. Jhonny Peralta at Detroit easily has the best offensive line, with a .351 OBP and .381 slugging percentage. But Peralta is very mediocre defensively, and at this position I prefer to go with someone who has a strong glove, so long as they are at least comparable with the bat. And there are two other viable candidates—Yunel Escobar in Toronto and Baltimore’s J.J. Hardy.

Hardy’s power has been impressive, with 26 home runs, though a lack of patience at the plate really hurts his on-base percentage. Escobar doesn’t have the same power, but he has a 54-point edge in OBP (.359 to .305) and beats out his Oriole counterpart on defense, as these two rank 1-2 in the league. For this reason, I give the Toronto shortstop the nod in the American League.  

RETURN TO THE PRIME SPORTS NETWORK HOME PAGE

Themify Ultra

The most powerful & flexible WordPress theme created by Themify, making it easy to create any site quickly and beautifully (and responsive, of course). Take full control of your theme design from header to footer. Loaded with many layout options and features, it is by far the most versatile theme by Themify.

Drag & Drop Builder

Build unlimited responsive layouts using Themify’s popular drag & drop Builder.

Parallax Scrolling & Responsive

Design stunning parallax floating effects that works on all devices & resolution with the Builder.

All-Star Shortstop Picks

Pre-made Demos

With just a single click, you can import the demo setup that includes the theme settings, content, menus, widgets, etc., exactly like our theme demos. This is a time saver for creating client sites.

Coming soon

Coming soon

Smart Layout Options

Ultra gives you full control from header to footer, either site-wide or on a per-page basis. This means that you can make your entire site share the same look and feel or create a unique look for every page.

15 Header/Page Styles

Select a header/page design from 15 styles (the no header option is perfect for making landing pages where you don’t want to have header navigation). And yes, there is a sticky header option and this design list is growing!

6 Header Background Options

Header background allows you to: upload a background image, pick a solid color, insert a slider, upload a video, set animating colors, or have it transparent if you want.

6 Footer Layouts

6 footer layout choices with options to toggle visibility of footer logo, menu, widget, and credit text.

5 Single Post Layouts

In term of single post layout, there is a default layout plus 4 unique layouts.

6 Archive Layouts

For the archive layouts, we have 6 different styles that you can choose from: slider, fullwidth, masonry, grids, polaroid, and overlay. You may also toggle the visibility of the post elements such as post title, featured image, meta, content, etc.

Section Scrolling (*New)

Inspired by our Fullpane theme, full section scrolling feature allows viewers to scroll through your page design one row at a time like a presentation slideshow.

60+ Pre-designed Layouts

The Builder includes a huge library of pre-made layouts designed by professional designers. Simply import a layout, replace the text and images, and you’re done! You can get an awesome parallax landing page done in minutes.

10 Bonus Addons

Get the exact same layouts as our pre-made sites with 9 free Builder addons. Valued at $100, purchasing the Ultra theme will give you access to all these bonus addons for free.

Animating Colors

Gradient

Overlay

All-Star Shortstop Picks

Mega Menu

Mega menu allows you to display recent posts, multi-column menus, and even the ability to add widgets into the menu.

Image Filters

Auto-apply Grayscale, Blur, and Sephia filters to your images without editing the original image source (no Photoshop needed). Image filter and hover filter can apply globally or individually as you want.

Sepia

Sepia

Blur

Blur

Grayscale

Grayscale

All-Star Shortstop Picks

Portfolio

Looking to showcase your work and services? Ultra includes an optional portfolio that works seamlessly with all of the post layouts available for the blog posts. We even throw in a post filter as a bonus.

WooCommerce Shop

Wanna sell something? Great, Ultra has WooCommerce integration which matches the shop with the overall theme appearance.

All-Star Shortstop Picks

30 Day Money Back

Buy it with confidence. If you don’t like it, simply request a full refund within 30 days.