Tiered Shortstop Rankings: July

An even-thinner-than-normal shortstop position got some reinforcements in June with Carlos Correa and Francisco Lindor getting the call. If you’re not convinced that shortstop is as shallow as ever, consider the following, which shows that a steadily declining position has seen a big decline this season.

Tier One

Hanley Ramirez
Troy Tulowitzki
Carlos Correa

Ramirez and Tulo rank third and fourth among qualified shortstops in wRC+, so they’re still the top options at the position even though the Steamer and ZiPS projections upon which these rankings are based are a little more optimistic than the author. But the champ(s) keep(s) the belt unless beaten decisively. We’ll get to the top shortstops according to wRC+ shortly, but their supremacy this season is far from decisive.

The star of this tier is obviously Correa. I wrote up Correa’s fantasy value when he got the call, and to say I undershot it is a bit of an understatement. I had him pegged to hit .260, he’s hitting .287. I had him hitting seven home runs in 350 PA, he already has five in just 97 PA. I had him finishing with about 70 R+RBI, he’s on pace to top 100 R+RBI. I’m an Astros fan and a total homer. I tweaked his Steamer/ZiPS projections a month ago to be more optimistic about the kid. And I still wasn’t close to having the right read on him.

All that said, Correa is due to slow down a bit, mainly in the power department. He’s carrying a home run per fly ball rate of 20 percent, which is unlikely to continue. But he clearly has raw power, and a HR/FB safely north of the 10.8 percent league average should be expected. The most encouraging thing about his power is that about a third of his batted balls have been fly balls after about a quarter of his batted balls in the minors were fly balls. If he can keep elevating at that level, he’ll keep hitting them out fairly regularly.

Tier Two

Jhonny Peralta
Xander Bogaerts
Brandon Crawford

Let me be very clear, I’m not a Crawford believer despite the fact that he and Peralta lead all qualified shortstops in wRC+. I understand that he may have made changes to his swing to give him more pop, but I’m dubious unless the numbers show me a reason for an improvement. You could make the argument that his plate discipline numbers show that he’s selling out for more power. His swing percentage is up and his contact rate is down, something that could be an indication of a guy trying to trade some contact for some power. But if Crawford is consciously trying to hit for more power, it’s odd that his fly ball rate is down about 10 percent from last year and, conversely, his ground ball rate is up about 10 percent.

Fewer fly balls can help a batter’s batting average, but when accompanied by an increase in a hitter’s swinging strike rate, you’d think the average would come out as a wash at best. That’s what Crawford has done this year and yet his batting average is 25 points higher than his career average and what it was last year. The projection systems have his average being around his career average from here on out, and I see no reason to disagree with them. If he hits .246 with 5-6 homers from here on out, his ranking here will look quite foolish. But I couldn’t bring myself to rank any of the guys in the next tier over a guy with a 131 wRC+.

Tier Three

Jose Reyes
Ian Desmond
Marcus Semien
Elvis Andrus
Starlin Castro
Alcides Escobar
Wilmer Flores
Brad Miller
Alexei Ramirez
Erick Aybar
Yunel Escobar

I’ve written thousands upon thousands of words on fantasy baseball, and I don’t know how to differentiate that group. When you run their rest-of-season projections through the z-score method, their projected fantasy values are effectively indistinguishable. Reyes and Desmond top the list simply for upside’s sake. Desmond has been brutally bad, and I don’t trust Reyes to play 50 more games, much less 80 or so. But the other options are all very low-ceiling players. And really, there’s no point in ranking these guys. All this group is really good for is potentially helping you in the specific categories where they’re above average and you need help.

Tier Four

Jimmy Rollins
Asdrubal Cabrera
J.J. Hardy
Andrelton Simmons
Jung-Ho Kang
Jean Segura
Chris Owings
Jose Iglesias
Francisco Lindor

Tier four is just the deep league version of tier three. The difference between all of these players in negligible, and their only real utility is to help owners in the categories where the players don’t provide negative value.

Tier Five

Jed Lowrie
Eugenio Suarez
Freddy Galvis
Adeiny Hechavarria
Didi Gregorius
Stephen Drew
Jordy Mercer
Nick Ahmed