6 Feet 7 Inches Tall

When the Pittsburgh Pirates summoned peak prospect Oneil Cruz this calendar week, those attempting to explicate the excitement around him had to attain into other realms for comparisons. The Giannis Antetokounmpo of baseball. Aaron Judge's meridian with Tyreek Hill's speed.

Anyone who was really convinced to plough on the Pirates game needed no further analogies. The thrill of Cruz'due south potential was all there, pure visual stimulus.

You see, Cruz is 6-foot-7, and he plays shortstop. And he'south not a novelty act or a fringe player with a absurd quirk. Until Tuesday, when Pittsburgh finally concluded its especially obnoxious campaign of service time manipulation, he was one of the most exciting players left in the modest leagues. Coming into the season, Baseball Prospectus ranked him the No. 12 prospect in the sport.

In his first game of 2022 (he made a one-game MLB debut at the cease of 2021), Cruz threw the ball harder than any MLB infielder and so far this flavour, ran faster than any Pirate has this season and hit the ball harder than any Pirate has this season.

3 innings into his 2022 debut, @Pirates' Oneil Cruz has registered:

🏴‍☠️The hardest throw by an infielder in @MLB this year (96.7 mph)
🏴‍☠️The hardest hit ball of the year by a Pirate (112.9)
🏴‍☠️The 3 fastest sprint speeds of the year by a Pirate (31.v, xxx.7, xxx.3) pic.twitter.com/nScTK5mD4A

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) June 21, 2022

Simply by starting a game, Cruz became the tallest shortstop in MLB history. And he needed those mold-busting, comparison-defying abilities that and then rarely mingle within one body to flip the prevailing question from "Why? to "Why non?"

But where it was once a hot take to think Cruz would stick at shortstop long enough to sniff the majors, he could quickly evolve from an anomaly to a trendsetter. If he maintains traction at one of baseball's most enervating and storied positions, his arrival could air current up every bit a milestone for unicorns acquisition the positional tropes and preconceived notions of yet another sport.

Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz prepares for a pitch in the field. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Oneil Cruz is MLB'due south tallest shortstop ... by a mile

Being 6-pes-7 and playing shortstop is completely unheard of.

Just six players who stand six-foot-five or taller, including Cruz, have ever appeared in an MLB game at shortstop for whatsoever amount of fourth dimension. Just two have e'er played so much equally 10 games in a flavour there — Archi Cianfrocco, who mostly played offset base for the San Diego Padres in the 1990s, and Mike Morse, who came up as a shortstop simply apace moved to the outfield.

The tallest players to stake out actual careers in the six hole have been in the 6-pes-iv range. That breed of quarterback-bodied shortstop began with Cal Ripken Jr. and has proliferated a bit in recent years with Corey Seager and Carlos Correa. Cruz, who is listed at 220 pounds, has a slender, lanky body type closer to Fernando Tatis Jr., who is 6-foot-3.

When Cruz was even younger and even ganglier, Baseball Prospectus prospect writer Jarrett Seidler was in the pack of scouts trying to foresee his future. It was understandably hard to cover how it would look in the majors.

"It'due south worth noting that Cruz isn't merely going to be the biggest regular shortstop in MLB history, he'south going to exist the biggest by a wide margin," Seidler said this week. "There's never been a regular shortstop listed above 6-pes-4. Cruz is every bit of vi-human foot-seven, which is the same height as Aaron Approximate, and three inches taller than Seager, Tatis, and Correa. Then that's but completely uncharted waters."

Back in 2018, Seidler was bullish on Cruz's chances at navigating the path to a shortstop job in the majors, in part because he showed such a reliable glove and dynamic arm.

"The industry expectation when he was in A-ball was that Cruz was going to lose pregnant range as he continued to grow, and indeed he's listed 45 pounds heavier than when he signed," Seidler said. "Only he filled out without losing whatever noticeable range or agility."

Moving him off shortstop means finding a new position. That, as Seidler points out, isn't a walk in the park.

Beingness this tall and playing *any* position other than pitcher, beginning base or designated hitter would count as historic, but what's specially striking is the dearth of tall players who have fabricated careers at the crucial positions in the heart of the diamond: catcher, second base of operations, shortstop and center field. Simply 18 players 6-human foot-5 or taller have managed fifty-fifty 100 career games at those positions since 1920.

It's notable that of those eighteen, five are active and 2 more were playing in the past two seasons.

Fifty-fifty Judge has increased his time at the more than difficult centre field position, playing a career-high 31 games there already this season every bit he paces the AL MVP race.

Function of the calculus there, equally Seidler points out, springs from advances in defensive positioning that help teams encompass more of the field with less stellar defenders. It allows them to maintain roster flexibility and amend their lineups offensively.

Teams have every incentive to play a potentially fantabulous hitter like Cruz at the most challenging defensive position he tin can handle. Particularly right at present — after small-scale-league experiments in the outfield went poorly — that is shortstop for Cruz.

"If he'due south an average or fringe-average shortstop merely worse at third or the outfield," Seidler said, "it might make sense to exit him at shortstop even if it is not in a vacuum platonic to sacrifice shortstop defense force."

Why Oneil Cruz may not be an outlier for long

Perhaps no sport has shed rigid positional labels more than thoroughly than basketball. While Giannis is more than deserving of his "Greek Freak" nickname, he's not the NBA's but skyscraping star who tin can handle the ball and roam the perimeter with all the fluidity of what we used to call a point guard.

Positionless basketball doesn't map perfectly into the world of baseball. Positions don't dictate matchups or cause direct physical advantages in baseball, but the demands of some spots have limited talent pools for generations.

Just as basketball has disposed with most positional stereotypes and football has slowly embraced some less conventionally sized quarterbacks, baseball is entering a moment where the last barriers — around premium positions — could disintegrate.

This is already a sport where Judge and Jose Altuve can compete for an MVP accolade. It could soon be a sport where they can compete for the award and play the same position.

A lot of current star shortstops accept overcome questions virtually their power to stick. But Cruz is a different sort of proposition precisely because he cuts such a hit figure. Small-scale-league ball tracking numbers, per Seidler, show that he is capable of hitting the ball harder than any current major leaguer other than Giancarlo Stanton. He doesn't square it up enough but yet to accomplish all that ability consistently, only the potential is at that place.

Another player with comparable measurements is rising through the Cincinnati Reds organization right now — Elly De La Cruz. A limber 6-pes-5 at just twenty years old, De La Cruz has a lot of minor-league highlights looking … similar Oneil Cruz.

Seidler calls De La Cruz 1 of his favorite prospects, and says he'south quicker in the field, but less sure-handed than his taller precursor. The Reds have tried him at third base and second base then far, but he'south notwithstanding playing the majority of his games at shortstop.

If y'all're rooting for more Giannis-like dynamic diversity across the field, root even harder for Cruz to hold his own. It is, later all, the first existent case report for future freaks, and for De La Cruz.

"Information technology certainly won't hurt his chances," Seidler said, "if Cruz can be successful."