After a long, cold, frustratingly slow offseason, MLB’s regular season begins on Wednesday, March 20, with the Dodgers and Padres squaring off in Seoul (the 28 other teams will get things started on Thursday, March 28). With precious little time to go until Opening Day, now is the time to start cranking up your fantasy baseball drafts — and we’re here to be your one-stop shop for all things draft prep. We just recently unveiled our top 300 overall for redraft leagues in 2024, as well as top prospects to know, full positional previews and sleepers at every position.
Now, however, it’s time for something a little less fun: players to avoid at every position. Next up: shortstop, a position that is once again overflowing with fantasy riches. But just because this is the deepest spot for fantasy talent — seriously, there are players to love at every price point, and in every category — doesn’t mean that there aren’t pitfalls to be avoided. If anything, whiffing at shortstop hurts more because of the opportunity cost, and all the other great options that are now on opposing teams instead of your own. Who should you be fading at current cost? Let’s get into it.
Fantasy baseball busts: Shortstop
Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati Reds
ADP: 35
I really hate being this guy, because De La Cruz is as fun as it gets when he’s rolling. Alas, I’m forced to fade at his current outrageous ADP: The guy just hit .191 in the second half while getting benched against left-handed pitching, and while he could make major strides as he gets used to the Majors, there are just too many red flags here to stomach spending an early-round pick. With so many five-category contributors still on the board, why not take one with far lower risk, saving the upside swings for later in the draft when the opportunity cost is lower?
Bo Bichette, Toronto Blue Jays
ADP: 40
There’s still a lot to like about Bichette as a player, but in the fantasy game — and particularly in roto formats — he just doesn’t bring the kind of juice we need to justify this ADP. Bichette doesn’t profile as more than a 20-25 homer hitter, given his often he hits the ball on the ground (if you’re dreaming on that 29-homer outburst in 2021, remember that Toronto played its home games in a literal Minor League stadium that year). That means he’s going to have to give us speed as well to really be worth an early-round selection, but Bichette’s steals have totally dried up over the last couple of years. You can point to 2023’s quad strain as the culprit there, but this decline began far before that: His sprint speed has dropped in each of the last two years, and he stole just 13 bases (while being caught eight times) in 2022. His plate skills are such that, if he does get back to being a 20/20 or even 20/15 guy, he’d be a huge value. But that’s very hard to bet on right now, and Toronto’s lineup might be even more middling than it was last year — capping his counting stats once again.
Ha-Seong Kim, San Diego Padres
ADP: 85
Kim’s quality of contact didn’t come close to backing up his apparent growth as a hitter, with his hard-hit rate and average exit velocity both dropping from 2022 to 2023. Of course, much of his fantasy value was tied up in his 38 steals last season, but that’s another place where it’s fair to be skeptical – he had just 12 steals in 2022, after all, which is a massive jump even given the new rules. It’s not hard to imagine a world in which Kim backslides to something more like a .250, 12-homer hitter at the plate, meaning he’ll have to really, really run to recoup top-100 value.
