After covering the starting pitchers and outfielders over the past few weeks, the Shuffle Up series rolls on. Our job is to try to rank the players as if we’re drafting starting from scratch today (something you can still do at Yahoo, by the way). Use this list for self-scouting, pickups, trades, any kind of player evaluation you like.
[Smarter waivers, better trades, optimized lineups — Yahoo Fantasy Plus unlocks it all]
Today we are raking the infield — everyone with infield eligibility should be here, other than any dual-position catchers (they get their own day).
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Everything to this point is an audition. Assume a 5×5 scoring system. Players at the same salary are considered even.
Tier 1: The Big Tickets
Witt has future MVP written all over him, especially when he stops chasing at pitches outside the strike zone. Keep in mind, he’s just shy of his 25th birthday. He’s as fast as anyone in baseball and has no platoon deficit. It would be nice if the Royals could build an A to Z lineup, but one step at a time. Despite being tied to the No. 26 scoring offense in baseball, Witt would be the standard No. 3 pick in pretty much any league starting fresh today, after Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani.
Cincinnati’s De La Cruz and Pittsburgh’s Cruz no longer play the same position, but they’re still young, ascending, jumbo-sized stars in the same division, so it’s fun to link them.
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De La Cruz is on pace for 200 strikeouts and his hard-hit metrics are down, but he still has the athleticism to outrun his mistakes — he’s projected for 25 home runs and 55 steals, with an average that won’t crush you. Cruz has almost doubled his walk rate this year and he’s running liberally — after stealing 15-for-15 in the second half of last year, he’s 18-for-19 this season (only a brief back problem slowed him down). Cruz strikes out even more than Elly, but when the category juice is this tasty, you live with the empty at-bats. We still haven’t seen the peak of either player, which is scary.
One reason Bregman came to Boston on his make-good contract was a dreamy career split at Fenway Park; so far, that hasn’t registered in 2025 (.330 average on the road, .263 average at home). Still, it all hashes to his best OPS+ since 2019, and a regaining of his power stroke. Bregman has excellent zone judgment and he knows when to look for his pitch, pulling the ball a whopping 55% of the time. Even if the bat speed might be slightly down, his experience makes up for…