Shortstop has turned into the premier position for fantasy. Bobby Witt Jr., Gunnar Henderson, Mookie Betts, Elly De La Cruz, and Francisco Lindor are among the most elite players in the game and will cost you a first or early second-round pick. Trea Turner, Corey Seager, Oneil Cruz, CJ Abrams, and Willy Adames will likely be gone by the end of round six.
If you’re one of the few managers to leave the first six rounds without a starting shortstop, there’s no need to worry. The wealth of talent at the position is spread throughout all stages of the draft, and even if you do draft one of the elites, there’s a good chance you’ll find another one you like to fill your middle infield or utility spots.
They might not have the exciting upside that many sleepers do, but boring, reliable contributors such as Jeremy Peña and Dansby Swanson can be drafted after pick 180. That type of guaranteed role in high-powered offenses goes a long way, especially in deeper leagues.
If you do want to take a chance on upside, there are plenty of players with the chance to offer way more than what their ADP suggests. These five especially are names you need to know on draft day.
*All ADP data via NFBC.
Bo Bichette – 135.33 ADP*
It feels weird to call Bo Bichette a sleeper after being a consensus first, second, or third-round pick every year since 2021, but his catastrophic 2024 season has left his ADP at 135, the equivalent of a twelfth-round pick in 12-teamers.
Bichette never was the safest early rounder, with many questioning how legit his power really was, but it was always accepted that he would be a standout contributor in batting average. That is what made his 2024 production so shocking, how could a career .299 hitter suddenly bat .225?
He truly flopped across every roto category and was likely dropped in many leagues, but are we ready to write off a 26-year-old former star over one bad year? I’m certainly not. Batting average is one of the toughest categories to find once you’re past the early rounds of drafts, and if Bichette rebounds, that is the type of upside that could win you your league. I don’t see a world where he is suddenly a .225 hitter from here on out, and looking deeper into his metrics paints a hopeful picture.
For someone to drop 75 points below their career batting average, you would expect to see a drastic decline across their plate discipline and quality of contact metrics. However, Bichette looked like a near-identical hitter in terms of his swinging tendencies from 2023 to 2024. His total swing rate, swing rate at balls outside of the strike zone, whiff rate, and strikeout rate were all almost mirror images of 2023 when he batted .306.
The cause of his struggles can be seen in the discrepancy between his hard-hit rate and barrel rate. His hard-hit rate only dropped by 1.4%, while his barrel rate plummeted from 9.7% to 4.1%. A barrel is defined as a ball hit above 98 mph at a launch angle between 26-30 degrees. Since he hit the ball nearly as hard as he did before, this points to his launch angle being the main contributor to his struggles. His sweet spot rate (balls hit between 8 and 32 degrees) dropping by 6.4% further confirms that he was hitting way more balls than usual at suboptimal launch angles.
The fact that he remained a very similar hitter besides his worse launch angles is encouraging, especially when considering that there may be a simple explanation for his struggles. He dealt with a calf injury throughout most of the season, straining it on multiple occasions. Most of the year was spent by him either on the injured list or in the lineup trying his best to play through it. Even after being activated from the injured list in September, he suffered a fractured finger only a few days later that ended his season and required offseason surgery.
Playing through injury is certainly something that could have messed with his swing mechanics, and he is on track to be fully healthy for the start of 2025. Toronto’s manager, John Schneider, alluded to the fact that they basically played without Bichette last season and that he finally looks like himself again.
It’s also important to note that this will be a contract year for him, giving him even extra motivation to return to his past levels of production. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Bo back as an early-round consideration in drafts at this time next year.
Masyn Winn – 163.72 ADP*
Masyn Winn had a solid first full year in the majors, batting .267 with 85 runs, 15 home runs, 57 runs batted in, and 11 steals atop the Cardinals’ lineup. That’s not bad at all for a 22-year-old at the highest level, and there’s reason to believe that he could take another step forward in 2025.
It was a tale of two halves for Winn, who doubled his home run total but took a step back in his steals and batting average in the second half. Technically he was a slightly worse hitter in the second half than the first, but the increase in power was encouraging to see. It at least shows a path to the best-case scenario that he can end up as a 20-20 type of player.
His 11 stolen bases also don’t look the most promising on paper, but Winn has all the tools needed to steal 20 bases and beyond. His sprint speed ranks in the 87th percentile of the league at 28.8 feet per second, which is much faster than you would expect for an 11-steal player.
The intent to steal is even more important than speed when it comes to how many stolen bases a player will end up with, and luckily Winn has a ton of that, too. He has said that the bulk of his offseason was spent working with a track coach and that he wants to steal 30-to-40 bases, if possible. That’s not an outlandish claim either, as he stole 32 bases in 98 minor league games in 2021 and 43 in 119 games in 2022.
He is once again penciled in as the Cardinals’ leadoff hitter for 2025, which if nothing else, will make him a great contributor of runs that you can pick up later in drafts. ATC projections have him as 81-14-59-15-.260 for the upcoming season. That in itself is a useful fantasy player, but he has the upside to blow that stolen base projection out of the water, and could even improve on his homers, too.
Carlos Correa – 245.10 ADP*
Carlos Correa once again struggled with his health in 2024, but when he was healthy, he looked better than he had in a very long time. In the 86 games he ended up playing, he slashed .310/.388/.517 with 55 runs, 14 home runs, and 54 runs batted in. On a 162-game pace, that would translate to 103 R, 26 HR, and 101 RBI.
It’s unrealistic to expect Correa to play 162 games or keep up that pace for the entirety of the season, but with an ADP of 245, there is absolutely zero downside in drafting him. He dealt with plantar fasciitis that kept him sidelined from July 13th to September 14th, but even in the 11 games he played to finish out the season, he picked up right where he left off, batting .325 over those games.
His expected stats weren’t quite up to par with his actual ones, but they were very good in their own right.
His plate discipline was also great, with his strikeout rate of 16.6% marking the best of his career and his walk rate keeping up with his excellent career norms.
All in all, it’s hard not to view Correa as anything other than a near-elite hitter when healthy. He won’t provide any steals, and he shouldn’t be expected to bat over .300 again, but he should be a very solid four-category contributor on a per-game basis for 2025. I understand there is a risk in drafting injury-prone players, but an ADP past round 20 is taking the fear way too far. Unless you play in a very deep league with no IL spots, Correa should be a no-brainer with one of your last picks in the draft. His per-game production is guaranteed to be better than his ADP suggests, and you won’t even have to draft him as your starting shortstop.
Tyler Fitzgerald – 236.05 ADP*
I was fully expecting to label Tyler Fitzgerald as a bust heading into this draft season, but that was before seeing his ADP settle outside of the top 230 picks. He was an out-of-nowhere breakout in 2024, slashing .280/.334/.497 with 15 home runs and 17 steals in 97 games, which represents a 162-game pace of 25 homers and 28 steals.
Those are truly elite numbers and look like the stats of a player you would be drafting at pick 36 rather than 236. Of course, looks can be deceiving, and his expected stats tell a completely different story.
He strikes out at a nearly unsustainable rate, doesn’t hit the ball hard, and his expected ratios are nowhere close to his actual 2024 production. It’s safe to say regression is coming, but there may not be as much as his underlying metrics and ADP suggests.
While expected stats can be great for a quick estimation of whether a player is underperforming or overperforming, they shouldn’t be taken as gospel. Prime examples of this are players such as Jose Altuve and Isaac Paredes, who pull the ball in the air at much higher rates than the average player. Expected stats don’t take into account the direction in which the ball is hit, so these types of players will often look like they are overperforming.
Although not as extreme as Altuve or Paredes, Fitzgerald ranked in the 90th percentile or better in fly ball rate, pull rate, and sweet spot rate. Although he doesn’t hit the ball hard very often, his ability to pull the ball at optimal launch angles is far better than the average player.
On top of that, his 61.8% medium hit rate is the 11th highest among all hitters with at least 300 plate appearances. So even though he doesn’t hit the ball hard very often, he’s not hitting the ball softly most of the time, either. These balls with medium exit velocities pulled down the line will lead to hits much more often than they are expected to.
The final thing that exemplifies Fitzgerald’s ability to outperform his underlying metrics is his top-class speed. His 30 feet per second sprint speed ranks in the 100th percentile and is tied with Elly De La Cruz (who just stole 67 bases) and a couple of others to be the third-fastest player in the league. This elite speed allows him to take extra bases that many hitters wouldn’t be capable of.
He hit for a .292 batting average in the minors in 2023, so his .280 average in 2024 didn’t completely come out of thin air. While a repeat in average shouldn’t be expected for 2025, it shouldn’t be nearly as bad as his .227 xBA suggests that it will be.
No matter how he ends up hitting, his speed is legit, and that alone would be enough of a reason to draft him past pick 230. A 20-20 season with a .250 batting average is a very attainable outcome for him, with the upside to be even better.
Jordan Lawlar – 418.15 ADP*
If you play in a deeper league and want to take a shot on a prospect, Jordan Lawlar is the one to choose. Last season was a lost year for the youngster, as he suffered thumb and hamstring injuries that limited him to just 21 games in the minors. Still, he is ranked as the 11th-best prospect according to MLB.com, and for good reason.
He has consistently shown moderate power, exceptional speed, and good on-base skills. He has done everything needed to prove he can dominate the minor league levels, and now he just has to stay on the field long enough to earn a promotion.
Geraldo Perdomo signed a four-year extension which doesn’t help the matter, but he should still be able to play his way into a job eventually. He is likely to start the season in the minors rather than being given a major league bench role, but multiple avenues could carve out a spot for him.
The Diamondbacks’ weakest positions are their third outfield spot and their DH. They could opt to try Lawlar out in the outfield this spring, or they could give Ketel Marte and Eugenio Suárez more time at DH, opening consistent at-bats for Lawlar. Any injury to an infielder would also open up an everyday spot for the prospect.
He’s not the best pick in standard-sized leagues where he would be taking up a bench spot, but there are several situations where he can make for a valuable pick. Leagues that have MiLB spots to stash minor leaguers, fifty-round draft-and-hold leagues, and deep NL-only leagues are all places where he is a great stash for upside.
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