By Jim Higgins
I realize it has been a while since I last posted here but I promise I haven’t been neglecting the blog. In all honestly, I have been trying to create a formula that takes a players skills and projects where they will rank over the next three years.
I am not ready to release how the rankings are calculated but I wanted to get some feedback on where I’m at so I ranked the starting shortstops (who would be starting if healthy) of all 30 teams. I am a big fan of Ron Shandler’s work and I will say I have used his metrics for power, speed and expected batting average, along with walk rate and age to get a basic ground work for ranking players for longer than one season.
Basically the formula for this list was assigning point values to ranges for each metric, adding the scores together and multiplying that number by the score assigned to the players age.
As you look at this list, keep in mind that these ranks are for a three year span so when Derek Jeter appears no where near the top of the list, it is because of his projected skills decline and the fact that he will be 39 at the end of the projection model.
One final thing to keep in mind is that even the best prognosticators are only 70% accurate and that is projecting a players’ value for one year so there is a good chance the margin of error here is pretty big.
Ok, so without further rambling, here are the how today’s shortstops should fare fantasy-wise at the end of 3 years.
- Hanley Ramirez, Florida
- Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado
- Jose Reyes, New York Mets
- Stephen Drew, Arizona
- Ian Desmond, Washington
- Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia
- Yunel Escobar, Toronto
- Tyler Greene, St. Louis
- Erick Aybar, Los Angeles Angels
- Elvis Andrus, Texas
- Asdrubal Cabrera, Cleveland
- Cliff Pennington, Oakland
- Everth Cabrera, San Diego
- Alcides Escobar, Milwaukee
- Alexei Ramirez, Chicago White Sox
- Rafael Furcal, Los Angeles Dodgers
- JJ Hardy, Minnesota
- Starlin Castro, Chicago Cubs
- Jason Bartlett, Tampa Bay
- Ramon Santiago, Detroit
- Yuniesky Betancourt, Kansas City
- Tommy Manzella, Houston
- Ronny Cedeno, Pittsburgh
- Cesar Izturis, Baltimore
- Derek Jeter, New York Yankees
- Marco Scutaro, Boston
- Alex Gonzalez, Atlanta
- Orlando Cabrera, Cincinnati
- Edgar Renteria, San Francisco
- Jack Wilson, Seattle
Again, these rankings are more based on trying to assign keeper value to players so the older the player, the less value they will provide over a longer period of time. Also, I realize that value of Starlin Castro is pretty low which is just due to a lack of data. I tried to use stats from 2008-present, and for those with less MLB service time than that, I used Major League Equivalents (MLE’s) to try and assign skills value.
I am open to any suggestions of other skills to include in the formula or for any problems you have with this list and hopefully I will be able to put something together shortly after the end of the season so you will have a long-term list to use to make long-term decisions about your multi-year team. Please leave your suggestions in the comments section below.
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