Shortstop Tiers: June
According to both ESPN’s Player Rater and the Zach Sanders z-score method, Brandon Crawford has been the top fantasy shortstop so far this year. But in today’s post, Crawford is playing the role of Aaron Rodgers in the 2005 NFL Draft. Let’s see how far he falls.
Tier One
1. Hanley Ramirez
2. Troy Tulowitzki
3. Marcus Semien
4. Starlin Castro
If there were any doubts about Semien’s solid first month of the season, Semien backed up his April with a May in which he hit another three home runs and stole four bases compared to the three he stole in April. He also hit .289 after hitting .284 in the first month of the season. His RBI production dropped off as he was moved towards the top of the order in late April, but his run production increased in May. All in all, Semien’s second month of the season should confirm to you that’s he’s going to continue to produce.
Tier Two
5. Ian Desmond
6. Jose Reyes
7. Wilmer Flores
8. Jhonny Peralta
There’s no doubt that Desmond has not been good this year. According to the z-score method he has only been the 14th most valuable shortstop so far, and the Player Rater has him 17th at the position. Unfortunately, it’s not like he’s had historically bad luck on balls in play or an unfortunate home run per fly ball rate. His strikeout rate, although better than last year’s career low, is still several percentage points worse than it was during Desmond’s peak. And he’s hitting way too many balls on the ground as his 56 percent ground ball rate is the eighth highest among qualified hitters this year.
But the good news is that Desmond is still hitting the ball fairly far when he does elevate. His average home run and fly ball distance ranks 54th among the 218 listed on the baseballheatmaps.com leaderboard. That’s down from where it was last year when he hit 24 home runs with an 18.2 percent HR/FB rate. But it’s higher than it was in 2013 when he hit 20 home runs with a 12.9 percent HR/FB rate. That means the ZiPS rest-of-season projection that has Desmond hitting 14 home runs from here on out doesn’t seem unreasonable. And both ZiPS and Steamer have him stealing at least 10 bases from here on out even though he’s only 1-for-3 when attempting to steal this year. The projection systems also have him projected for roughly 100 R+RBI. All that together means Desmond could have plenty of value left and may even be under ranked here.
Tier Three
9. Elvis Andrus
10. Alcides Escobar
11. Jean Segura
12. Erick Aybar
13. Alexei Ramirez
14. Jimmy Rollins
Still no Crawford.
Tier Four
15. Brandon Crawford
16. Zack Cozart
17. Andrelton Simmons
18. Jung-Ho Kang
19. Xander Bogaerts
20. Brad Miller
Alright, fine.
Let’s start with Crawford’s power. The 14 percent home run per fly ball rate this year compared to a 6.6 percent career rate is obviously a red flag. To be fair to Crawford, he does have the fourth highest average home run and fly ball distance this year with an impressive 314.2 foot average. But this is a guy who averaged roughly 275 feet in his last two seasons. I have a hard time believing in such a significant spike. Jeff Sullivan recently wrote a pretty convincing piece in support of Crawford’s power, and I’ll buy into it to some degree. But I can’t buy into Brandon Crawford: top five in average home run and fly ball distance.
Another concern with Crawford’s power holding up is the rate at which he is putting balls in the air. A large driver of his first double digit home run season last year was a roughly ten percentage point jump in his fly ball rate. He hit fly balls out of the park at a relatively normal rate for him, but he just hit more balls in the air. This year his fly ball rate is back down where it was prior to last year. Again, not that I think it is, but if Crawford’s early power does turn out to be largely a fluke, his home run total from here on out could be minuscule with his current batted ball profile.
There’s also the issue of his batting average. His BABIP has been fairly normal over the years, and his strikeout and walk rates have floated around a bit, but Crawford has hit between .246 and .248 for three straight seasons. This year he’s hitting .300, but his BABIP is another obvious red flag at .354. Once again, Crawford deserves some credit for having quite a large spike in his hard hit rate this year, which is obviously helping with the BABIP. However, most of the 30 or so hitters who have a higher hard hit rate than Crawford have a BABIP lower than Crawford. So while his average may not regress all the way back to the .250 range, at least some of what we’ve seen so far has been luck.
Tier Five
21. Jose Ramirez
22. Danny Santana
23. Asdrubal Cabrera
24. Nick Ahmed
25. Adeiny Hechavarria
26. Freddy Galvis
27. Jordy Mercer
28. Didi Gregorius
29. Jose Iglesias
30. Ryan Goins
You can find more of Brett's work on TheFantasyFix.com or follow him on Twitter @TheRealTAL.
No hardy sighting in the last group?
I somehow always manage to leave a guy or two out on accident. Yes, Hardy towards the top of that last tier. My bad.
I know J.J. Hardy is scuffling, but there’s no way that he is an inferior option to the players in that bottom tier…
I’m new to this site and to the metrics involved in creating the ranking. But how can someone like Jose Iglesias be at the bottom of the rankings? It doesn’t seem to make any sense.
Both the Steamer and ZiPS projections have him hitting .270 with a handful of steals from here on out. That’s not very valuable.
Where would Russell slot, tier 4? Also, “Zander”?
I’m out on Russell. Strikeout rate is untenable. Unless he maintains a much better than normal BABIP, his average is going in the tank.
I own Castro in a couple of leagues and have been pretty disappointed in his play thus far (I put him on the bench in favor of Segura when he got back from injury). What’s behind his lofty status here? I’m getting close to shopping him, as I’ve got Segura and/or Kang on each team with Castro as well.
Agree. Castro seems to be not that good. ZiPS (8th), Steamer (11th) and Depth Charts (9th) rest-of-season projections rate him lower than you (Tier 1). What are you expecting that the computers aren’t?
Add in every skill number is in the toilet for Starlin: BB%, o-swing, career worst swinging strike, contact type, hard contact rates, pull% skyrocketing with no additional power, etc… He’s trying to yank out everything but just rolling it over or popping it up. His BABIP is probably even a little elevated too. I can see where the experts think a guy like Tulo could overcome so much evidence, but this looks like the 2013 Starlin at best, hardly tier 1.
Using the z-score method he’s been the 6th best SS so far, and running the ZiPS projections through the z-score method has him 3rd rest-of-season. So I’m not expecting anything from him that the computers aren’t.
I guess I’m skeptical that the projections are picking up what looks to be a shift in skills. Castro has the worst batted ball distraction and plate discipline numbers of his MLB career. He’s also clearly never recovering the SBs that would be able to partially offset what appears to be a pretty big drop off in batting avg and power.
Distraction = distribution
“zander”?
(It’s June, not July)
Zach Cozart is having his best year in the majors and can’t make Tier 3? ouch
Kang is too low. 18th best SS? Below Andrelton Simmons??
He’s got the 4th best wRC+ of all SS and if you give him the same amount of PA as Peralta his counting stats would be right with him. He’s moved in to an everyday role now on the Pirates, either at short or 3rd, and he’s usually hitting in the 5 spot on a good team.
Castro is in the 1st tier, yet Kang has equaled his homers and steals in half the PA and is far superior in all of the triple slash categories.
I think that lack of PAs is the problem, though. I’ve been starting him for the last couple weeks and I’ve been really happy with him, but if Kang isn’t playing 6 days/week, that would hurt his value a ton. I assume that, as he solidifies his grasp on the starting job, he’ll rocket up these rankings though.
He has pretty much locked up a starting job already though, he has been a fixture in their line up for the past 2-3 weeks now. Hurdle seems to be rotating Harrison, Kang and Polanco in the line up, with Mercer drawing the occasional start at the expense of Polanco or Harrison lately.
The only negative the Pirates have said about Kang is his defense is a downgrade from Mercer at SS, but that hasn’t stopped Hurdle from pretty much making him an everyday player since the calendar turned to May.
Pirate fan here. Kang is pretty much an everyday player at this point, though hurdle does likes to give a decent bit of rest days. Against righties Kangs at Short and against lefties the trend has been to play Kang at third, shift Jhay to right and start mercer at Short.
And thats true Mike W. I know the pirates have said that but watching Kang play i dont see his defense has being that bad/Mercers defense being that much better, if that makes sense. I have been very pleased with Kang on defense so far this year.
Yes I’m low on the expected PA. If you feel differently about that, he should be quite a bit higher in the rankings.
Tier 4 has so many interesting names.
Wow, Wilmer Flores’ occasional home runs must carry a lot of weight here (no7/t2) because he doesn’t do ANYthing else.
1st among SS in HR, 4th in RBI, 6th in SLG. He’s one of the best power options available at Short. In leagues that don’t use BA he’s a pretty strong option.
Do those leagues also not use OBP? Because he doesn’t walk, either.
He doesn’t have many XBH outside of his 8 HRs. And those 8 HRs? Per HitTracker, HALF of them are of the “Just Enough” variety. He has an average HR distance of 381.4′ and a speed off bat of 99.3 MPH (that is LOW.)
In other words, he’s been a one trick pony, and that one trick doesn’t look sustainable.
Rankings based on standard 5×5 for the record.
Flores is one of the few SS in the game today that earns his playing time primarily with his bat. He is #9 YTD SS on CBS and apparently FG shares my optimism that Flores will continue to improve offensively this year. He hit for high average the past few years in AA and AAA and he doesn’t strike out too much for a guy with pop so his BA should be better than .244 at year end. He plays every day. He doesn’t have any speed, so he’s less likely to blow out a hammy going first to third. Terry Collins says he’s really good so he must b…err, well, never mind that.
Semien has been pretty horrible over the last couple weeks. I own him and don’t trust his rest of season production. Will try to use this article as a tool to trade him.
Better hope your league mates don’t read the comments, then.
I own him too, Scoko, and haven’t completely bought into him for the rest of the season either….but it’s a keeper league and I have him for $1.
He’s 24 and eligible at multiple positions this season.
Wasn’t even eligible at SS at the start of the season. Picked him up as an injury backup to my backup 2nd baseman when Rendon when on the DL.
Unless you can really fill a hole with a trade, he may be worth holding for a little while longer. Don’t know about your league, but the FA pool for SS’s in our league starts at Tier Six.
Don’t get to watch the Royals that often and not in on their daily juice. Does anyone know what’s up with Alcides? 3/5 SB? I was banking on 25-30 ish…not like he isn’t getting on base at all or anything…Anyone? Thanks
If I had to guess, his sprained knee from the Brett Lawrie slide may still be bothering him. Only a guess, but maybe he has some lingering discomfort and is afraid to re-injure it and go on the DL.
Thanks Mike. That was my guess, too, but was wondering if someone knew something more.
I don’t think that’s it. The Royals as a team are running much less than they did last year – their stolen base attempts through May are down 33% from last year at the same time. It’s not just Escobar.
Where would Ben Zobrist be tiered? My guess is most of the people who own him, myself included, are using him at SS.
Bottom of tier 2.
What would Carlos Correa slot in if he were to be called up today?
I’d go bottom of tier 2 on Correa but I’ll admit that could be considered optimistic.
Apparently the people of the world are even more optimistic: Flores is owned by just 12% on Yahoo (is that just public leagues?), while Correa is already at 28%.
Nice write up. I have Kang and Andrus on my team, and maybe I’m overreacting to a good start by Kang, but I would take Kang over Andrus for the rest of the season.
Andrus is batting 7th most of the time now, hurting his run scoring potential, and he already is almost a zero with homers and is not going to turn into a big RBI guy. Batting average will be mediocre at best, and his stolen base percentage is real weak now for the second straight year, and it is not like he is taking off all the time either. Kang might fall off too, but I would be real skeptical considering Andrus a top 10 option at short the rest of the way.
This may seem dumb, but i still believe Danny Santana could be a useful fantasy option.
He has become a lot less selective and his BB% is down while his K% is up, but he’s hitting balls harder this year. He has hit more balls across the field instead of being as pull happy, so maybe he can use that to make some adjustments as to where to drive the ball.
No matter how bad the dude is with the bat however, he’ll still steal ya some bases. Unfortunately hitting at the 9th spot in the lineup he’s only attempted 7 SB’s this year.
I don’t know, as a Twins fan I think there is a very real scenario where he gets sent down if he doesnt start hitting better soon. His defense has been bad at SS and unlike Gardy, Molitor seems to be more aware of those type of advanced defensive metrics.
Furthermore, when Arcia or Vargas are called up, they will likely become the full time DH and that means Eduardo Escobar could end up either starting at SS or at least eating into Santana’s AB’s pretty quickly.
Justin Turner is SS eligble in my league based on 15gp last year. Where would he rank? He seems to be coming into a firm starting job at 3b, and has some nice AVG and power potential. I’ve got him and Crawford, trying to patch something together.
Top of tier 5 I’d say.
Finally ditched Andrus after waiting and waiting on some sort of reasonable production, it’s like a burden has been lifted. He doesn’t really do anything anymore, and guys that can replicate his stats are generally a dime-a-dozen on waivers in all but the deepest of leagues.
Peralta is tier 1. Zero question.
OK, I can’t believe I’m the first one to do it, but I’ll bite.
Brandon Crawford. Right up front, I understand skepticism when trying to predict future success based upon his small sample size. However, you mention my main reason for belief in a real change: his hard hit %. More specifically, pulling from baseballheatmaps, his overall batted ball distance of 209.7 ranks 12th in MLB, right behind Paul Goldschmidt (isn’t that a nice cherry-pick?). I have found that total batted ball distance has a higher year to year correlation with ISO than does HR/FB distance, LD%, and FB%. Label me a believer, and if people are still not valuing him highly in your leagues, pounce. I skimmed Jeff’s article, and I am in agreement with him that a real change has happened. A little BABIP regression will be worth the production from short the rest of the way.
Jung Ho Kang? He’s been brought up in a couple of comments but not addressed.
Nevermind. I found him, he’s just much farther down than I would have thought
Where would you drop Yunel Escobar? SS eligibility in most leagues – mid tier 4?
Yeah 18-22 range.
I have Desmond in a league that uses Fielding Percentage and OMG is he killing me. I think I’ve lost that category every week of the season, entirely because of him.
I’m curious as to why you use a high BABIP, high HR/FB%, and low FB% as evidence that Crawford is playing over his head, but ignore Peralta having a career year for the same reasons and put him in tier 2. I’d wager they end up with very similar numbers at the end of the season.
Agree with the commenters that Semien is way too high, and Crawford way too low. Terrible rankings really.