With the fresh fantasy baseball season approaching, it’s time to get you some tiered rankings from my Shuffle Up series. Use these for auction drafts, straight drafts, keeper decisions or merely a view of how the position ebbs and flows. We started last week with infield spots, and today we complete them with the shortstop position. The outfield and the pitching spots will follow later this week.
The numbers are unscientific in nature and meant to reflect where talent clusters and drops off. Assume a 5×5 scoring system, as usual.
More Tiered Rankings
The Big Tickets
In what can fairly be termed an off year, Witt still led the majors in hits and doubles and was the seventh-most valuable hitter for 5×5 leagues. The Kansas City lineup has an upgraded feel to it, with eight of its primary starters expected to be league average or better. Witt likely hasn’t peaked yet, about to enter his age-26 season.
De La Cruz has trimmed his strikeouts significantly the last two seasons and he’s no longer a batting average risk. And when you combine his speed with his average exit velocity, we can confidently project him to have a high BABIP yearly. De La Cruz had a strange powerless stretch last year, going 74 games with just one homer, and it’s possible he might eventually move off shortstop. But I still want to be proactive to his case, knowing we haven’t seen his peak yet.
Neto won’t be a screaming bargain, but he’s likely undervalued simply because he missed 36 games last year and it slightly muted his counting stats. Neto has improved his average every season and already has the category juice you demand in the early rounds. Even with a pedestrian Anaheim lineup supporting him, I’ll consider Neto in the second round and pounce on him in the third. You want players on the escalator, and Neto steps into his age-25 season.
I had to regretfully move Lindor down after we learned he needed hamate bone surgery. I’m not going to play the injury optimism game, especially for someone reading for his age-32 season.
Legitimate Building Blocks
Peña grew into a star last year but he’s still underpriced, perhaps because a month on the injured list muted his final counting stats. Take advantage of the price this one last time. He’s expected to bat leadoff in Houston, which is good for the volume. And he’s right in the middle of his peak years.
It hurt me to fade Seager, one of the best hitters in baseball. Seager’s plate discipline is so perfect that there’s a popular zone-judgment metric that’s named after him. But the reality is that Seager has played just one full season out of the last seven (ignoring the 2020 truncated year) and that’s not a trend to swim against as he turns 32. Seager’s average has dropped into the .270s the last two years and he’s never been interested in stealing bases. I’ll stay open-minded if his price slips in my rooms, but I can’t consider him at current ADP.
Perdomo was the No. 11 player in 5×5 value last year but his ADP is nowhere near that for the fresh season. This presents an attractive “regress and win” opportunity where Perdomo can actually give back a significant amount of last year’s stats and still be a fantasy profit. Perdomo is a high-percentage base-stealer and entering his age-26 season, so I’m not worried about that column. And he’s the rare player who had more walks than strikeouts last year, and those players are always attractive targets. Maybe the 20 homers won’t come back, but there’s enough broad profile here to make Perdomo a cornerstone player.
Talk Them Up, Talk Them Down
Adames was a screaming fade last year after changing teams on a big contract and heading to a roomy park, but that angle only worked for the first half. He conked 18 homers and slugged .494 in the second half, and he even picked up his running. He might be a shade past his peak into an age-30 season, but so long as you’ve assembled batting average elsewhere, I could sign off on Adames around his Yahoo ADP of 106.3.
Wilson’s profile is filled with some interesting contradictions. He’s the hardest player to strike out in the AL but he actually has a poor chase rate and a low walk rate, too. His contact metrics were also low, which is why his Savant page suggests a .277 average last year, not the .311 number he finished with. But if you pick Wilson you’re betting on the Sacramento park (great for offense) and Wilson’s pedigree (he was the sixth overall pick in 2023 and zoomed through the minors). He’s capable of stealing 10-12 bases, too, like any front-9 ballplayer is.
Some Plausible Upside
Holliday gave us category juice and a trimmed strikeout rate last year, but he needed hand surgery in mid-February and should open the year on the injured list. This is the type of news that could wreck a season, because we can’t expect Holliday to be sharp — and ready to run — the moment he comes off the injured list. Ultimately, the conclusion is the same as with Lindor — don’t be the injury optimist in your pool.
The Red Sox take a lot of heat for money not spent, but they were lucky when Bogaerts walked after the 2022 season. The X-Man hasn’t even been a league-average hitter the last two years. It’s a good thing he’s running, because he’s below code in every other column we use for scoring. The Padres are on the hook for eight more years.
Bargain Bin
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