The Boston Red Sox spent the 20th overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft on a shortstop most evaluators had rated closer to 90th. Jake Schaffner, a left-handed-hitting infielder out of North Carolina, was the pick nobody in the room saw coming, and the reaction on draft night made that plain.
Schaffner, 21, grew up in Janesville, Wisconsin, and starred at Janesville Craig High School before landing at North Dakota State. He hit .353 across two seasons with the Bison, stealing 34 bases and winning the Summit League Defensive Player of the Year award as a sophomore, the first in program history.
He transferred to North Carolina for his junior year and became the engine of a Tar Heels lineup that rode to the College World Series. That single season changed his stock entirely.
Jake Schaffner’s Breakout Season at North Carolina
GettyJake Schaffner #2 of the North Carolina Tar Heels, the Boston Red Sox 2026 first-round draft pick.
Schaffner hit .356 with a .467 on-base percentage and a .552 slugging mark in 2026, according to D1Baseball’s player statistics database. He led the Tar Heels with 96 hits across 68 games, adding 19 doubles, eight triples, six home runs, 50 RBIs, 85 runs and 26 stolen bases. Power was never the selling point. Contact, discipline and legs are the currency Schaffner deals in, and Boston clearly values that combination enough to take him nearly 70 spots ahead of his consensus ranking.
Red Sox Fans and Analysts React to Jake Schaffner Pick
@diamondheels 3️⃣ for 2️⃣ Jake’s triple fired us into the semifinals.
Baseball America‘s JJ Cooper didn’t hide his surprise.
“First my jaw just hit the floor pick,” Cooper wrote in a post on X, adding that his outlet had Schaffner ranked 97th overall before conceding the shortstop’s “real contact skills” might justify a slot in the 45-55 range.
Red Sox podcaster Tyler Milliken framed the pick as a value play rather than a straight reach.
“Seems like they’re going underslot here, with a bigger shoe to drop later,” Milliken wrote on his own social media account, noting both MLB Pipeline and Baseball America had Schaffner rated well outside the first round.
Analyst Eric Cross agreed on the profile.
“There’s minimal power upside here,” Cross wrote in a separate post, pointing to just nine home runs across 171 college games. Draft evaluator Cal, posting as @cal__designs, countered that Schaffner is “pesky, leadoff hitter material” with a plus arm and a 95th-percentile barrel rate.
UNC beat writer Adam Lucas leaned on program history. Schaffner is UNC’s 14th first-round pick since 2006 and the program’s third straight first-rounder, Lucas noted, despite the shortstop going unranked in preseason polls. Fan Monty Taylor made a similar case, citing Schaffner’s 33 extra-base hits and his role in UNC’s run to the national championship series, while Greg Hoogkamp simply called him a “tremendous pure hitter with a great approach.”
Skeptics pushed back. Analyst Adam Greene still called the pick a reach, and fan account Big John Studd was blunter, writing that he “hates this pick so much” Boston could have waited. Sammy James poked at the whole debate, joking that the “Red Sox are the smartest guys” in the room whether fans believe it or not.
R P 3 landed in between, praising the “good solid hit tools, speed” while predicting Boston stays heavy on high schoolers going forward. Even a Phillies fan, Alec Kostival, weighed in, noting Schaffner had gone unranked ahead of Philadelphia’s own first-rounder.
Nobody appeared to dispute that Schaffner can play plus defense, and he can really run. Whether the bat translates without more thump behind it is the debate Red Sox fans will keep having until he starts logging at-bats in Boston’s farm system.
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