With catcher, first base, second base and third base all in the books, it's time to wrap up the infield with a look at possible sleepers and busts at shortstop. As usual, the position is loaded with talent in all ADP ranges, but that doesn't mean there aren't undervalued players to be found — or traps to avoid.
For this series, breakouts are defined as players with an ADP between 50 and 150 who could significantly outperform their price tag. Busts are players in the top 150 who have a significant risk of underperforming.
Fantasy Baseball Shortstop Breakouts
More of a bounceback than a conventional breakout, but how the mighty have fallen. Betts was seen as a rock-solid, high-floor selection in the late first or early second round all the way back in the distant past of, well, last spring. He missed time due to injury in 2024, and after his numbers collapsed in a relatively healthy 2025, he's suddenly being viewed as damaged goods. Betts is just 33 years old, though, and his underlying numbers don't seem to alarming. His Statcast page has plenty of red on it, but a 10th percentile bat speed and 20th percentile barrel rate seem like the main culprits for his slide.
Betts is still athletic enough to be an asset defensively at short, and he pins last year's decline on an early-season illness that caused him to lose weight and strength that he was never able to regain while
With catcher, first base, second base and third base all in the books, it's time to wrap up the infield with a look at possible sleepers and busts at shortstop. As usual, the position is loaded with talent in all ADP ranges, but that doesn't mean there aren't undervalued players to be found — or traps to avoid.
For this series, breakouts are defined as players with an ADP between 50 and 150 who could significantly outperform their price tag. Busts are players in the top 150 who have a significant risk of underperforming.
Fantasy Baseball Shortstop Breakouts
More of a bounceback than a conventional breakout, but how the mighty have fallen. Betts was seen as a rock-solid, high-floor selection in the late first or early second round all the way back in the distant past of, well, last spring. He missed time due to injury in 2024, and after his numbers collapsed in a relatively healthy 2025, he's suddenly being viewed as damaged goods. Betts is just 33 years old, though, and his underlying numbers don't seem to alarming. His Statcast page has plenty of red on it, but a 10th percentile bat speed and 20th percentile barrel rate seem like the main culprits for his slide.
Betts is still athletic enough to be an asset defensively at short, and he pins last year's decline on an early-season illness that caused him to lose weight and strength that he was never able to regain while the Dodgers chased a second straight title. If that's truly the cause, he might still have a couple .280-30-100-100 seasons in the tank, maybe even with double-digit steals too, while hitting in a prime spot for the most stacked lineup in the league.
Another hitter who's more of a "break back out" candidate than a typical breakout player, the 30-year-old looked like he was feeling the weight of his big free-agent contract early last season. Through the end of May, Adames was sitting on a .207/.291/.329 slash line with only five homers in 58 games, a far cry from the reliable slugger he'd become in Milwaukee. He slowly got comfortable in San Francisco, though, and after the All-Star break he posted a .232/.335/.494 line with 18 long balls in 64 games, numbers much more in line with his usual standards.
The Giants improved the lineup around him in the offseason, adding Luis Arraez and Harrison Bader to raise the floor, while Bryce Eldridge's imminent arrival and a full campaign from Rafael Devers should boost the ceiling. Adames will still have a spot in the heart of that order, and that might be enough to get him back to the 100-RBI plateau while slugging his expected 30-plus homers.
Fantasy Baseball Shortstop Busts
Perdomo isn't the most glaring regression candidate on the draft table this year (that honor belongs to Josh Naylor), but his 2025 campaign is still mind-boggling. Perdomo came into the campaign with 14 career homers in his first 401 career big-league games; he launched 20 over 161 contests in an out-of-nowhere breakout that included career highs in literally every 5x5 roto category, including RBI (100), runs (98), steals (27) and batting average (.290).
Perdomo's underlying numbers were solid, but they were also solid in 2023 and 2024, too. It was mainly a modest improvement in his contact rate that led to his massive production increases, not a radical new approach or swing mechanics, and that means his margin for error to maintain those gains looks razor thin. Perdomo's barrel rate and average exit velocity were both in the bottom 25 percent, and while he did deliver a career-high hard-hit rate, it was still only in the 11th percentile.
I don't expect Perdomo's numbers to completely evaporate, but his profile looks more like a .270 hitter with 10 to 12 homers, not the fringe MVP candidate he was last year. You can get that kind of production 150 picks later from someone like Otto Lopez.
Bichette has just about every narrative red flag imaginable. He's had trouble staying healthy the last few years, averaging about 118 games played. His athleticism is on the decline, even at only 27 years old, and his sprint speed bottomed out in the 21st percentile last year after being in the 75th percentile during his first full big-league season in 2021. He also signed a big free-agent contract, is switching leagues and moving to a more pitcher-friendly home park, and is learning a new position with the Mets as they move him from shortstop to third base.
Yet somehow, he's still going in the top 100 picks. The big driver of that fantasy appeal is his batting average, as Bichette hit .311 for the Blue Jays last season and is a career .294 hitter, and that might be enough to cushion his fall. Or it might not. Did I mention that his bat speed also declined last year?
There's certainly a path for Bichette to return acceptable value at his current ADP, but it's hard to see where any ceiling is coming from, and we've already seen what the floor looks like in 2024.
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