Fantasy Baseball: Draft This, Not That, Part 9

So for the most part, this series has made its way around the diamond. Now it is time to go back to a key position or two.

One of those spots is at Shortstop. This is largely a top-heavy position dominated by maybe five key names. Once that upper echelon goes, the band of variance narrows considerably.

Players that are drafted as the 10th to 12th players at the position are fringe starters, obviously, and it should have those owners looking to see if there is anything else available as the draft goes on.

There is a chance for some upside. Check out this comparison:

Player A – 83 runs, 15 HR, 61 RBI, 10 SB, .278 AVG, 118 ADP

Player B – 71 runs, 15 HR, 71 RBI, 2 SB, .269 AVG, 228 ADP

Pretty direct comparison here. The difference of at least nine rounds in a 12-team league has to weigh on the mind of an owner. After all, in a head-to-head league, a swing of 12 runs or 10 RBI does not even amount to one per week. Largely, that should mean a change rarely, if ever, loses you a category or loses you a week. At the end of the day, it just does not have enough impact at the end of the day.

Player A in this case is Stephen Drew. Drew is being taken as the eighth shortstop overall, behind Alexei Ramirez and Elvis Andrus. You could argue that he should be going above Andrus but still behind Ramirez, but the point is that he is a solid selection that will provide good value and offense in round 10 or 11 of a draft.

He is young and has upside to potentially 20 home runs and 75 RBI with a .275 average. Production is good; you do not end up necessarily missing out by not having one of the top-five on your roster, and an owner will hold his or her own at the spot.

While older and less “reliable," Player B is Miguel Tejada. Tejada does not get the respect that he probably should. At 36, getting another year of production is more a roll of the dice than for Stephen Drew. His power has fallen off some, but he has never had fewer than 13 home runs in a season since 1999.

Only once in that stretch has he failed to drive in better than 70 runs, and he has not once scored fewer than that mark. Tejada is on a one-year contract with the Giants, and his new home park will not produce the same offense as he had in Camden on the face of it. For those concerned, he did have eight home runs while playing with the Padres in the second half of last season, and he hit .270 on the road for the season.

Tejada’s age is going to scare many away, and rightfully so, but he is likely to produce similar numbers to what an owner would get out of Drew—without the cost up front. Drew’s youth is worth drafting at his spot, but should an owner miss, the numbers produced by Tejada would not be a bad consolation prize.