Kings of the hot corner: Buster Olney ranks baseball's best third basemen

Spring training camps are underway, which means it is time to look at the state of baseball. As part of our 2026 MLB season preview, ESPN’s Buster Olney surveyed those around the industry to help him rank the top 10 players at every position as part of his annual positional ranking series.

Today, we rank the best of the best at third base.

The objective of this exercise is to identify the best players for the 2026 season, not who might be best in five years or over their career. We will roll out a position per day over the next two weeks. Here’s the rest of the schedule: starting pitchers (Feb. 16), relief pitchers (Feb. 17), catchers (Feb. 18), first basemen (Feb. 19), second basemen (Feb. 20), shortstops (Tuesday), corner outfielders (Wednesday), center fielders (Thursday), designated hitters (Friday).

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Jose Ramirez is now signed through the 2032 season, meaning he theoretically has seven more seasons to add to his amazing career. Sometime in the summer ahead, he’ll hit his 300th career home run — we can assume this because he’s got 285 and he’s hit at least 17 homers in nine straight seasons, including the 60-game COVID season. And sometime this summer, he’ll pick up his 300th career stolen base, which we can assume he’ll do because he has accumulated 287already — 85 over the last two years.

Brooks Robinson set a standard for defense at third base. Eddie Matthews and Mike Schmidt were the best power hitters to play the position. Adrian Beltre should have been a unanimous selection for the Hall of Fame. There’s George Brett, Wade Boggs, Chipper Jones and Alex Rodriguez (who was a shortstop for half of his career).

But is Ramirez about to enter the conversation for the greatest third baseman ever?

He finished third in the MVP voting last year, the seventh top-6 finish in his career. He’s won six Silver Slugger awards. He’s approaching 2,000 career hits.

I asked colleague Tim Kurkjian about Ramirez’s place in history. “He is a certain future Hall of Famer,” Kurkjian said. “He is already on the Mount Rushmore of baseball in Cleveland.

“Only Bob Feller made more All-Star teams than Ramirez, and when [Ramirez’s] contract ends, he will have spent 24 years with the organization. He has a chance to replace Feller as the greatest player in Cleveland history.”

Terry Francona managed Ramirez for the first 11 seasons of his career. “He is what every manager is looking for,” Francona wrote in a text. “You don’t manage him — you wind him up and stay out of his way. I love everything about him. He commanded the clubhouse.”

Ramirez is the king of the mountain on our list of top third basemen.

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Top 10 third basemen

1. Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Guardians

There’s long been a debate about whether there is such a thing as clutch, and we’re not going to pretend to know the answer to the larger question. But it’s indisputable that Ramirez has been a more productive hitter with runners in scoring position over the last two years.

2025: 143 plate appearances .321 BA/.458 OBP/.519 SLG
2024: 170 PA .326/.394/.597

2. Junior Caminero, Tampa Bay Rays

Only four players hit more homers than Caminero’s 45 last season — Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, Shohei Ohtani and Eugenio Suarez — and Caminero is 22 years old. The guy just wrecks fastballs — he batted .333 with a .742 slugging percentage against four-seam fastballs last year, and 27 of his homers were against four-seamers or sinkers. With the Rays moving back into Tropicana Field this season, it will be interesting to see how Caminero fares in a park less favorable as the team’s 2025 home of Steinbrenner Field, where Caminero batted .313, as opposed to .218 on the road.

3. Alex Bregman, Chicago Cubs

The expectation that Bregman would excel at Fenway Park, a place that theoretically fits his swing, never came to pass — he had a .761 OPS at home last year, but .875 in road games. So maybe the adjustment to the pitcher-friendly Wrigley Field won’t be as difficult for Bregman as some have predicted. Bregman turns 32 at the end of March, but he has nudged his exit velocity upward in recent seasons — last year’s 90.1 mph average matched his career high — and as an above-average defender, he becomes part of what is expected to be MLB’s best defense with the Cubs.

4. Manny Machado, San Diego Padres

Like Ramirez, Machado is climbing the list of the best third basemen of all time. He needs 41 homers to reach 400, an achievement that will probably happen sometime in 2027, and he’s at 61.7 WAR for his career. He’s about to pass Hall of Famer Todd Helton on that list, and during the season, he may pass Dave Winfield, Jackie Robinson, Andruw Jones and Shoeless Joe Jackson, among others.

5. Maikel Garcia, Kansas City Royals

Last year was a breakout season for the Kansas City infielder, who had 60 extra-base hits among 170 for the season, with an OPS+ of 123. Ke’Bryan Hayes is generally considered to be the best defender at this position, but Garcia led AL third basemen in defensive runs saved with 13 and in outs above average at 18, winning the AL Gold Glove Award.

6. Matt Chapman, San Francisco Giants

The five-time Gold Glove winner saw his WAR drop from 7.1 in 2024 to 4.1 last year, but that was still among the leaders at the position. Chapman is going through some gradual changes at the plate. He cut his strikeout rate to 23.6% last season, his lowest since he played for Oakland in 2019, and his 13.3% walk rate was the highest of his career.

7. Bo Bichette, New York Mets

Bichette demonstrated in the World Series that no matter how much of a layoff he has had, he still has rare ability as a hitter. Even after he had missed seven weeks, he became an immediate threat — he had eight hits in 23 at-bats, with four walks and four homers — and the Mets bought in big for a player who has led his league in hits twice and has a .294 career average. He’ll be a nice fit to bat behind Juan Soto in the Mets’ lineup. The defensive challenges for Bichette are real, as he moves from shortstop to third base. Rival evaluators have noted that at shortstop, he almost never dove for ground balls — the-step-and-dive is elementary for playing third in the big leagues — and he has some inconsistency with his throwing. Stars as great as Cal Ripken and Alex Rodriguez initially struggled in the move from shortstop to third base.

8. Max Muncy, Los Angeles Dodgers

Dodgers coach Bob Geren has bestowed special customized seats at the front of the L.A. dugout, devoting those spots to players who are locked in to every pitch during the course of a game. One of those bears Freddie Freeman‘s name; the other belongs to Muncy, who is deeply focused on how opposing pitchers are trying to work. Muncy continues to be devastating against right-handed pitching: Last year, he had a slash line of .267/.409/.514 vs. righties.

9. Austin Riley, Atlanta Braves

Riley had season-ending core surgery in August — an issue previously referred to as a sports hernia — and this spring he has told staffers that he feels much better. The Braves hope so because they need Riley to be the player he was from 2021-23, when he generated a staggering 18.7 WAR, with 104 doubles and 108 homers, for an OPS+ of 135. Riley is under contract for the next seven seasons.

10. Carlos Correa, Houston Astros

When Correa failed his physical examinations with the Giants and Mets as a free agent prior to the 2023 season because of an issue with his ankle, the concern was that a past injury would begin to affect him in his early 30s. His production was very good in 2024, when he had an OPS of .905 for the Twins, but last year, his numbers dipped to .276/.332/.402, with 42 extra-base hits in 584 plate appearances. He’ll play most of this season at age 31, his first full year playing third base. The Astros really value his leadership in the infield.

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Honorable mentions

Jordan Westburg, Baltimore Orioles: A nod here for Westburg’s production when he’s been on the field, and his potential. But he’s hurt again, with a torn ligament in his elbow — a brutal injury for Baltimore. If he responds to treatment, it will be interesting to see if he remains at third base when he comes back, or if the O’s shift him to second to take pressure off his throwing.

Addison Barger, Toronto Blue Jays: OK, I’m going to cheat a little in putting Barger here, because with the $60 million signing of Kazuma Okamoto, it may be that Barger won’t see as many reps at third base this season after starting 67 games there in 2025 and coming off the bench to play in 24 others. We’ll see. But so many evaluators came away from the World Series believing that no matter where Barger plays, he’s going to dent opposing pitchers. He went 22-for-60 in October, with 3 homers, 8 walks and 12 strikeouts, showing off a lot of skills at the plate.

Caleb Durbin, Boston Red Sox: Durbin will fit right in with the Red Sox’s push to build a pitching-and-defense team, and like many others in the Boston lineup, he’s good at getting on base (.334 OBP in his rookie season) and putting the ball in play.

Matt Shaw, Chicago Cubs: Shaw vastly outplayed expectations on defense last year, but with the addition of Bregman, he will move into more of a utility role, including playing in the outfield.

Ke’Bryan Hayes, Cincinnati Reds: Hayes is here because of his defensive dominance. He led all third basemen in defensive runs saved (19) and outs above average (22) last season.

Alec Bohm, Philadelphia Phillies: This is a big year for Philadelphia’s third baseman. He’ll be a free agent this fall, and the Phillies at least explored the idea of bringing in another infielder, Bo Bichette, which may have impacted Bohm’s status. Bohm had a wRC+ of 105 last season but he was markedly better in the second half, batting .305 with a .358 OBP in his last 64 games.

Ryan McMahon, New York Yankees: New York had hoped McMahon would be helped by the Yankee Stadium boost for left-handed hitters, but he had an OPS+ of 81 after being acquired from Colorado. But his extraordinarily smooth defense earns him a spot here.

Eugenio Suarez, Cincinnati Reds: With Hayes such a strong defender, we’re going to assume for the sake of these lists that Suarez will get the bulk of his plate appearances at DH.