Welcome to the third installment of our Fantasy Baseball State of the Union. I’ve been looking back to see if this “new” version of the game we love had any meaningful impact in fantasy. Of course, some of the stuff you can already imagine, like the increase in stolen bases and the higher batting average without the shift, but what does that mean for each position? Did it create more value in certain spots? How does that impact our 2024 draft strategy? These are the questions I’m looking to answer in this State of the Fantasy Baseball Union series.
You can look at my examination of first base here and also check out my breakdown of second base here, but today we are going to turn our attention to shortstop. I sorted by players who accumulated 200 plate appearances both this season and in 2022 and looked to see if there was any meaningful change in the standard 5x5 offensive categories (batting average, home runs, runs, RBI, and steals). Then I tried to dive into WHAT that change was, WHY it may have happened, and HOW likely it is that we see it again.
Well, we’re not starting off on the best foot. Despite the new shift rules, we saw essentially no meaningful change in batting average value amongst shortstops. If you didn’t read the previous columns then that red box means that shortstop had the lowest number of batters hit over .240 of any position aside from catcher.
If you want to dig in even further, some of the hitters who made my 200 plate appearance cut off and hit over .240 were not really rosterable for you in fantasy. Guys like Garrett Hampson, Amed Rosario, Kevin Newman, Elvis Andrus, and, to a lesser extent, Kyle Farmer. Now, those guys may have been shuffled on off and of teams during stretches where they were playing a lot, but you weren’t happy about having to do it. That means there were really just 20 shortstops who you wanted to have on your roster who helped your batting average (and, really, there were times where you didn’t want Orlando Arcia or Ezequiel Duran on your roster).
What that tells me is that we need to prioritize batting average from our shortstop if we take one early because we’re likely not going to get it late. It also tells me that, if we’re thinking that a shortstop is going into our MIF slot then we need to make sure we feel good about our batting average before then because there’s a good chance we’re not getting anything more than a mediocre batting average hitter in that spot.
If you do want to ensure a strong batting average from your shortstop position, it seems easy enough to do if you choose early. Corey Seager, Bo Bichette, Matt McLain, and Xander Bogaerts all hit over .280 (so did Wander Franco but we may not see him play an MLB game again). Bobby Witt Jr. and Trea Turner both are like .280 or better hitters next year, and we should continue to see improvement from Gunnar Henderson, who hit .255 this season, Ha-Seong Kim, who hit .260, and potentially Tim Anderson, who hit .245 but has always been a solid batting average asset.
Aside from that, there are no real batting average assets who will consistently help in other categories. You’ll take Francisco Lindor’s .255 average but it’s not ideal and guys like Jon Berti and Orlando Arcia and J.P. Crawford just don’t do enough in other categories to make you feel like you want them as a shortstop. As I’m writing this, I already am beginning to see that I don’t love the shortstop landscape.
Another category where we saw no improvement and where shortstop is the worst of any offensive position. This time, it is actually worse than catcher.
The only shortstops who hit 20 home runs or more this year were: Seager, Lindor, Witt Jr., Henderson, Turner, Bichette, Willy Adames, Dansby Swanson, and Anthony Volpe. (Ha-Seong Kim will also qualify at SS in most leagues, so we can call this 10 players).
Honestly, that right there is basically the tier of shortstops you want to draft. Among that group, Seager, Witt Jr., Lindor, Turner, and Kim are likely to be the only ones we discuss multiple times in this article, which shows you have small the grouping is if you’re looking for a true five category player.
I do want to point out that CJ Abrams just misses the cut here with 18 home runs. He also just barely made the cut above with a .245 average. However, he is a young player on the rise, so there’s a good chance we see improvement in both areas, and he’s a sneaky five-category player in waiting at shortstop. I just wish his team context were better.
Another category where shortstops don’t produce a lot of fantasy value; however, they get saved by second base being worse.
You’ll see a lot of the same names here: Lindor, Seager, Witt Jr., Henderson, Adames, Swanson, Turner, and Bichette. You also find Ezequiel Tovar in here, which was a bit of a surprise to me.
Anyway, I don’t think we take away too much from this. You’re really not planning for your shortstop to be a huge RBI asset for you, but it’s pretty clear that, if you want a well-rounded player in your starting shortstop slot, the same names keep coming up.
While this doesn’t seem like a lot of players with 70 runs or more, it’s actually tied with both third base and second base and just two behind first base, so it’s pretty much right around the value of all the other positions.
As you can imagine, it’s more of the same names in the leaderboard here: Lindor, Turner, Henderson, Witt Jr., Seager, Bogaerts, Abrams, Swanson, Tover, and Adames. Bichette finished with 69 runs and both Matt McLain and Anthony Volpe were in the mid-60s and figure to jump into the 70s with another full MLB season under their belts. As should Elly De La Cruz, who finished with 67 runs scored despite hitting .235 and striking out 33.7% of the time.
All told, that means we could see 17-18 players or more push over 70 runs at the shortstop position next season, which makes it perhaps the best position aside from outfield to find some value in the runs category.
If you’re in a deeper league, there are also players on here who contribute in one or two other categories like J.P. Crawford (.266 average and 19 home runs), Jeremy Pena (.263 average and 13 steals), and Geraldo Perdomo (.246 average and 16 steals).
So what’s the takeaway here? For me, it seems that we can use the shortstop spot in order to boost our runs totals if we find ourselves in need of that category and while it’s the same guys at the top, we also have a few players who are proving that they could be valuable for your team in a deep league MIF spot if you’re solid in other categories by the time you get to those later rounds.
This is interesting because we saw only a small increase in shortstops contributing meaningful steals totals despite steals being drastically up across the league. However, we did have some elite steals assets at shortstop with seven players swiping 30 bags (eight if you think we get Wander Franco back next year).
Bobby Witt Jr., Francisco Lindor, Trea Turner, and CJ Abrams are all names we’ve mentioned more than a few times who swiped 30 bases or more this year. Elly De La Cruz, who had 35 steals in 98 games, also feels like a good bet to be valuable in many categories in 2024, which really just leaves Jorge Mateo as the only over 30 stolen base shortstop to not really help you anywhere else.
Among the rest of the group who had over 20 steals, the only other name we’ve seen before is Anthony Volpe. Taylor Walls and Tommy Edman both find their names here but didn’t crack the other lists except for Edman hitting .248 on the season. Xander Bogaerts did steal 19 bases, so he just missed, and Ha-Seong Kim makes this list too if he gets SS eligibility in your league. Matt McLain had 14 steals in 89 games, so he also feels like somebody who could push over 20 steals in a full season.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that Witt Jr., Turner, and Lindor all have proven to be solid five-category contributors while Abrams, McLain, De La Cruz, Bogaerts and Kim are all either on the fringes of that distinction or could grow into it, and Seager is the most elite four category hitter we have at the position, but we know he won’t give you much of anything in steals.
TAKEAWAYS AND RANKINGS
So, to simplify, there’s a clear top group of five-category guys at shortstop and some intriguing young players who could push into that group and also Oneil Cruz, who feels like a five-category player who missed most of the 2023 season. However, once you get past the top 10-12 players at the position, there are plenty of warts and question marks. It doesn’t nearly feel like the deep position it was touted to be heading into the 2023 season.
As of now, below is my top-15 shortstops for 2024. Obviously a lot can change before the season kicks off, but this is where we’re at as of now.
Make sure to check back over the next couple of weeks as I go through all of the positions.