It's haircut season, ladies and gentlemen. The 2026 draft is five weeks out and the phone lines between agents and front offices are beginning to vibrate. Bonus pools are finalized, slot values are set, and teams are doing exactly what they do every year at this time: looking for the player who will take a little less money than his talent suggests, so the savings can be redirected somewhere else on the board.
This year, the shortstop position is ripe for exactly that kind of maneuvering. The top of the class at the '6' is genuinely deep within the Top 100 picks or so. The five players below all carry some version of a signability conversation, whether because of injury history, prior draft track record, or simply the fact that they're living in the shadow of a more celebrated prospect at the same position. The data says they're worth the …