Fantasy Tiered Rankings: Shortstops

To read the previous articles in this series, follow the links below:

• Fantasy Tiered Rankings: Catchers
• Fantasy Tiered Rankings: First Base
• Fantasy Tiered Rankings: Second Base
• Fantasy Tiered Rankings: Third Base

Today, our positional tiered rankings series continues with a look at shortstops.

Players at each position are divided into five tiers, represented by a numerical star rating. Five-star players are the studs at their respective position. In general, they are the players who will be nabbed in the first round or two of mixed league drafts, and will fetch auction bids in excess of $30. Four-star players are a cut below the studs at the position. They will also be early-round selections, and they are projected to be worth more than $20 in most cases. Three-star players are the last tier in which players are projected to provide double-digit dollar value in auctions, and two-star players are projected to earn single digits in dollar value in auctions. One-star players are late round sleepers and roster placeholders. The positional tiers aren't simply a regurgitation of last year’s values but rather try to offer some insights into what we expect will happen in 2016.

We retained last year's roster requirements for the positional tier series. Dollar values come from last year’s PFM using a 15-team, standard 5×5 scoring format, with 23-man rosters and the following positions: C (2) 1B (1) 2B (1) 3B (1) SS (1) CI (1) MI (1) OF (5) UT (1) P (9). The minimum bid for players is $1, and, as we did last year, we allocate $180 of a $260 budget to hitters. Players needed to play in 20 games at a position to qualify there. The PFM is customizable, so if your league uses a different format, you can adjust it to match your league settings and see how it impacts players’ dollar values.

Players with multi-position eligibility are listed at the position where it is most likely they would start in a standard fantasy league. Anyone with shortstop eligibility will appear in this article. While you might use Jung-Ho Kang at third base at some point during the season due to an injury, it is more likely you would use him at shortstop at the beginning of the season.

Five Star

It would be quite easy to write 3,000 words on the fascinating phenomenon of how a 21-year-old shortstop with 432 career plate appearances is ranked sixth overall in ADP, but very few fantasy analysts are even questioning Correa’s high draft position. Compare and contrast this to the plethora of think pieces that predicted a significant drop off for Mike Trout in 2013. Correa belongs in this tier—particularly if you are grading on the curve for the position—but even if you use the questionable methodology of stretching out his 2015’s numbers to a full season, Correa would have “only” been the eighth-best hitter in 15-team mixed. Correa is fine to draft at the back end of the first round, but with the no. 6 pick overall, you are already paying for nearly all of the upside.

Five-Star Value Pick: None
The joke construction about selecting a player as a value pick because he is the only player in the tier feels played out, so I will not name Correa as the value pick even though he is the only player listed in the five-star tier. Thus ends a short-lived yet wonderful tradition here at Baseball Prospectus. I hope you enjoyed it. It was an amazing ride.

Four Star

Tulo was firmly ensconced as a late-first-round/early-second-round pick in 2015 but after a disappointing campaign and a trade to the Blue Jays, he moves down to the top of the four-star tier. The move from Coors Field to Rogers Centre isn’t much of an offensive downgrade (it is an upgrade in home runs but a downgrade in run scoring environment for right-handers) but Tulo did put up his weakest season with the bat since 2008. An automatic jump to 2013-2014 levels isn’t automatic given his injury history.

It may seem extremely aggressive to place Seager in this tier given that what you see above is his entire major-league resume, but given the paucity of options at short compared to every other non-catcher position, the potential is worth stretching for somewhat. Lindor has more on his major-league resume than Seager but it is fair to wonder if the power that Lindor showed in 2015 in the majors is sustainable. In the short term, he might have a consolidation season.

Four-Star Value Pick: Xander Bogaerts
Strictly from a numbers-based perspective, Bogaerts is a bad candidate to even be included in the four-star tier, let alone be the value pick. His .372 BABIP looks unsustainable, his high groundball rate doesn’t speak to a jump in home runs, and most of Bogaerts’ value in 2015 was wrapped up in his batting average. However, this ignores Bogaerts’ immense talent, overall ceiling, and the fact that he made unexpected strides improving his game in 2015 and could quite easily do so again in 2016. Even if Bogaerts does slip somewhat, it is generally better to bet on the player who has performed for an entire season than on a commodity like Seager or Lindor who hasn’t yet played a full season at the major-league level.

Three Star

Nearly half of the players in the three-star tier are speed-first shortstops. Many of Baseball Prospectus’ readers scratch their heads as to why Andrus and Segura are rated so highly by our PFM, but the dollar values displayed here are fairly consistent with many industry valuation systems. Reyes could jump into the four-star tier with a healthy season in Colorado, but at the moment there are too many questions surrounding his status to draft him with any kind of confidence whatsoever.

If you are skeptical about paying this much for speed, there are power options in this tier as well. A miserable 2015 knocks Desmond down a lot this year, but you are looking for comeback candidate, there is arguably no one better. Desmond was the only player in Major League Baseball to post three consecutive 20-20 seasons from 2012-2014. Crawford broke through last year after showing some signs in 2014 that a breakout was coming, but it is fair to wonder if he will lose some of the power gains in 2016. On potential alone, Russell could sit in the four-star tier but the numbers aren’t quite there yet.

Three-Star Value Pick: Jhonny Peralta
Every year, Peralta gets deeply discounted by fantasy managers in auctions or drafts and every year he ends the season as a bargain. This is probably due to the lack of a high ceiling, but there is nothing wrong with drafting stats and turning a profit when your opponents are all chasing upside. 15-20 home runs, 60 runs, 70 RBI, and a .265 batting average is terrific value in the 17^th round of a 15-team mixed league.

Two Star

Where 2015 saw some young up-and-coming stars in the two-star tier, this year’s group is a more established, veteran group, even if some of them are young. Semien and Miller are the most intriguing of the group because of their double-digit power/speed combination, even if the upside in both cases is not tremendous. Of the eight shortstops in this tier, Semien ranks fourth and Miller seventh, which is a nice of way of reminding you that batting average counts as well.

Even though the players in the two-star tier aren’t nearly as good as any of the ones profiled above, the two-star tier feels underrated. Cabrera’s defense knocks him down a couple of pegs in real life, but he has been a consistent fantasy performer for years. Kang surpassed expectations in his first season in the majors, and would rank higher if not for an injury that leaves him questionable for Opening Day. His status and ranking will be revisited once Spring Training is in full swing. Marte looks like a questionable inclusion in this group at first glance, but if he can duplicate his 2015 numbers over the course of a full season, it would put him on a par with more known commodities Aybar and Escobar.

Two-Star Value Pick: Erick Aybar
This is the third year in a row Aybar has appeared in our fantasy tier rankings as a value pick, which either means that no one is reading these articles or our readers do what they want. Aybar is a boring, back end option in 15-team mixed leagues but this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have value. Aybar is capable of earning 75-80 percent of what more popular options like Andrus and Segura will earn while being drafted at the tail end of a 15-team league with 23-man rosters.

One Star

Statistically speaking, there are some options in the one-star tier that don’t look all that bad. The problem is that for most of the shortstops in the one-star tier who were above sea level in mixed leagues it is valid to ask if they can sustain this performance in 2016. Gregorius certainly didn’t hurt his fantasy teams, but it is possible that what you see is what you get. Simmons, Hechavarria, and Iglesias could repeat in 2016, but any slippage at all makes them completely fungible in mixed leagues. The upside risks run the gamut from a rookie like Trea Turner to a down-and-out veteran like J.J. Hardy. Jonathan Villar is intriguing if he can hang on to the job all season long, but Orlando Arcia could be up by mid-year and put a crimp in that.

One-Star Value Pick: Alexei Ramirez
Ramirez has never been a particularly strong hitter in real life, posting a career TAv of .250 and never posting a TAv higher than .255 since his rookie season back in 2008. Despite this, Ramirez has been a fairly reliable source of speed and power throughout his major-league career. Unless he completely falls off of the map, Ramirez is likely to put up earnings in the two-star tier; in fact, he earned more than everyone currently residing in this year’s two-star tier with the exception of Escobar. The Padres dirt-cheap contract does make it easy for them to jettison Ramirez is he isn’t performing, but given a lack of any strong options in the high minors, they’ll likely stick with him all season long unless he completely collapses with the bat.