The Best Fielding Shortstops

For the last spot on the infield, we’re examining the best three-year peaks of defensive play by Giant shortstops, as measured by baseball-reference.com’s rfield. I explained my methodology here, and we’ve previously looked at catchers, first-, second– and third basemen.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Giants pretty consistently had stellar defense from their shortstops. John McGraw traded for Dave Bancroft during the 1920 season, and he was their starting shortstop until 1923. In mid-June of that year, Bancroft caught a cold while riding in a Pullman sleeper with the window open on a trip back from St. Louis. His cold developed into a serious case of pneumonia, and Bancroft was out for two months. At the end of that season, John McGraw packaged Bancroft, Bill Cunningham and Casey Stengel and sent them to the Boston Braves for Joe Oeschger and Billy Southworth.  The trade seemed lopsided in the Braves’ favor, but McGraw’s real motivation was to aide his old friend Christy Mathewson, who’d been named president of the Braves earlier that year.

McGraw included Bancroft in that trade for two reasons: “Beauty” was 32 and McGraw could see decline, and the Giants had a kid named Travis Jackson who had demonstrated while Bancroft was sick in 1923 that he was ready to take over at short. Jackson was named the outstanding major league shortstop in 1927, 1928 and 1929 by The Sporting News, and it seems that even without the benefit of r-field, the paper may have known what it was talking about. Jackson’s defense declined a bit after he suffered a broken knee in 1932, and various players (including Jackson, if only on a part-time basis) would serve as shortstop for the next two seasons.

Then, after the 1934 season, manager Bill Terry acquired “Rowdy” Richard Bartell from the Phillies. Bartell was an infielder in the old John McGraw mold, meaning he approached baseball the way a modern hockey player might. He was well-known at the time of the trade for two spiking incidents, both involving the Dodgers. Nowhere in baseball was he more hated than at Ebbets Field, making him a natural for stardom at the Polo Grounds. The Sporting News named Bartell the best shortstop in 1937.