Braden Shewmake has been designated for assignment three times in the last 14 months. The Atlanta Braves traded him away. The Chicago White Sox couldn’t use him. The Kansas City Royals claimed him off waivers and released him 23 days later. The New York Yankees took a flyer, stashed him at Triple-A for a year, then cut him loose in February.
The Houston Astros acquired him on April 19 for a minor league pitcher, and he’s been one of their best hitters ever since.
In seven games since joining Houston, Shewmake is 10-for-28—a .357 average that would rank among the team’s leaders if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. He has filled in at shortstop, second base, and third base. He has come through with timely hits in games the Astros desperately needed. In a season defined by injury, misfortune, and disappointment, the 28-year-old infielder from Wylie, Texas, has been a quiet, unexpected bright spot.
None of this was supposed to happen.
Shewmake was the 21st overall pick in the 2019 draft—a polished infielder out of Texas A&M who had been a First Team All-SEC selection two straight years and the SEC Freshman of the Year in 2017. He signed for $3.13 million. The Braves thought they had something.
The minors were uneven. He hit for the cycle at Triple-A Gwinnett in 2023—the first player in franchise history to do it—but the bat never fully translated. His MLB debut with Atlanta that May was a 0-for-4. He played sparingly, was traded to Chicago in a package deal for reliever Aaron Bummer, and hit .125 in 29 games with the White Sox in 2024. The merry-go-round of DFAs and waiver claims that followed was the baseball equivalent of nobody wanting to be stuck holding the bill.
The Yankees had him for all of 2025 and used him at Triple-A Scranton, where he hit .244 with four home runs and 15 stolen bases in 85 games. Functional. Unspectacular. DFA’d in February when the Yankees needed a 40-man roster spot for someone else.
What the Astros saw when they traded for him was depth—a versatile infielder who could play multiple positions while Jeremy Peña and Nick Allen nursed injuries. What they got was a player who looks, at least for now, like he belongs.
A word of caution: Shewmake’s expected wOBA based on quality of contact is .281, well below his actual .493. Some regression is likely coming, and seven games is a small sample against which to draw conclusions. He is not the long-term answer at shortstop, and Peña’s return will push him down the depth chart.
But on a team that has been starved for good news, Braden Shewmake has been exactly that. He went from the Yankees’ scrap heap to one of the few reliable bats in the Astros’ lineup. Sometimes baseball works out in the strangest ways.
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Photo by Minda Haas Kuhlmann / Gwinnett Stripers, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
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