2016 Top 20 Shortstop Rankings: The new wave of superstars are here

A few days ago, I published my early Top 20 Third Base rankings for 2016, and today, I am publishing my early Top 20 Shortstop rankings. It is early to be publishing position rankings, but the end of the season is near and many of you are either in the money in your roto and fantasy leagues, WE HOPE, or have moved on to fantasy football.

Over the past few weeks, the site has been dominated by fantasy football articles, and we hope you are enjoying them, but we won't stop covering fantasy baseball when the offseason begins. In addition, we will once again be covering fantasy basketball, as Bobby Del Rio is coming back to cover fantasy hoops for us. He will be providing regular FanDuel daily fantasy basketball content as well, so look for that as the season approaches. I hope to find a fantasy hockey writer in the coming weeks, as Troy Langefeld won't be back with us this season.

Well, the shortstop position will be very interesting to discuss in the offseason and into next season, as the position is now full of potential superstars, including Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Xander Bogaerts, Addison Russell and Corey Seager. Add in Jung Ho Kang, who could miss the start of the season after Thursday's horrific knee injury, and the position is full of excellent hitters. All this after we saw the position thin out in 2015, with Troy Tulowitzki putting up the worst season of his career.

I have written before that I think that Tulo either was feeling the effects of his hip surgery last season or this could be the new Tulo, which will hurt his ranking heading into the 2016 season. Much will be written about him this offseason, as this could either be just a down year for him, it happens, or the beginning of his decline years. I tend to think it is the former and not the latter, so I ranked him as my #2 fantasy shortstop behind the new #1, Correa.

Correa has put up phenomenal numbers in just 84 games through September 17th, hitting 18 home runs, driving in 52 runs and stealing 12 bases in just a half a season of games. Could he put up a 30 home run, 20 stolen base season in 2016?

Behind those two we have several young shortstops in Bogaerts, Russell, Seager, and the new Tulo-lite, Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford, who put up the best season of his career in 2015, hitting 19 home runs and driving in 77 runs.

I might be low on Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor, and reserve the right to move him up in my rankings after further research this offseason. He has been tremendous since his call up, but I am skeptical he can repeat the power output in 2016.

I ranked Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager at #5, but that is assuming he starts next season in the majors. I see no reason why he would not, especially with the way he has hit since his call up earlier this month. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised to see him play some third base next season as well, so he could easily have dual position eligibility early in the 2016 season.

Here is a look at my early Top 20 shortstop rankings for 2016, with stats courtesy of FanGraphs:

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