June Shortstop Tier Rankings
A lot has happened since the May consensus shortstop rankings were published. Those will be updated around the All-Star break, but until then here are my tiered rankings for June.
Tier 1
Starlin Castro
Troy Tulowitzki
Rafael Furcal
Jed Lowrie
Hanley Ramirez
Castro was a pretty valuable player last year when he hit 10 home runs, stole 22 bases and hit .307. We’re through 60 games this season and he already has five homers and 16 steals and is hitting .308. Our ZiPS updated season projections have him swiping 32 bags with 11 homers. He’s being far more aggressive than last season, swinging at 41.6 percent of balls outside the zone, but it’s possible he goes 15/30/.300 with 80 RBI and 80 runs. Not many players, let alone shortstops, are going to have those totals. The biggest surprise in this group is Jed Lowrie. We’ve all been teased by his potential before. He’s getting regular playing time now, and has avoided injury thus far, and the results are speaking for themselves. His 12 homers lead the position, though he’s driven in himself nearly half the time. He’s become more selective this season, swinging less and walking more. I’ve always been a Lowrie believer and it’s paying off right now.
Tier 2
Derek Jeter
Elvis Andrus
Jose Reyes
Asdrubal Cabrera
Kyle Seager
The real surprise of this group is Seager. The 24-year-old has impressed all around and is going to finish with double digit steals and home runs while maintaining a decent average and OBP. He already has 17 doubles as well, pushing his Isolated Slugging (SLG% – BA) to .210, second behind Jed Lowrie. Reyes had a rough April in his new environment, but has been returning to normal levels since. Every one of his main slash numbers has gone up from April to May and May to June. If he keeps it up he’ll get bumped into the first tier. Andrus is hitting for a higher average, getting on base more, and slugging more than ever. He’s on pace to have the lowest stolen base total of his career, but should still get to 30 bags.
Tier 3
J.J. Hardy
Mike Aviles
Ian Desmond
Jimmy Rollins
Marco Scutaro
Zack Cozart
Jhonny Peralta
I’m not a believer in Aviles, as I’ve written lately. He had a decent start but doesn’t have the plate discipline I like to push him any higher. Hardy has great power for the position, but you have to be ok with giving up some batting average in exchange for home runs. The same goes for Desmond, though he’ll steal you ~15-20 bases. Peralta has been a disappointment after a great 2011 season. He’s started to rebound, though, posting a .756 OPS in May and a 1.054 OPS in 23 June plate appearances. If he keeps it up he will easily move up a tier in next month’s rankings.
Tier 4
Dee Gordon
Alcides Escobar
Yunel Escobar
Gordon has been a disappointment, not getting on base enough to use his amazing speed. He does have 17 steals, but how many could he have if his on base percentage wasn’t .280? Of the two Escobars, Alcides is playing the best. He’s been much better than his last two seasons, raising his average and OBP to respectable levels. That success is partly due to an increase in his BABIP of .345 when it hadn’t cracked .290 in 2010 or 2011. When you’re not fast, having a 63.2% ground ball rate is rarely a good idea. Yunel Escobar is finding that out the hard way. After a very good 2011 he’s hitting just .250/.307/.329.
The Rest
Alexei Ramirez
Willie Bloomquist
Jamey Carroll
Sean Rodriguez
Elliot Johnson
Cliff Pennington
Brandon Crawford
Erick Aybar
These players shouldn’t be owned in standard mixed leagues. They simply don’t provide enough value to sustain ownership.
Erik writes for DraysBay and has also written for Bloomberg Sports. Follow him on Twitter @ehahmann.
STARLIN CASTRO at number one? Just leaving aside for the moment any arguments about Tulo being that he’s out with an injury (albeit one that should see him return in 3 days) you used the ZiPS projection for Castro to justify his #1 ranking. Then you put Hanley Ramirez, who’s ZiPS projection utterly annihilates Castro’s, 4 spots beneath him. Is this tailored for a league that weights singles as if they’re home runs??? I don’t get it.
Maybe I’m biased since I have Tulo in 4 of my 5 leagues (including 2 long term keepers)…but having Castro ahead Tulo is nucking futs.
Andrelton Simmons?
Great call on Seager. Unfortunately he hasn’t played any games at SS this year and in ESPN leagues he qualifies only as a 3B.
He does qualify at SS in yahoo leagues.
Stopped reading when I saw tier 1.
I’ll assume you wrote this to convince someone in your league to trade you Hanley for Jed Lowrie.
Godspeed
Agreed.
I’m extremely confused and didn’t bother proceeding after tier 1… Lowrie and Furcal in tier 1 and Castro #1 overall? I don’t get it.
(Although I did scroll down to read some comments on these bizarre ranks)
At what point do we stop assuming Asdrubal Cabrera is going to regress and think that possibly we simply have a case of a guy who has been around for a while, but is only now beginning to hit his prime? His plate discipline numbers suggest that his decrease in K’s and increase in BB’s can be sustained, and even with a HR/FB ratio about 4% lower than last year, he should still finish with 15 homeruns to go along with 30+ doubles.
Yeah, ridiculous to have Castro at 1…..
furcal ahead of cabrera? please explaine
Great List…any thoughts on where Plouffe would fit in these tiers?
Plouffe is SS eligible in most leagues…if Seager’s on this list, Plouffe HAS to be.
STARLIN CASTRO at #1?
JED LOWRIE ahead of Hanley Ramirez?
WTF?? this may be more inane than the NL SP list that Dan Wade pooped out last week.
wait a minute, I just passed out and hit my head on the floor and blacked out, I just had this horrible dream where somebody thought Jed Lowrie was a better fantasy SS going forward than Hanley Rami… OH MY GOD IT WASN’T A DREAM.
Hanley: .254, 33 R, 11 HR, 37 RBI, 10 SB
Lowrie: .289, 27 R, 12 HR, 28 RBI, 2 SB
Lowrie hasn’t even been better than Hanley for the first two months of the season. Unbelievable.
if you use those kind of stats around here to back an argument, you’re bound to get shunned.
Still, I agree. Castro at 1 is a bit much, need to see more out of furcal and lowrie, ANDRUS should be tier one, right up there with Castro as he is a starlin with a little less power and a little more speed. Having Jeter ahead of him, especially after acknowledging Andrus’ enormous strides towards stardom with the batting average, XBH, and plate discipline all skyrocketing. He was considered #5-6 coming INTO the year.
what are you talking about Daniel?
This is a fantasy article. Those are the exact stats that matter.
hey, remember when Erik Hahmann ranked Jed Lowrie ahead of Hanley Ramirez in a SS fantasy ranking?
no? …. um, then do you remember when Erik Hahmann “purposely excluded” Hanley Ramirez in the SS keeper rankings this past offseason, and then posted a lame follow-up article about why he couldn’t handle the task? http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/hanley-ramirez-keeper-conundrum/
no? ….. um, then do you remember when Erik Hahmann made the same idiotic mistake in his SS rankings last year when he ranked Hanley Ramirez at the bottom of tier 3, outside the top 10, and behind such luminaries as Erick Aybar, Yunel Escobar and Sexwi-Lexei? http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/updated-shortstop-rankings-july/#more-20346
so why does Erik still get to do SS articles? Thank god for the consensus rankings.
obviously I’m bored at work, don’t mean to sit here harassing poor Mr. Hahmann for his incompetence as I know we aren’t ever allowed to criticize free content… but maybe it would be better if the individual rankings articles had to be passed around to other FG authors for quick approval just to make sure nothing fails the “sanity check / smell test”.
this is a serious request. I’m sure if Erik had emailed his proposed tiers out to Eno et al somebody would have been like, um, have you actually thought this through good sir?
Yea… generally they’re good but definitely some glaring mistakes here.
Bonifacio is due back in a few weeks, and still leads all SS in SB. Since his legs were not injured, and his thumb never did much heavy lifting anyway (.047 ISO) he should probably still be in Tier 3 or so.
~ if you use those kind of stats around here to back an argument, you’re bound to get shunned. ~
Normally, I would agree with that point. But in the context of fantasy rankings, those old school numbers are probably the best to use. And the newer metrics can give some insight as to whether one thinks that performance can be sustained or will regress. But I have never been part of a league that used BABIP, ISO, WAR, etc.
yes, I acknowledge that right now. My bad. Still, just using those numbers isn’t going to get you any where in determining future production.
I wasn’t sure if you were being sarcastic or not but apparently you missed my point.
First off, this is a 5×5 fantasy article and the stats I quoted are their 5×5 stats, so it’s 100% relevant.
Second, the point wasn’t about predicting future performance. Rather, the point was to highlight the absurdity of ranking Lowrie ahead of Hanley by pointing out that even THIS SEASON to date Hanley has been better.
Obviously, no analysis of career performance nor future projections would possibly rank Lowrie in the same universe as Hanley as a fantasy player. So the ONLY possible explanation is that current season performance strongly favors Lowrie. Thus the reason for pointing out that even that isn’t valid, as Hanley has been better YTD.
Just one more way to show how ridiculous the ranking was.
I really enjoy whenever there’s a new Hahmann article, if only for the comments.
I’m not going to overreact or be “rude” in reply to this article like many other commenters, but I still have a few objections. Mainly because I actually want a reply. Many, in fact, but I just want to talk about Elvis Andrus’ ranking. Keep in mind, that, coming into the season, he was generally ranked behind Tulo, Reyes, Castro, Ramirez, and by some Cabrera. This year, he is having a career year by far.
First of all, WAR has Lowrie and Andrus easily on top. Even with the injury, it makes sense that Tulo is ahead of Andrus, just because of his elite track record
I’ll just leave Hanley and Tulo alone.
Looking at Castro, Furcal, Lowrie and Jeter, here are some numbers.
BB/K
Andrus-0.94
Furcal-0.72
Lowrie-0.67
Jeter-0.63
Castro-0.14 (ew…)
That’s just basic plate discipline. Andrus has the second highest Zone% of all SS, eclipsing the 50% mark and 3% higher than the next highest of the bunch in Lowrie; with the Ranger lineup’s protection behind Andrus, he clearly isn’t being pitched around, rather being attacked with strikes. To have so much of a better BB/K than the others while getting the most strikes is definitely to his credit. His SwStr% is only higher than Furcal (by a tenth of a %). Anyway, it’s probably pretty clear that, for leagues with OBP, Andrus’ OBP is no fluke.
Andrus has no ISO; that’s not part of his game. Yet it is still trending up, as his 2B+3B is already as high as 2010, almost as high as 2009 and on pace to easily ecliple his career high of 30 in 2011. Even his drawfish ISO this year is xtill barely lower than the likes of Furcal, Jeter and Castro. His OBP easily makes up for that small difference.
All told, his season to this point is very similar to Jeter and furcal (OBP and Power). Not including Andrus’ speed, easily the best. Which one projects to continue and/or have this success over many years. Who was expected to do the best? Andrus. I really don’t see any reason for Jeter and Furcal to be above him.
Concerning Castro, Castro has a little more pop than Andrus, but his inability to walk and get on base as much as Andrus more than makes up for that small difference. He has a few more steals but hasn’t in the past and they will probably end up with a similar number. Having Castro above him is not that unreasonable, but in no way should Starlin be a tier and a half above Andrus.
Andrus’ power is not at all like Lowrie and Cabrera. Their OBPs aren’t much below andrus’s. The steals for Andrus make up for part of that. Does Lowrie have the track record to be expected to sustain his numbers?
Standard stats for 5 by 5 fantasy players? Runs+RBi is in this order: Furcal, Andrus, Castro, Lowrie, Cabrera, Jeter.
in the end, this is how I assess those above Andrus.
Tulo and Hanley-Yeah, probably.
Castro, Lowrie and Cabrera-I don’t quite think so, but a pretty good case can be made.
Furcal and Jeter-No…
Check that: I’m not sure why I suddenly added Asdrubal into the equation…must have thought he was ranked ahead of Andrus as well. Ignore what I said about Cabrera.
These rankings are downright horrible.
I find it pretty cowardly that this author’s rankings are almost universally blasted, yet he never posts in the comments to defend his position or accept that he might have made a mistake.
After so many controversial/horrible posts, why does Fangraphs continue to allow him to write these?
obviously I agree 😉
I really do think the worst part is his unwillingness to appear in the comments and defend his rankings with analysis / rationale. It’s smacks of both cowardice and pretension.
Say what you will about the other guys, but Eno, Howard, Pods, etc. are more than willing to come talk about their articles. Even poor Howard who sticks his neck out to the snarky stathead crowd with his “Kicking Rocks” column is willing to respond to the more abusive posts :p
Agreed… I hate to criticize a man who’s working for free, but this is pretty bad. Add to it that Hahmann bascially refuses to defend himself and it seems a bit pretentious.
A lot of “the rest” have to be owned in mixers, if you use a 2B, SS and MI position.
I just gave out Carlos Quentin for Kyle Seager straight up, in hopes for Petco to devour Quentins quick start and I need help at 2b. Was it a decent trade?
that’s a bit tricky as it will be highly dependent on your team needs. Despite his nice start to the season, I still think Seager has most value as a “swiss army knife” who can rotate around your roster and plug holes making sure you don’t lose AB’s when a guy has a day off or misses a few games to a minor injury.
that said, he’s not an elite performer in any category and his value comes from positional flexibility and broadly decent performance — he won’t kill you in any category but isn’t going to put you over the top either.
Quentin probably will still hit for power at Petco (it only really murders LH powr) and also stands a decent chance of getting traded, so I’m not sure your rationale was sound. I do like trading Quentin now with his hot start, but I think you could have aimed higher than Seager. But losing Quentin isn’t going to kill your team, he’s “just” a decent power hitting OF over the long run, he’s really a 2-cat guy (HR + RBI) and is a total zero in SB and mediocre in R + AVG.
They dont have Starlin ranked #1, he is in the Top Tier…Which means he has been one of the Top Shortstops this year…those are the top 5 thus far….