Fantasy Baseball: Shortstop Positional Preview for 2025

The 2025 MLB season is right around the corner, and for fantasy baseball managers, this is peak draft season.

Ahead of drafts, we're previewing every fantasy baseball position, and this is the breakdown for shortstop.

Top Fantasy Baseball Shortstops for 2025

Here are the top 12 shortstops and their current average draft position (ADP), according to FantasyPros' ADP.

Shortstop is easily the most stacked of the infield positions, boasting 5 players with an ADP inside the top 15 and 10 within the top 70.

Bobby Witt Jr. can go as high as first overall, and Elly De La Cruz, Gunnar Henderson, Mookie Betts, and sometimes Francisco Lindor join him as first-round picks.

It isn't hard to see why if we look at their projected numbers (per ATC). Witt is a great-to-elite in all five categories, De La Cruz could lead the league in stolen bases again while still slugging 25+ home runs, and the other three are solid all-around contributors. You should be more than happy to build around one of these five to open drafts.

Even if you miss out on those guys, the depth of the position shines through when you see that Trea Turner, Corey Seager, Oneil Cruz, C.J. Abrams, and Willy Adames round out the top 10 consensus shortstops.

Turner is a former first-rounder who's coming off a down year by his standards due to injury, but he still has elite wheels (96th percentile in sprint speed) and remains capable of being a five-category star. While Seager won't help in stolen bases and often misses time, he's still a crazy good hitter who will hit for both power and average. Cruz and Abrams are tantalizing power/speed threats, but neither is likely to hit for average. Adames might be the one option out of this group who could be overvalued despite a strong 2024 season.

The final names in the above ADP chart are Matt McLain and Bo Bichette. McLain is probably someone you want to start at a weaker second base position instead, whereas Bichette looks like an intriguing buy-low option following a forgettable 2024 campaign.

Undervalued Shortstops for Fantasy Baseball

Here are a pair of solid SS choices outside the top 100 who could fill your middle infielder slot.

Masyn Winn (STL) | ADP: 178.8 (SS19)

Masyn Winn broke out in 2024 with 85 runs, 15 home runs, 57 RBIs, 11 stolen bases, and a .267 average -- and he'll turn just 23 years old this month. He's projected to bat leadoff again for the St. Louis Cardinals, and while the Cardinals were a below-average team in stolen bases last season, there's always a chance they let Winn run more in his second full campaign. In 2022, he swiped a whopping 43 bags in the minors, and Winn himself stated he wants to steal 30-40 bases.

Jeremy Pena (HOU) | ADP: 188.0 (SS23)

Jeremy Pena is coming off a solid 2024 stat line where he posted 78 runs, 15 home runes, 70 RBIs, 20 stolen bases, and a .266 average. ATC projects him to roughly repeat those marks, and his stolen base upside might even be underrated considering he posted a sprint speed in the 98th percentile last year. Pena's projections suggest he should be going earlier than the 23rd shortstop off the board, and he's firmly in his prime at 27 years old.

Late-Round Shortstops for Fantasy Baseball

Finally, these are two players outside the top 250 picks who stand out.

Tyler Fitzgerald (SFG) | ADP: 242.8 (SS26)

• Tyler Fitzgerald goes outside of the top 250 on popular platforms like Yahoo! and Fantrax, so we'll make a slight exception on his consensus ADP to sneak him in here. That's because Fitzgerald reached 15 dingers and 17 swiped bags in a mere 341 plate appearances last year, and he projects to reach or exceed those marks over a full season. No, he won't hit .280 again after posting a .227 xBA and 31.7% K rate, but you could do worse than rolling the dice on a late-round guy who produced a sprint speed in the 100th percentile.

Trevor Story (BOS) | ADP: 271.5 (SS29)

• Our Annie Nader listed Trevor Story as one of her favorite undervalued players entering this season, and while Story's floor is practically zero after spending so much time on the IL these past three seasons, even a somewhat healthy season could pay off at such a low draft cost. Given he's logged an ugly 31.3% strikeout rate since joining the Boston Red Sox, he could be a drag on batting average, but projection systems universally view him as a player who could reach 15+ home runs and 20+ stolen bases even with missed time factored in.

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