Andrelton Simmons is a second year shortstop for the Atlanta Braves. In his first full season in the league Simmons went out and dazzled with the glove. He won the Gold Glove for the shortstop position and also took home his first ever Platinum Glove. The scariest part of it all is that he was only 23 year-old when he accomplished this and he’s only going to get better. Unfortunately for fantasy owners the fielding aspect of baseball is not taken into consideration so his glove means a far lot less. As far as the bat goes his numbers from 2013 are below.
.248 batting average. 17 home runs. 59 RBIs. 76 runs. 6.7 WAR. 55 strikeouts.
These numbers are not bad for a first year player who wasn’t expected to hit more than 10 home runs but some of his other stats could scare you away, like his pop up rate. In 2013 Simmons had the third highest fly ball rate in the National League hitting a hefty 315 of them. Of those 315, 17 percent were Infield Fly Balls (IFFB) which was the highest in the National League.
The fact that his fly ball rate is up means that he will likely hit the ball out of the park more and more. He is not going to be a 30 home run guy but you also shouldn’t expect that from him. Simmons has been a very odd choice in fantasy baseball mock drafts this year. Some teams taking him as early as the sixth or seventh rounds while others are waiting until the mid-teen rounds to scoop him up. Everyone has a different opinion of how Simmons will play this year.
As a whole this guy could prove to help your team with value in the later rounds. If you have drafted a guy like Troy Tulowitzki in the the second round then drafting Simmons in the eighth wouldn’t really make sense. But if you draft a guy like J.J. Hardy or Everth Cabrera in the eighth or ninth round it might not be such a bad idea to go after Simmons in the seventeenth or eighteenth round; that is if he is still available.
There is a lot of what if’s for Simba coming into this season but there is one thing that is for certain. As long as his glove stays at the level it is at you will have a starting shortstop on your team that will be playing 150 games or more. That alone should leave you inclined to pick this guy up. Anywhere from the twelfth to the eighteenth round would be a good time to get this young platinum glover.