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This article will examine a few eligible shortstops for the 2022 MLB season that are being selected later than their Steamer projections suggest they should in points leagues and H2H points formats. RotoBaller's fantasy baseball points analyst Antonio Losada will be offering a few picks for both potential overperformers (sleepers) and underachievers (busts) when it comes to the following baseball season at each of the six (C/1B/2B/3B/SS/OF) rosterable positions through the remainder of the offseason gearing up to training camps and the preseason. ADP figures come from point-format contests over NFBC.
In general, points leagues and H2H points formats are extremely underserved by the fantasy baseball community and fantasy baseball outlets. But in case you weren't aware, here at RotoBaller we really take pride in and specialize in points leagues. All through the preseason and MLB season, we'll be publishing rankings, tools, and analysis articles all geared for fantasy baseball points and H2H points leagues.
Before we get to the players themselves, let's quickly review points leagues and how they are different than other formats. Typically, points leagues have different league settings and scoring formats than other fantasy baseball leagues. Different MLB stats and categories are assigned different point values, and those can vary by individual league settings. Those different point buckets are then added up over the course of a scoring period or season. In many cases, hitters who walk more and strike out less are preferred for points leagues. Without further ado, let's get it popping!
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Wander Franco, Tampa Bay Rays
ADP: 56.0 - OVR Rk: 23 - POS Rk: 4
70 games. 308 plate appearances. 127 wRC+. Francly, that's Wanderful. The sample is tiny, I know, but that's no reason to think the best prospect in the past 20 years is going to crater, regress, implode, or however you want to call it. No, seriously.
Here are Baseball America's MLB-wide prospect ranks from the past four years when it comes to Franco: 96-4-1-1 (that 96th-best, by the way, came on Franco's 17th birthday and he was the only prospect to make the top-100 while born after Sep. 1999).
Let's get down to earth for a second because I don't want to faint. They told me to look for walk rates: 7.8%, not convincing. They told me to look for strikeout rates: 12%, much better. They told me to put those two together for a BB/K ratio: 0.65... and we finally hit the jackpot! I know, I know, that figure isn't overly high, nor unique, nor anything. Only, you know, a freaking 20-year-old little man put it on his 2021 stat line on 300+ PA... which had happened exactly four other times since 1990 with Juan Soto, Bryce Harper, and Jason Heyward the only ones to achieve the feat this century--and a certain Ken Griffey Jr. doing so back in 1990. Jesus Christ.
The BABIP was high for a rookie (.311) but nothing too crazy league-wise these days. Steamer knows better than me, and Steamer has Wander projected for a full-season of 651 PA to go with 61 extra-base hits, a measly 79 strikeouts, a combined 85+84 R+RBI, and 10 stolen bases on top of that just for shits and jiggles. Put it all together and you'd be looking at an average of 2.87 FPPG in ESPN's scoring system, and a total 427 FP tally good enough for SS-4 while Franco is getting off the board past the 55th pick and getting drafted as the ninth-highest shortstop. Seriously, folks?
Gleyber Torres, New York Yankees
ADP: 133.5 - OVR Rk: 48 - POS Rk: 11
A disappointing campaign, the last one from Gleyber. Can't lie about that, won't lie about that. But fading Torres to an ADP of 133 seems a little bit of a large overreaction, doesn't it? Just compare that average draft position with his projected 371 FP by Steamer's numbers and you'll see why. We're talking about a man getting drafted as the 21st SS off draft boards while projecting to nearly double that ADP in terms of his total FP come next season. My lord.
The Yankees could very well drop Gio Urshela at the SS gap, and that'd mean Gleyber would move to the second bag. Do we care? Not really, as long as DJ LeMahieu takes on 3B duties and Torres stays on the field whether that is at the 2B/SS slots. Steamer is confidently projecting the youngin to 632 (!) PAs, the 15th-most among players tagged with SS eligibility, so I wouldn't be that worried. Getting back to actual performing levels, though, one can understand the concerns at least to a certain extent. It's been four years in the MLB and Torres is coming off his worst campaign to date with a 1.80 FPPG average.
For those of you old enough to remember the classic slash line, Gleyber posted a .259/.366/.697 one, even getting an above-average .314 BABIP. I'm not saying Torres will get back to the Pandemic Plate-Disciplined Gleyber version of himself--career-high marks in BB% and K%--but it's not that we're long removed from the year 2019 in which Gleyber (then a 22-year-old cherub) posted a monster 96/38/90/5/.278 and, for our purposes, a grand total of 402 FP (2.79 FPPG) that saw him finish as the top-seven SS and top-44 player in ESPN fantasy leagues. The Hard% went down a bit from years past, but the LD% ramped up through the last couple of months of 2021 while the Contact% was up from prior career-highs and the O/Z-Swings% moved in the right directions too. Ain't a thing stopping a positive rebound from Gleyber next year.
Carlos Correa, Free Agent
ADP: 70.1 - OVR Rk: 34 - POS Rk: 9
The question marks floating around Correa are a reason to knock the shortstop down a bit in the ADP leaderboard. Read that sentence again and find the keyword I omitted on purpose: good. I wrote "reason" not "good reason" because I don't need to know where Correa is going to land to know he's going to set the world on fire for the nth season. An ADP of 70 (!), seriously? The 13th SS off draft boards, for real? You can do better, my dudes.
We're talking about a freaking 2.61 FPPG career-long averager. Only in the weird-ass 2020 season did Correa fall below the 2.12 mark for the first time in his career, which I don't know about you but I can surely live with. Other than that, Correa's been a top-six SS in four of his six MLB campaigns and a top-24 in seven of his seven years doing it. That's good, this is better: BABIP down, BB% up, K% down, BB/K all the freaking way up. Points league GMs, believe me when I say you want to ride this wave.
Correa is both a hitting machine and automatic at walking. It feels he can do no wrong when on the field, full stop. The Statcast little thingies are all red-hot. Steamer projections are, well, steaming a solid 84/28/88/1/.278. That's good information for our grandpas and 5x5-cat guys, but not for us. What we dig: the bonafide superstar numbers on OBP (.364), 70/116 BB/K rate good for a 0.60+ ratio, and the 60 extra-base hits.
Brendan Rodgers, Colorado Rockies
ADP: 140.6 - OVR Rk: 99 - POS Rk: 17
Under-the-radar, sneaky picks are what we're here for. I'm not going to go and tell you to spend a top-50 pick on Rocky Boy Brendan, of course, but I wouldn't advise you on waiting until that 140 ADP either if you don't want to miss out on a solid, high-upside flier for the 2022 campaign. After a couple of partial-time seasons in Colorado (81 and 21 PA in the 2019-20 years), Rodgers finally broke the 100-game and 400-PA barriers last season. Of course, with a working sample of just 415 PA, he never was in the realm of top-tier players.
Rodgers could only finish 167th-overall in ESPN H2H fantasy leagues. That said, prorating his total FP to a per-600-PA basis, he would have racked up 314 points (2.13 FPPG) for a much better, near-top-75 finish OVR and top-14 at the SS position. Entering 2022, Steamer has B-Rod projected to a top-100 OVR campaign, which makes sense considering Rodgers is 1) the Rockies' new-and-locked-in daily shortstop with Trevor Story gone, 2) a capable 2B in case some help is needed at the other side of the infield mirror, and 3) a bomber in the making.... playing half of his games at Coors, no less.
B-Rod already bagged himself 15 homers last year with 49+51 R+RBI. I know Rodgers is not the most appealing points-format shortstop out there because of the high strikeouts and low (0.23) BB/K ratio, but he's still developing and it can be argued that he has yet to log a full season of PA even considering his three years appearing in the MLB (he has just 517 combined PA through the last three years). The strikeouts have gone down from his first two years to a much more palatable figure last season. The Swing% went up as the year advanced, but so did the Contact% making up for that more aggressive approach. And the wRC+ ended at a pinpoint average 100-mark but stayed above that figure from the end of July to the end of the campaign. There are reasons to believe.
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