This is an interesting thread.
Why would the O’s even want to move Mateo, though? Seems like the perfect utility guy, offers depth all over the field, and is relatively cheap. Very useful player for a contender to have.
Agreed with this. No reason for the Os to part with him cheaply, particularly not to a Division rival.
Not sure how we feel about UZR these days, but I pulled up
Fangraph's leaderboard by UZR per 150 games played ranks for all 76 players who had 90+ innings (I randomly decided 10 games was a nice round baseline) at SS in 2023. For context, Story comes in 4th in baseball (sad face). Old friend Yu Chang is 9th and Mateo 21st. Pablo Reyes checks in ~40th. Of note in terms of cheap replacements, Elvis Andrus checks in at 39th between Bobby Witt Jr. and Xander.
And of the 76 players who had 90+ innings at SS last year, want to know who had the absolute lowest UZR/150 rating by a significant amount in 158 innings?
Vaughn Grissom.
Edit: Sorry, when I mention Andrus above it's because the DBacks released him a few weeks ago:
https://www.msn.com/en-ph/sports/mlb/diamondbacks-release-veteran-shortstop/ar-BB1kmPFP
I'll go on record and say Andrus is my preferred replacement. He'll come cheap and can be cut/traded at any time if it's not working out or a better replacement emerges in Reyes/Hamilton/etc. He's a stabilizing veteran presence for a young team that just lost a veteran leader. And most importantly he's still decent defensively, while his bat should be within the range of acceptable (81 OPS+ last year, 104 in '22).
Pablo Reyes rates out similarly defensive and at the plate (last year), but he's 30 and has never had more than 170 big league ABs in a season and the team didn't seem comfortable just slotting him in there (see: yesterday's Hamilton experience). I don't want to cannabalize our CF defense or risk injury to O'Neill by shifting Rafaela to SS, and I don't buy anyone on the current roster being able to play a full season of games at SS.