Being able to play multiple defensive positions at a respectable level ensures that just about any MLB team can find a use for you.
The saying “Jack of all trades, master of none” is often used in a negative connotation. On the baseball diamond, however, we call a jack of all trades a utility player, and the good ones can be downright indispensable to the success of a Major League Baseball team.
Now, we’re not talking about players who can both hit and pitch. Since the implementation of the universal designated hitter in 2022, that combination of skills at the MLB level has been confined to just Shohei Ohtani. He is often called a unicorn, but is frankly the furthest thing from a utility player, logging a grand total of 8.1 innings at any position other than pitcher or DH through the first seven seasons of his career.
A utility player is someone who can be slotted into any of the seven defensive positions aside from pitcher and catcher. Some of them even do catch on occasion, though. And in those situations where a position player gets brought in to pitch the last inning of a blowout, it’s typically a utility player.
Let’s dive into the history of baseball’s Swiss Army knives to get a sense of how and why they’ve evolved into such a pivotal piece of a championship puzzle.
Evolution of Utility Players in Baseball
During the 2024 MLB season, there were 51 players who appeared in at least 80 games and made at least 10 appearances at three different positions. Quite a few of those are guys who spent time at each outfield spot while never once donning an infielder’s glove. That’s still a valuable bit of versatility, though.
Foremost among those jacks of all trades were AL Utility Gold Glove recipient Dylan Moore (22+ appearances at each of 2B, SS, 3B and LF), All-Star Willi Castro (27+ appearances at each of 2B, SS, 3B, LF and CF) and Kiké Hernández (9+ appearances at each of 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, LF and CF, plus four pitching appearances for the World Series champion Dodgers).
To put it lightly, it wasn’t always like this.
Jackie Robinson and Pete Rose are considered two of the greatest utility players in MLB history, but even they stuck to one, occasionally two positions in any given season while being willing to change their primary position from one season to the next. This undeniably made them more valuable to their teams, but it’s a far cry from today’s utility players who have to show up to the ballpark, ready to play anywhere and everywhere on a daily basis.
Picking the 1950 season at random, we find there were only nine cases of a player appearing in at least 80 games with 10 or more appearances at three different positions, three of whom just barely met the minimum with exactly 10 games played at their third spot. The only player with at least 10 games played at four or more positions was Stan Musial (69 at 1B, 57 in LF, 13 in CF and 11 in RF). And with zero games played at 2B, 3B or SS in his career, Stan the Man would hardly be considered a utility player (or super-utility player) by today’s standards.
Fast-forward to 1980 and it was at least a little more common to see players splitting their time between three positions, with Jerry Royster appearing in at least 40 games at each of 2B, 3B and LF. But the “plug and play anywhere” guys were still extremely rare. Alan Bannister was the only player to make at least 13 appearances at four different positions (41 at second, 32 in left, 27 in right, 20 at third).
By 2000, the winds had shifted to the point where quite a few teams preferred having one player on the roster who could play just about anywhere while at least hitting above the Mendoza Line and throwing a baseball better than late-career Chuck Knoblauch.
Save for Tony Phillips starring for just about the entire window between 1980 and 2000, those utility players still weren’t anything special. Denny Hocking, for example, made at least 12 appearances at every position except for pitcher and catcher in 2000, but he amounted to negative-0.6 bWAR in his 13-year career. Similar story for Craig Paquette, who in the year 2000 appeared in a career-best 134 games spread across five positions, but gave the Cardinals a negative-0.5 bWAR for that season.
It was around that time, however, that utility players began to blossom from reserves who could play anywhere into assets who you wanted playing somewhere.
Career versatile backups like Hocking and Paquette gave way to the likes of Mark Loretta, Craig Counsell, Juan Uribe, Martín Prado, Howie Kendrick and perhaps the greatest utilityman of them all, Ben Zobrist.
As far as Baseball Reference is concerned, those six players were collectively worth more Wins Above Replacement in their careers (171.6) than Barry Bonds (162.8), and almost as much as Babe Ruth (182.6). And after watching those guys play key roles all over the diamond for a few decades, you’re now far more likely to find a team with multiple utility players than none of them.
Why Utility Players Are Essential to a Winning Baseball Team
First and foremost, injuries happen, and even the vast majority of uninjured players simply need a day off from time to time. Case in point: only four players appeared in all 162 games in 2024. Having someone on the roster who can hold down the fort at a better than replacement level at several different positions is a major asset.
Utility players are also essential because of limited roster space. Most teams parse out their 26 roster spots to five starting pitchers, eight relief pitchers, the nine “every day” hitters, a virtually mandatory backup catcher and three bench players. At a certain point, you need at least one player who can play a bunch of different positions, just in order to survive the marathon that is an MLB season.
Then you’ve got your platoon situations and guys who regularly need defensive replacements in the late innings of close games.
On the platoons front, right-handed hitters generally fare better against left-handed pitchers than they do against right-handed pitchers, while left-handed hitters tend to have an opposite split. And for some players, it is a drastic difference, to the point where they’d be borderline All-Stars if they could get 600 plate appearances in a season exclusively against RHP or LHP, but they’re borderline unplayable against the opposite-handed pitcher. Utility players come in handy there, particularly if they’re switch hitters or guys who don’t have considerable RHP/LHP splits.
Basically, utility players are a bonus form of roster depth and versatility.
Key Skills Required for Utility Players
Perhaps more so than anything else, utility players need to have a high baseball IQ and a deep understanding of where they’re supposed to be in any given situation.
If you play shortstop your entire career, the various middle infield duties become second nature. You know who’s covering second on pickoffs or stolen bases, who’s taking which cutoff duties on a fly ball to deep center, when to shift where and what you’re doing any time the ball comes to you.
But if you play shortstop one game, third base the next, then you start the following game in left field before shifting to center in the seventh inning and so on and so forth, your responsibilities are constantly changing. And one mental error can be every bit as detrimental to your team as a fielding or throwing error.
Then, of course, you need to be able to physically handle all of those responsibilities. You need goalie-like reflexes to play third base, the ability to read the ball off the bat to play any outfield position, speed to play center, range and flexibility to play middle infield, “scoopability” to play first, and so on and so forth.
Utility players are often used as pinch hitters/runners or defensive replacements, too, which is another skill set of its own, remaining both physically and mentally ready for a moment that might never come in that particular game.
There’s a reason most players stick primarily to one position. It’s just not easy to bounce all over the place and perform at so much as an average level at each position you play.
How Does a Utility Player Impact Fantasy Baseball Strategies?
Before we get started here, it’s worth noting that while active rosters on fantasy teams typically include at least one “Utility” spot, by no means does that need to be filled by a utility player. It should probably just be called a wild card spot or “Bonus Batter” rather than opening itself up to that possible confusion.
Having a utility player on your fantasy roster can be a major asset, though, for the same reason they’re great on a real roster: plug and play when someone else on the team is injured or not playing that day.
The rub, however, is that utility players get a lot of days off in their own right. Among the aforementioned 51 players who appeared in at least 80 games with 10 or more appearances at three different positions in 2024, only three of them started more than 135 games.
Moreover, each of those three (Willi Castro, Ceddanne Rafaela and Christopher Morel) hit below .250 and did not rank top 50 in the majors in home runs or stolen bases, meaning even the near-everyday utility players weren’t exactly worth starting on a regular basis unless you’re in a deep league.
Starting them regularly at a shallow fantasy position like second base, though, can have value. And, speaking from experience, having Ben Zobrist on your fantasy team back in the 2009-13 timeframe was a whole heck of a lot of fun. You could start him just about anywhere, and he started at least 135 games in six consecutive seasons, mostly performing at a high level.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the best utility player in MLB history?
Sort of addressed this one earlier, but the answer depends on how you define a utility player.
Pete Rose appeared in more than 500 games at each of 1B, 2B, 3B, LF and RF en route to becoming the hit king. However, he was almost exclusively a second baseman for his first four seasons, barely played anything other than outfield for the next eight years, took up near-permanent residence at the hot corner for the next four years and then hardly ventured away from first base for his final eight seasons.
While he was versatile, Rose didn’t switch things up from one game to the next; he served a presidential term or two before moving somewhere else.
By the modern understanding of utility players, the best to do it thus far was either Ben Zobrist or Tony Phillips, both of whom provided a borderline Hall of Fame level of value over the course of their careers.
How should I draft utility players in fantasy baseball?
Without getting into the value of specific players, the most pertinent advice here is probably that if you’re going to draft a utility player, make sure you can actually use him as one.
Using someone like Willi Castro as your everyday second baseman isn’t as valuable as being able to deploy him in any number of spots in your lineup on a given day. You end up needing a utility player to back up your utility player.
Is being a utility player in baseball a good thing?
Utility players used to be viewed as players who were good enough to have on the roster but not good enough for every day work.
That mentality has definitely changed over the past two decades as the inherent value of utility players becomes increasingly apparent, and now utility players are definitely viewed as a good thing to have.
Being able to play multiple positions certainly doesn’t hurt your chances of making it to the majors, either.
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If you’re still relatively new to the world of baseball or just looking to expand your knowledge of the game, we’ve got all sorts of articles to help you out, from baseball rules for beginners, to an explanation of baseball statistics, the most popular teams, a primer on the positions in baseball and, of course, tips for playing fantasy baseball.
