We’re making our way around the diamond with our updated rankings and today we are onto shortstops. Here are the positions we’ve done so far and you can also access them via the Positional Rankings in the right sidebar:

• Catchers
• First Basemen
• Second Basemen

If you feel we missed someone, please let us know in the comments.

This was a really tough position for me because it’s just so messed up. The studs aren’t studding leaving it wide open at the top. There has been some nice risers, but it’s still a remarkably thin position and easily the thinnest on the diamond.

FYI: the table is sortable!

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It’s tricky to write about batted ball mix changes, for the most part. If you’re talking push and pull, adding the ability to go the other way can increase your batting average, sure. But it can also decrease your power output. Ground balls and fly balls act the same way — there’s really an ideal mix for each hitter, and we’re trying to figure out just as much as they are which is the best way forward.

There’s one batted ball type that just plain sucks, though. The pop-up. The infield fly.

98.5% of the time, that’s an out. It’s a bad idea, plain and simple.

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On Friday, Dave considered Troy Tulowitzki’s trade value in the real world, and today I want to consider his trade value in the fantasy world. As Dave noted, Tulo, who is off to a slow start, still has fairly rosy projections and is a good bet to bounce back. Specifically, his home run per fly ball rate is basically a third of his career rate, and his a rough strikeout and walk rates are too far out of line with his norm to continue.

He probably has at least 15 home runs left in his bat this year, if not 20. And while he may end up with the worst strikeout and walk rates of his career, it’s unlikely they’ll end up being significantly worse than they’ve ever been. You can expect him to be much more helpful in average and/or OBP going forward.

Now that we’ve established Tulo isn’t a dog (tough, I know), what’s his trade value? Read the rest of this entry »

Each weekend I take the ZiPS rest-of-season projections and run them through the Zach Sanders z-score method and then see how players I have rostered compare to players available on the waiver wire. Being that I’m tasked with discussing shortstops here on Mondays, I thought I’d analyze two decisions I had to make this week involving shortstops. Read the rest of this entry »

Shortstop has been a difficult position for most fantasy owners this season. As of earlier today, after Hanley Ramirez the top four in Yahoo!’s actual production ranks have been Adeiny Hechavarria, Zack Cozart, Marcus Semien, and Brandon Crawford. While I am very fond of Semien and think Crawford has made notable improvements, this is not exactly the glowing age for fantasy shortstops.
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Always a shallow position for fantasy owners, shortstop is positively a wasteland so far in 2015. It would almost be impossible for shortstop to collectively be this bad going forward, but there are so few bankable assets at the position. If it were March again, I’d tell you just to punt the position. Read the rest of this entry »

Of the top seven shortstops so far according to wRC+, just one was drafted in ten-team mixed leagues according to ESPN. That would be Jhonny Peralta who went 11th among shortstops on average. Five of the top seven, including Peralta, are primarily riding some good fortune on balls in play so far, but two guys are having success with somewhat reasonable BABIPs, Zack Cozart and Wilmer Flores. Read the rest of this entry »

So often, the first take takes. In other words, whatever prognostication came first, it’ll stick long after the data has taken a new turn. In most respects, when it comes to the games on the field, Addison Russell, Masahiro Tanaka, and Homer Bailey all started on the wrong foot this year. The trick is finding out — quickly — if there’s a chance that first look is obscuring the true value of these guys.

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The two things we know about Andrelton Simmons offensively is that he will not be good at stealing bases and he will not take many walks. The rest of whatever Simmons is offensively is up for interpretation.
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This is always the most challenging time of year for me as a fantasy writer. Every statistical sample size is way too small to analyze. I haven’t been to any minor-league games yet, so I don’t have any scouting reports to share. There’s just not a whole lot to write about yet.

Point is, this is a great time to discuss more general topics, because that’s far more interesting for me — and hopefully you — than my hot takes on Ian Kinsler’s awesome first week. With that in mind, let’s dive into a topic that’s been on my mind quite a bit lately, that of the lightly owned super-utility player.

There’s nothing sexy about the lightly owned super-utility player — to be henceforth referred to as a LOSUP — but the ability to use that player to plug multiple lineup holes is a somewhat underrated commodity. In relatively deep leagues with a reasonable number of bench slots, I always like to have a LOSUP floating around.

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