Positional scarcity has been a big topic on my mind lately and there may be no scarcer position in all of fantasy sports than shortstop in MLB (well, maybe tight end in NFL). In past years, shortstop has been the position to either pay up for one guy – Troy Tulowitzki (and maybe only when he’s playing at Coors Field) – or punt the position entirely. However, Troy hasn’t necessarily been up to his game this year (see below), which initially left the shortstop spot, well, pretty ugly.
Troy Tulowitzki after another #Rockies loss: “Hopefully I can be into every single pitch and pretend like something is on the line.”
— Nick Groke (@nickgroke) July 22, 2015
That is, until 20-year-old phenom Carlos Correa of the Houston Astros was called up to the big leagues. Usually, when young rookies come up, the hope is that they don’t get completely drowned by big-league pitching every night and show some development, even if it’s slow and small. Fast forward to today – Correa is hitting third in the order of a 54-win team, slashing 0.292/0.337/0.532 (good, good, holy crap), and generally crushing balls as shown in this article. Not exactly slow and small development.
Take a look at his last 10 games – at least one hit in 9 of them:
Not only are you getting the upside of a guy slugging 0.532 – that would be 15th in the entire MLB if he qualified, by the way, and right in between Josh Donaldson, Manny Machado, and Anthony Rizzo – but the consistency as well. Combine that with the fact that he’s hitting in a very good offense, even without injured George Springer, and you have the recipe of a shortstop you can finally roster on DraftKings without having to punt it nightly.
The good news is that Correa is doing it in all situations, both at home and on the road…
Against righties and lefties…
And against both great WHIP guys…
And great strikeout guys…
Of course, the sample size on Correa is still small, as it would be with any 20-year-old rookie a couple months into his big-league career. However, there’s obviously reason to be incredibly optimistic about his career and, in turn, his fantasy potential. The shortstop position is incredibly hard to find value, even with other good, young players like Xander Bogaerts. With Tulowitzki really struggling this season, at least in comparison to the past…
…I thought we may not have any elite shortstops in fantasy. However, Carlos Correa has changed that narrative in a big way. Last month, that FanGraphs article got some Statcast data that said that Correa has hit 57% of his batted balls at least 100 mph, which would lead the majors if qualified. That number has likely regressed some over the last month – it was ahead of Giancarlo Stanton at 53% – but the point stands that Correa projects to be an elite hitter at his position over the course of his career. An interesting thought: is Correa becoming the Gronk of MLB DFS?
