Fantasy Sports: Michael Young

A few weeks ago, I talked about Michael Young's trade request and the real-life implications of the request, ultimately suggesting that he had negative trade value. Commenter btroup1 asked, "How does he rate, contractually and performance-wise, amongst AL 3B?" I gave my answer in terms of his real value, but it wasn't until yesterday that I tried to figure out how it affects his fantasy value. Obviously, moving to third won't affect his 2009 value since he'll still be eligible at SS, but how will it affect his value in 2010 and beyond? To do so, I used last season's statistics and my rankings spreadsheet. At shortstop, I have his value at 2.26, which is the number of points Michael Young contributes to your standings points in a 12-team standard 5x5 roto league compared to a replacement level shortstop. At third, his value drops to 1.07, so his value gets cut in half without the shortstop eligibility. To further illustrate this drop, he's ranked 4th among shortstops and 11th at third. In overall rankings, that puts him at 95th as a shortstop and 134th as a third baseman. Moving from short to third significantly limits Young's fantasy value as he drops from an 8th-rounder to a 12th-rounder, but thankfully, in non-keeper leagues, we don't need to worry about that until 2010.