Looking back at 2013 shortstop ADPs

If you drafted a shortstop early this year, chances are you’re looking back and you’re pretty disappointed. That’s because very few of those shortstops drafted as starters in a 12-team league returned positive value relative to their draft positions.

This analysis will use Yahoo’s Average Draft Positions (ADP), and while a lot of people also play in auction leagues, it stands to reason that ADP and auction dollars would be tightly correlated. And of course, comparing ADP to actual value rank perhaps isn’t fair since the context of the rest of a person’s draft is required, but it should still be a good approximation of the majority.

Anyway, with the exception of perhaps Ian Desmond, nobody walked away happy with where they got their starting shortstop, it seems. There were some values to be found by waiting until backup shortstops (or MI positions) were being drafted, and those who jumped early due to positional scarcity weren’t really rewarded.

The table below shows shortstops listed by Yahoo ADP and includes their value rank, the gap and their standard value score, provided by Baseball Monster. The standard score is BM’s means of a catch-all value statistic, and it uses a standardized scores method.

If you drafted Ian Desmond as the fifth shortstop off the board or waited on an Alexei Ramirez type or stashed Jean Segura, you’re probably doing fairly well right now.

Presented another way, here is the table sorted by overall rank, with the same columns shown.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Segura was the best value, going undrafted in some leagues but ranking as the top shortstop at present. Those who took Hanley Ramirez or Troy Tulowitzki probably aren’t too disappointed, either, as those owners probably assumed some injury time.

Elvis Andrus kindly displays how you don’t need to be any good to have fantasy value, and J.J. Hardy and Alexei Ramirez demonstrate that the unsexy names you know can really help out.

So, was 2013 just an extraordinarily tough year to evaluate shortstops? It actually appears to at least be a three-year trend that the top-drafted shortstops struggle to return value. Some of this is due to injuries, and perhaps it’s apparent at all positions, but it’s worth keeping in mind for next year.

The position is definitely a scarce one, but a lot of the value comes from late picks. The top names will always remain valuable because when healthy, they’re so much better than the rest of the lot.

But it seems pretty clear that the strategy for 2014 should be to wait beyond the top-100 picks for your shortstop unless you’re really enticed by a top name. This might even hold truer in 2014 with how the depth at the position has improved with some young additions later in the year.