2023 Shortstop Preview
Covering shortstops today. I actually want to go a little bit more in depth, because I didn’t feel nearly as accomplished with the 1B and 2B posts.
You can read what I’ve done already here:
Now we are on to shortstop. Subscribe to the newsletter to get everything I do, and become a paid member to get access to all of the dashboards and reports and projections!
Landscape
Shortstop is deep once again. We have three guys that are going in the top 20 (Turner, Bichette, Tatis) and 16 going in the top 150. It’s loaded, which makes it a pretty good position to wait on, but we’ll talk about that as we go.
Tier One
Trea Turner
Bo Bichette
Fernando Tatis Jr.
No matter you slice it this is a pretty clear top three and a clear tier one.
Trea Turner
He’s been so great for fantasy for so many years, and very few players can say that. Last year he was a pretty easy #1 overall, now that’s not the case because SS is so loaded and we figure steals won’t be quite as hard to find. That means you can often get him after the fifth pick, which I think you should just do at that point.
Let’s look at projection value over replacement here for a minute. My model actually has Tatis as the top shortstop at $18.03, but that’s assuming full health which I think is foolish. Turner is around $16.20. The 12th-highest SS (replacement value-ish) is Javier Baez (the model is quite high on him) at $10.15. For comparison, Correa and Pena are right around there as well. There’s about a $6 difference between the top and the replacement. Here’s that number at other positions:
C: $8
1B: $7
2B: $7
SS: $6
3B: $10
OF: $7
So yes, if you are going to wait on a position, statistically shortstop seems to be the best one to do it at. This is all based on standard 5x5 roto - so if you have a points league or non-standard categories this might change - but the general rule is good.
In a 5 OF league, I’m taking Acuna/Judge/Rodriguez/Tucker over Trea. In a 3 OF league, Trea is probably my #2 guy behind J-Ram.
Tatis Jr.
He’s already set to miss 20+ games with the suspension. He’s been so insanely good when on the field that the model still spits out 38 homers and 22 steals for him - but once again, that is assuming that he misses no additional time and is 100% healthy and as good as he was before.
Those are massive assumptions to make. I’m not even sure what kind of Spring Training injury updates we can get on him since he’s suspended, but it’s just not a risk I’m willing to take on this year with the scary injury history and the suspension being in play.
Bichette
He finished the year with a .290/.333/.468 line with 24 homers and 13 steals. That was a step backward from that 2021 season when he went .298/.343/.484 with 29 homers and 25 steals.
The true Bichette is probably in the middle of those two. He could benefit from the park changes in Toronto (it’s unclear who that will help, however), and even if things go more towards the 2022 side I still think he’s an easy 20-20 guy this year, so he’s perfectly fine. I would say the upside is lower than what you get with other guys given his lack of huge power (9.6% Brl%, 6.9% Brl/PA, 112.4 max velo) - I don’t think he has 35 homers in his range, but all of this applies to Trea as well. If you run this season 1000 times, Bichette probably outdoes Trea like 35-40% of the time, so if you can grab him in the second round I think that’s a good pick - but again I’d probably rather just take one of the replacement guys about 80 picks later.
Tier 2
Francisco Lindor
Corey Seager
Oneil Cruz
There is kind of an awkward group between tiers one and three. I can’t put any of these three with the three above, but I think their sheer upside separates them from the group below.
Lindor
He somewhat gets there on counting stats. He had a really nice bounce-back season last year slashing .270/.339/.449 with 26 homers and 16 steals. But the 2021 season with the .230/.322/.412, 20 homers, and 10 steals is still looming. He scored 98 times and drove in 107 last year, so that’s really where the value comes from. The Mets lineup has only gotten better and Lindor is still under 30.
I suppose he could be considered a tier-one guy since I don’t see much of a difference between him and Bichette. Lindor has a 12% SB attempt rate over the last two years and Bichette is at 14% (Trea at 19%), so there’s that difference.
I suppose I should like Lindor more than I do because you can definitely squeeze out top-20 production for a lower pick, and there are definitely plenty of seasons here where he would finish at the #1 overall SS - so he’s a good bet, but it just gets less appealing with all of these other options hanging round.
Seager
It’s possible we’ve made too much out of the shift stuff. Seager has been gravitating up draft boards because he hit the most ground balls into the shift last year. He seems to stand to benefit 20+ points of batting average due to the shift rules, but you can’t really know that for sure, and the price is rising because of the speculation.
Last year Seager went .243/.315/.454 with 33 homers, 91 runs, and 84 RBI - but just three steals. He has never been a steals guy, so he doesn’t figure to steal double-digit bags this year even with the rule changes. He has the most raw power of the shortstops we’ve talked about so far, so we could easily see a 30+ HR, .280 season from him with a bunch of counting stats. But the tier-two price and projection are really all about the shift speculation, and it’s possible that’s wrong.
The worst-case scenario makes him look a whole lot like Willy Adames, who goes 30+ picks later, but the upside separates Seager. I really think we could see a season from him where he hits close to 40 homers, hits .280, and steals 7-10 bags - and that would work magnificently.
Oneil Cruz
Cruz is the misfit here. He has the largest range of possible outcomes at the position. The floor is that he strikes out 35% of the time, hits .200, loses playing time and/or gets demoted. That’s pretty unlikely, I think the Pirates would likely roll with him even if he is hitting .190 in June - what exactly would be the point of sending him down or benching him? But who knows!
The upside is that he gets the K% to 27% and then follows with 35 homers and 25 steals with a high BABIP that gets the batting average over .250. I think that’s just as possible as the worst-case scenario.
If we just assume he stays in the lineup all year, there is almost no chance he doesn’t go 20-20. He hits the ball harder than anybody else in the league and is one of the fastest players in the league to boot. But you just might have to eat a hugely disappointing batting average and a counting stat total that does not match the names above.
Tier Three
Dansby Swanson
Wander Franco
Xander Bogaerts
Tim Anderson
Willy Adames
Jeremy Pena
Carlos Correa
This is as strong of a third-tier as you’ll find at any position, and it’s where I’ve taken my shortstop in almost every draft I’ve done so far.
Swanson
Not a safe pick by any means given the slumps he’s had in recent years as well as the team context downgrade. He had a high 26% K% last year but smashed in fantasy with the 25 HR, 18 SB, 99 R, 96 RBI line. I think that will prove to be his best season. The Cubs are probably a neutral offense this year, and he will sit in the middle of the order - but the projections are taking all of that into account and giving him this
88 R, 25 HR, 77 RBI, 15 SB, .263
That’s a fine line if he gets it, but there’s a pretty big downside if the K% comes up above 27% and the Cubs stink it up.
Franco
This is another guy I’m not drafting. The higher price tag is seemingly still mostly about the prospect pedigree. He hasn’t been good for fantasy in the Majors with a .282/.337/.439 line with 13 HR and 10 SB in a full season’s worth of PAs over the last two years. 13-10 isn’t something you want from a starter, especially not a top-100 pick. If anybody can majorly improve, though, it’s Franco - who has all of the tools. I’m just not a guy to buy into TOOLS, I want to see the production first, so I’m out on Franco.
Bogaerts
Some people are worried about the big contract, which I don’t really buy into - but it’s there. The concerning thing with Bogaerts is that he hasn’t been great in any category besides batting average over the last two seasons. He has 38 homers and 13 steals to go with the .301 batting average. The RBI opportunities should be there in bunches with the Padres, but I don’t think he’s a 20-homer guy in San Diego and he’s not likely to make a big impact in steals either.
The good news is that he’s pretty safe. He’s 30 years old and he has always been a good hitter. He could certainly be a guy to benefit from the steals changes and swipe 15 bags with 18 homers and 200 R+RBI, so I’m more than fine with drafting him if he falls out of the top 100.
Anderson
Anderson hasn’t played a full season in quite a while, but he’s usually a 120+ games played guy so I’m not really penalizing him. He’s fantastic for batting average, steals, and runs - and that’ll play for me. Since 2021 he has hit .306/.338/.440 with 23 homers and 31 steals in about 1.5 season worth of playing time. The projection is 84 R, 14 HR, 55 RBI, 22 SB, .291 batting average in 569 PA. That works pretty well for a guy going after pick 90 and a guy that does fall into the 100s in certain drafts.
Adames
Adames went ahead and pounded 31 homers in his first full year with the Brewers. It was fully backed up with a high 8.5% Brl/PA and a 13% Brl%. The strikeouts were a bit high (27%), but he put a ton of balls into the air (34% GB%). So Adames struck out a lot but when he was putting balls in play, they were in the air and hit hard (44% hard-hit rate). The .238 batting average feels right, if not a little bit high for that profile, although all of the projection systems have him above .245 - so that’s a good sign.
If he really hits .250 with 30 more homers, that’s a really good season. My projections have him for 31 homers, 8 steals, a .246 batting average, and then 87 runs and 83 RBI. That makes him the fifth-best SS at $12.95. The downside is that there’s always more inherent risk with high strikeout rates, he could certainly fall well short of 30 homers and hit .230 or something - that would be like an $8 return rather than $13, but yeah I like Adames a ton for where he goes, and I’m happy to make him my SS starter while everybody else grabs the guys above and I load up elsewhere.
Pena
Pena wasn’t fantastic for fantasy purposes last year with 22 homers and 11 steals, but he wasn’t bad at anything either (72 R, 66 RBI, .251 AVG). I don’t see why we shouldn’t assume that’s his floor as a young player that was previously highest touted. The Bat X has him for a .253 batting average with 18 homers and a dozen steals - a slight step forward.
You would have to think that Pena has the highest upside of this group of shortstops given the age (25) and lineup context. If he finds himself in the #2 hole of that Astros lineup and takes even a small step forward - he could have a huge year. You could see 22 homers, a .270 average, 100 R, and 75 RBI or something like that - pretty useful!
I prefer to get one of the above as my starting SS, and it’s at Pena that I’m a little bit less confident - but yeah he’s perfectly fine where he goes and he’s benefiting a lot from all these other good options, price-wise.
Correa
We can never get any love for Correa in fantasy. He hit a nice .291/.366/.467 last year, but the problem is that it came with an average HR total (22) and no steals (0.6% steal attempt rate). He has a lot of injuries in his past, and all of the news about him failing physicals this offseason shows you the risk here.
With Correa, you’re seemingly getting a bunch of risk without much of the upside. I mean if he turns in a full season with .290, 22 homers, and 75 RBI you’re profiting big time there - but it seems like the average outcome is much worse than this.
Tier Four
Amed Rosario
Javier Baez
Nico Hoerner
Adalberto Mondesi
You don’t want a starting shortstop from this group, and since we’ve already talked about 15 names, you’re almost certainly not going to have that happen to you.
Rosario
He’s very much like Hoerner, as we’ll see. He has a good hold on a solid spot in the Cleveland lineup and should score a good amount of runs because of it. The projections have him for 90 R, 12 HR, 65 RBI, 18 SB, .280. That’s pretty useful, but the upside is lacking because he just doesn’t have power in the profile, so he’s a big downer in HR and RBI.
Baez
The projections really like the Baez bounce-back, pricing him above Correa. My system has a 71 R, 23 HR, 62 RBI, 17 SB, .239 season for him. That might be aggressive after a season last year where he hit 17 homers and stole just nine bags, but it seems like he should benefit from the park adjustments they’re making in Comerica. It’s also good to see that he cut his strikeout rate down to 25%, his best mark since 2016. That might be related to the loss of power. Maybe he was just swinging the bat more softly to try to make more contact. The xwOBACON (.344, down from .452) seems to support that narrative.
The projection is that Baez finds a middle-ground here and flirts with a 20-20 season for a really cheap price. I don’t see a ton of difference between him and Adames really - so I’m happy to take the big discount on Baez as a middle infielder (you’re probably putting a shortstop in that slot rather than a second baseman).
Hoerner
Very little power from the guy with a 2.6% Brl%. That makes his 10 homers hard to believe. He does make a TON of contact (11% K%, 86% Cont%), and steals a bunch of bases (20 bags last year, a 16.7% SB Att%).
The Cubs have had trouble finding a reliable lead-off hitter, so maybe Hoerner can be that guy - and they do have some extra run producers in the lineup now behind him.
Right now, he’s slotted in as the lead-off hitter with facilitates the projection below.
548 PA, 75 R, 8 HR, 44 RBI, 25 SB, .282
That’s a pretty good player - so another guy to consider as a middle infielder if you find yourself behind the ball in steals.
Mondesi
He’s hurt right now, shocker! No idea what to say about him, I’m just not drafting the guy! Take Hoerner instead, or just don’t play fantasy baseball maybe.
That said, he’s going to be in this tier rather than the next one because of how many bases he could potentially steal if somehow he plays 100 games (a 66% stolen base attempts rate over the last two years in those 190 PAs).
Tier Five
Ezequiel Tovar
CJ Abrams
Jorge Mateo
JP Crawford
Elvis Andrus
In standard leagues, we’re already done. Tovar and Abrams had some of that prospect hype, but neither of them looks like a player that will hit home runs and they are not a part of lineups you want a ton of action from. They both had hard-hit rates under 35% last year, and there’s no reason to think they’ll be lead-off hitters or anything like that. The positive is that they’re young and neither of them strikes out very much, which is at least something to hang your hat on. They are worth monitoring early on, but not drafting.
Mateo has a little bit of power at least with 13 homers last year while he stole 35 bags on a 46% attempt rate. The 6% Brl% is near the league average, but he does strike out a bunch (28%) which brings a lot of this downward.
He’s not a starter on the depth chart right now, but he can be drafted as a late-round steals flier in deeper leagues.
We’ll have to see where Elvis Andrus ends up, if a decent team picks him up and makes him the lead-off hitter at the beginning of the season, there could be something there. He did hit 17 homers and steal 18 bags last year with a .249 average. We probably won’t see anything close to that again - but I guess it’s possible!
Other Names to Know
Oswald Peraza (NYY)
Anthony Volpe (NYY)
Brice Turang (MIL)
Elly De La Cruz (CIN)
Four prospects here that will probably come up this year. Turang has the most playing time per the projections (424 PA). He hit .287/.362/.418 last year with 14 homers and 34 steals - and that was in a full season in AAA (608 PA). Probably not much power here, but definitely some steals - and the 19% K% in AAA is good to see.
Peraza and Volpe are the Yankees’ prospects that will compete for some playing time. Peraza made the Majors last year for 57 PAs, so he’s a bit ahead of Volpe. However, his OPS in the minors was unspectacular at .785. In 57 PAs in the Majors, he put up a nice 85% contact rate with a 5% Brl% - hitting .306, so that’s encouraging. Here are some projections on him:
The Bat: 299 PA, 35 R, 8 HR, 29 RBI, 10 SB, .245
Steamer: 258 PA, 28 R, 7 HR, 28 RBI, 9 SB, .242
JonPGH: 338 PA, 39 R, 7 HR, 35 RBI, 17 SB, .227
You’d think he would have an opportunity to make the team out of camp, since he’s on the 40-man and already debuted - but we’ll see.
Volpe is the better prospect and did reach AAA last year for 99 PAs. He slashed just .249/.342/.460 with 21 homers, but 50 steals! Seems like another guy without a ton of raw power but a lot of speed.
The most talented of the bunch is Elly Da La Cruz, but he’s the least likely to play a bunch in the Majors this year. He hit .304/.366/.571 with 30 homers and 56 SB last season in 618 PA between winter ball, A+, and AA. However it came with a 30% K% - so he has Oneil Cruz vibes here. I don’t think you’ll the Reds bring him up quickly at all if he’s still striking out a ton, and they have no real reason to rush their talent to the Majors this year.
Overall Strategy
I’m happy to take Trea Turner in the middle of the first, or Bo Bichette in the middle of the second, or even Lindor if he falls toward the fourth round. However, as we’ve said, this is the best position in the game to wait awhile on, because you still get above-average bats even after pick 100.
My ranks:
Turner
Bichette
Lindor
Tatis
Seager
Bogaerts
Anderson
Swanson
Cruz
Adames
Pena
Franco
Correa
Baez
Rosario
Hoerner
Mondesi
Tovar
Mateo
Abrams