Rest of Season Ranks - Shortstop
A summer series of posts re-ranking players by position
Shortstop is absolutely loaded now. I found more than 30 players here worthy of being started in moderately deep leagues, and it’s certainly a polarizing position where some people might vehemently disagree with these ranks, so this should be fun. Let’s have at it.
Tier One
Fernando Tatis Jr.
Corey Seager
Bo Bichette
Trea Turner
Wander Franco
I don’t think I’ll get too much pushback on this being my top tier. You could certainly shuffle these names around a bit. Here’s a few points on each name.
Tatis
Barrel rate is down under 10% right now, but so is the strikeout rate (19%), so that’s kind of an even trade. The batting average and steals should be very good, and everything else will be well above average as well. Very few hitters have his upside, so he’s my #1 if drafting today.
Seager
Doesn’t steal, but that’s really the only negative thing you can say. The guy has a 1.028 OPS right now with a 17% K% and a 20% Brl%. One of the best pure hitters in the league.
Bichette
Only three steals (six attempts) is pretty disappointing, and the OPS isn’t through the roof either at .852. However, the barrel rate is up and we know that he can steal bags - so I think that will come.
Turner
He has been better lately but still has a 23% K% and a 7.1% Brl% on the year with a very low 69% Contact%. He’s just not making contact at the same rate and that’s been tough to see. I still think he’s an easy top five SS if re-drafting just because of his long, long history of being elite. We shouldn’t let 2-3 mediocre months take us too far off of Trea.
Franco
Bad barrel rate (6.7%) and higher GB% (48%) makes me question his power output, but the Rays have a way of beating their barrel rates and he does everything else magnificently well.
Tier Two
Bobby Witt Jr.
Elly De La Cruz
Two guys here with insane talent and upside, but both have issues that keep them out of the first tier for the short term.
Witt Jr.
The park seems to be killing him. He has a .350 xwOBA and an 11.3% Brl% but just 12 homers (27.8 PA/HR). But he has 23 steals and a low 20% K%. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Witt Jr. lead the position from here on out, but the lineup around him is so bad and the park is seriously damaging, so here he is.
De La Cruz
Not many players have been better for fantasy than him since his call-up. He has a .989 OPS with 3 homers and eight steals in just 76 PA. However, the xwOBA is low (.299), and that’s mostly because of the 60% GB% and 29% K%. His contact rate (70%) is better than I would have thought, so it’s definitely positive he can maintain a K% under 30%, but a 35% K% is still in the realm of possibilities, so there’s a pretty big downside with EDLR. But his ceiling is a first-round pick next year, obviously, so I can’t really justify putting him in the same tier as the names to follow.
Tier Three
Nico Hoerner
Matt McLain
Gunnar Henderson
Francisco Lindor
Hoerner
Maybe I’m too here, but he has 17 steals in 310 PAs (23.5% attempt rate, very high) and he’s hitting .282 and scoring runs at a very high rate. He gets a lot of credit here for his reliability. The upside is pretty low given his lack of power, but we know that we’ll get a strong batting average and a bunch of steals, and that matters quite a bit.
McLain
It’s pretty risky to have strong takes on players with less than 200 career PAs, but we’ve seen very good stuff from McLain so far. A .922 OPS with a 12.6% Brl%, a solid enough 27% K% and a nice 75% Contact%. He also has a pretty decent 16% SB Attempt%, above the league average - so it seems like we can get a little bit of everything from McLain.
Henderson
If I were writing this a few weeks earlier he’d be way further down, but he has really come to life lately. He has a 1.061 OPS in June with a 24% K% and a 17% Brl%. I’m more willing to consider the smaller sample when it’s someone like this with the huge prospect pedigree and a ton of talent but just a slow start to their career. It’s possible he’s really figured something out and will continue this tear, but it’s also possible that this was just a random-ish streak of success and he’ll go back to being kind of mediocre soon. Who knows, but I think this is the right place to put him.
Lindor
A bit quietly has 15 homers and 9 SB, bt the .221/.306/.443 slash line is disappointing. The very good news is his 11.6% Brl%, 22.7% K%, and .340 xwOBA. It certainly seems like he’s had a bunch of bad luck, and unlike the previous two names, we know he’ll be solid at the very least moving forward.
Tier Four
Thairo Estrada
Willy Adames
Ezequiel Duran
Dansby Swanson
Tim Anderson
Right around this time was my favorite place to draft a shortstop this year, and that hasn’t worked out very well since I missed out on these elite names above quite a lot.
I’m done going player-by-player at this point, but real quickly, we have a mixed bag here. You have your steals specialists (Estrada), your power specialists (Adames), your “solid but low upside veterans” (Swanson & Anderson), and then your guy that’s played extremely well but is still largely unknown (Duran).
Tier Five
Royce Lewis
Maikel Garcia
Xander Bogaerts
Carlos Correa
Two high-upside youngsters (Lewis & Garcia), and then two boring veterans who are struggling a bit this year (Bogaerts & Correa). All of these guys could go up or down in a hurry depending on what happens. If Royce Lewis could play every day, he’d probably be in the next tier up, but it’s weird how they’re using him right now and we really don’t know who he is yet with just 84 MLB PAs this year.
Tier Six
Tommy Edman
Orlando Arcia
Jeremy Pena
Zach Neto
Ezequiel Tovar
Anthony Volpe
Ha-Seong Kim
Luis Garcia
And that pretty much ends the shortstops you really want to start. But there are cases to be made for all of these guys. Edman is still running and not striking out, Arcia is having a very nice year, Tovar has been okay and still has that prospect upside, and then Pena/Kim at least play every day in good lineups.
As for Volpe, I’m not even sure how much longer he can stay in the lineup with his sub-.200 batting average, but he’s running a bunch and has a pretty decent barrel rate, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he could pull a Gunnar here and go on a tear, but if we were drafting for 2023 right now I wouldn’t touch him.
Tier Seven
Jorge Mateo
Javier Baez
Chris Taylor
Amed Rosario
Bryson Stott
Jon Berti
Taylor Walls
Geraldo Perdomo
Mauricio Dubon
And that’s how I finish it. Let me know who I missed and I will edit this post, but I think I got everybody.