We know the game is changing and getting much younger as a result. We just watched perhaps the best rookie class ever. One position that has been especially enriched by the youth movement is shortstop. For a few years it has been the worst fantasy position on the diamond and next-worst wasn’t particularly close. The gap has definitely shrunk and may have done so enough to where it’s not even the thinnest position in fantasy.

Obviously the headliners here are Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor, the two super-phenoms who embarrassed the league’s pitchers for 99 games apiece at the ages of 20 and 21, respectively. Many already see Correa as a first-round fantasy talent thanks in large part to his incredible power at such a premium position. Lindor won’t last too long, either. He went in the fourth round of a 15-team draft I did earlier this month, though he hasn’t yet gone deep into the seventh round of a 12-team mock that I have observed.

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A mixture of beer and orange juice is called a brass monkey. Occasionally, uncreative types will call it a beermosa. A mixture of Miller High Life and Tropicana orange juice is called disgusting. It’s also sometimes referred to as sweetened pisswater. Now that our mixology lesson is over, let’s talk about Brad Miller in his new digs.

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Say what you will about the Cincinnati Reds, but they have some useful middle infield depth. Veteran Brandon Phillips is under contract for one more season. Since he has full 10-and-5 rights (i.e. a no trade clause), the retooling Reds may have trouble swapping him elsewhere. That’s a shame for their two shortstops – Zack Cozart and Eugenio Suarez.

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The little brother of Mariners third baseman Kyle, Corey Seager enjoyed a delicious cup of coffee with the Dodgers after being recalled in early September. He BABIPed his way to a .421 wOBA over 113 plate appearances after heading into the season ranked as the team’s second best prospect.

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On Tuesday, Brandon Crawford was inked to a six-year, $75 million dollar extension by the Giants complete with a full no-trade clause. The 28-year old shortstop just enjoyed a breakout season that saw him hit 21 HR and knock in 84 runs, both highs at the position. The offense was added to an already-stellar defensive reputation at arguably the game’s most important position.

In fact, defense alone earned his playing time early on. Crawford, a fourth-round pick from 2008, debuted in 2011 after the hopes of one final kick from Miguel Tejada fell through for the Giants. He was called up in late-May as a 24-year old after Tejada managed a paltry .522 OPS through the team’s first 50 games. The 37-year old had also shifted over to third base by the start of May, leaving shortstop to 31-year old journeyman Mike Fontenot.

Crawford was never a big-time prospect coming up. He barely made San Francisco’s Top 10 from Marc Hulet prior to his debut, but the lack of hype was because of his bat. His defense was always seen as big league-capable. Hulet suggested he could become an Adam Everett-type or maybe even a J.J. Hardy clone with less power if his bat improved. In his debut, he looked a lot like the former with a 68 wRC+ in 66 games. Everett was a career 65 wRC+ (albeit with excellent, best-in-the-league level defense).

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Carlos Correa won the Rookie of the Year vote, and Carlos Correa is guy that most fantasy owners prefer, too. And mostly that’s because we’ll take Correa’s bat over the one Francisco Lindor was supposed to show. When it comes to the bat Lindor actually showed in his debut, though, things get closer. Just a little bit of power separates the two.

And that’s the problem with evaluating Lindor for next season. Power can be so fickle, and we all remember the Kevin Maases of the past. Past research doesn’t even agree on a proper sample for power numbers. We’re left grasping at straws when a young player comes up and is more powerful than they were supposed to be.

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Troy Tulowitzki managed to stay healthy enough to accumulate the most plate appearances he has since 2011. Surely that would have resulted in an excellent fantasy season, and perhaps some profit for those owners who were willing to take on such an injury risk. But that’s not what happened. Though he still finished third among shortstops in fantasy value, he earned just below $10 and posted the second worst wOBA of his career. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was then traded out of the cozy confines of Coors Field, making forecasting his near-term future difficult.

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It was a weird breakout season for Xander Bogaerts. He was the undisputed top shortstop in baseball by about $9 and yet it doesn’t really feel like it. He won’t be the top shortstop off the board in 2016 and his home runs + stolen bases didn’t even equal 20. The big season was spurred by an 80-point spike in batting average, 84 runs, and 81 RBI.

Obviously the batting average plays into the rise of the other two, but a lot of it was batting second, third, fourth, or fifth for 103 of his 156 games on a team that scored 4.62 runs per game – fourth-most in baseball. In other words, there was some team-dependent good fortune baked into this season as opposed to a season like Manny Machado’s which showed major skill growth. No other shortstop scored more than 77 runs and only Brandon Crawford topped the RBI total with 84.

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You have to scroll all the way down to the 24th ranked shortstop, Eugenio Suarez, to find a hitter who recorded fewer at-bats than Carlos Correa did this season. And yet, Correa still managed to finish second in dollar value among all shortstops. He did it in just 387 at-bats and 432 plate appearances.

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2015 Visualized: Third Base
2015 Visualized: Second Base
2015 Visualized: First Base
2015 Visualized: Catcher

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For the next few weeks, the RotoGraphs staff will devote an entire week to each defensive position, including spotlights on particular players as well as trends throughout the 2015 season. This week, we’re highlighting shortstops.

I don’t claim to be a Tableau (or data visualization) whiz by any means, but I thought it would be cool to visually represent the shortstop landscape in 2015 — with some analysis sprinkled in.

Steamer and ZiPS represent premier player projection systems; FanGraphs’ Depth Charts combines the two, and the writing staff allocate playing time accordingly. The playing time part is less important relative to the combined projections, as aggregated projections tend to perform better than standalones.

I compared projected wOBA (weighted on-base average) from the preseason to actual wOBA (1) by team and (2) by player within team. Unlike WAR, wOBA is a rate metric, so it does not need to be scaled according to playing time.

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