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In 2024, the Twins finished sixth among MLB teams in fWAR at the shortstop position, even with Carlos Correa missing much of the second half with a foot injury. Heading into 2025, Minnesota was again projected as a top-10 team at short, behind the strength of Correa coming off an All-Star season.
Correa proved disappointing. At the end of July, the Twins ranked 16th among MLB teams in shortstop WAR. Mediocre, but hardly disastrous. Just minutes before the trade deadline, Minnesota's front office pounced on an opportunity to unload (some of) Correa's contract, sending him to the Astros for essentially nothing.
Brooks Lee took over full-time shortstop duties the rest of the way, and things now did take a turn for disaster. He slashed .208/.274/.348 with uninspiring glovework in the final two months. Despite the underwhelming display, he's once again lined up for the everyday job in 2026, without much in the way of confidence-inspiring backup plans.
Can Lee and the Twins defy expectations at a position where they are projected by FanGraphs to be the worst team in all of baseball?
TWINS SHORTSTOPS AT A GLANCE
Starter: Brooks Lee
Backup: Ryan Kreidler
Depth: Orlando Arcia, Tristan Gray
Prospects: Kaelen Culpepper, Marek Houston
Twins fWAR Ranking Last Year: 22nd out of 30
Twins fWAR Projection This Year: 30th out of 30
THE GOOD
It's important to acknowledge that Lee is still only 25 years old, and the attributes that made him a top-10 draft pick and high-end prospect are still there. He's a switch-hitter with excellent contact skills and a very high baseball IQ, capable of playing up the middle while offering signs of latent power potential.
That's a valuable asset, in theory. But so far in his major-league career, the pieces just have not clicked together for Lee, who's been a replacement-level player through 189 MLB games per FanGraphs (negative-1.0 WAR per Baseball Reference). And while there's no sugarcoating his performance up to this point, it's telling that the Twins traded Correa last year, handed Lee the reins, and are handing them right back over this spring.
They believe in Brooks Lee. That was clear from very early on. Their faith may ultimately prove misguided but it's far too early to say so; he'd hardly be the first highly-touted prospect to struggle through a couple of rough seasons before finally turning a corner in his mid-20s. Tom Kelly used to say it takes 1,000 plate appearances in the majors before you really know about a guy, and Lee's still a few hundred short of that.
That said, the clock is ticking. The Twins are giving him a wide open runway to take off. The time is now.
Lee knows it, and has come to camp with a resolve to lock down the shortstop gig for the foreseeable future. As Bobby Nightengale wrote for the Star Tribune, Lee is living out the proverbial "best shape of his life" mantra — “Probably 15 people have said to me, ‘Man, Brooks looks great,’” said Derek Shelton — and attacking his weaknesses head on. He's focused on improving his defensive range in the field, and making better swing decisions at the plate.
Average shortstop defense is about the best you can realistically hope for from Lee, so his bat needs to carry him if he's going to be a positive contributor. And while there are many things that go into that, the simplest version is that he just needs to hit the ball harder. He's shown flashes of impressive power but they are too few and far between, washed out by endless waves of weak contact.
We'll see if the offseason work and partnering with new hitting coach Keith Beauregard pays off. Lifting his batting average by even 20 or 30 points would go a long way toward putting Lee's production in an acceptable range — seemingly doable for a guy with one of the lowest BABIPs (.254) in the league since debuting in 2024.
Even if he rights the ship somewhat, it's not clear that Lee is part of the long-term vision at shortstop. He's better suited at second or third. Rising through the system are two clear candidates to be heir apparent: Minnesota's #1 selections from each of the last two drafts.
Kaelen Culpepper, drafted 21st overall in 2024, experienced a huge breakout last year in the minors, slashing .289/.375/.469 in 113 games between Single-A and Double-A. He participated in the Futures Game and this spring finds himself as a consensus top-100 prospect. Culpepper is in big-league camp and seeing a fair amount of action, which is among the many signals that he might be inching toward entering the team's plans.
Marek Houston, drafted 16th overall in 2025, lacks the offensive profile of Culpepper, but is probably already the best defensive shortstop in the organization at age 21. I don't want to overstate things but there's a reason the Twins took him in the middle of the first round, signed him for nearly $5 million and promoted him to High-A almost immediately — and it's not because of his bat. If he proves to be the level of difference-maker in the field that the Twins are envisioning, he can turn into a valuable big-league regular even if the punchless bat doesn't progress. Shortstop is one of the few positions where you can say that.
THE BAD
Correa, even during his down years in 2023 and 2025, was a roughly average MLB starting shortstop. I know people get lost in the salary and the "overpaid" narratives, but Correa had tremendous value to the Twins as a floor-setting veteran with All-Star potential. They traded that for nothing at last year's deadline and now we pin our hopes with an organization that has shown no real ability to develop its own MLB shortstop talent.
Here's a list of first-round shortstops the Twins have drafted in the past 20 years, prior to Culpepper and Houston: Levi Michael (2011), Nick Gordon (2014), Royce Lewis (2017), Keoni Cavaco (2019), Noah Miller (2021) and Lee. That list does not include high-profile international signings like Wander Javier, Miguel Sano and Danny De Andrade. To date, none of these players have panned out as major-league shortstops. (Jorge Polanco did, briefly.)
The jury is still out on Lee, but it's not looking good. And while it's easy to dream on Culpepper or Houston, the reality is that odds are stacked against them because it's just really hard to emerge as one of the 30 best shortstops in the world. Culpepper is a good prospect, but not an elite prospect, in part because many evaluators believe he's destined for third base. Houston's going to need to meet an extremely high bar defensively unless his hitting ability improves by leaps and bounds.
For now, what the Twins have is Lee, a replacement-level player backed up by replacement-level options in Ryan Kreidler, Orlando Arcia and Tristan Gray. Unless Lee can stay healthy and rebound, the shortstop position is going to be rough for Minnesota in 2026.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The long-term picture is unclear and the short-term outlook is rather bleak. FanGraphs projecting the Twins to rank 30th out of 30 MLB teams in WAR at the shortstop position says it all — Lee hasn't shown much of anything, and there's little behind him in the way of proven depth.
Catch up on the rest of our roster preview series:
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