The Rapid Fall of Elvis Andrus

Elvis Andrus was one of the key pieces in the Mark Teixeira to Atlanta deal and he was able to become one of the most promising young players in baseball not long into his Texas career. Just as we expect to see with a young player, he got better as he matured and he grew into what could be a great player. He quickly showed fantasy owners that he would be a great speed/average option but he also showed that he would never give much in the way of home runs. He had the added bonus of hitting great in clutch situations, which could have lead to elite RBI numbers from a stolen base guy. He had everything going for him but somewhere along the road he lost his touch and has been sliding into fantasy irrelevance ever since.

2013 was Andrus’ last extremely productive season at the plate. He was one of the wonder kids of fantasy baseball. He gave us 42 stolen bases, a pretty good average and he even contributed 67 RBI. He didn’t hit for power that year but we knew what the deal was and we were willing to live with it if it meant that there was a shortstop available that would steal bases as well as be productive in other categories.

The fantasy baseball World reacted as expected; the shortstop class was a little deeper in 2014  but Andrus was ranked by a lot of outlets as a top 5 fantasy shortstop. You read that right, top 5. As you probably guessed this caused Andrus to fly off draft boards and in turn cause drafters a lot of grief.

In 2014 he was able hit .263 with 4 homers, 41 RBI and 27 stolen bases. That line is pretty good but compared to the previous year it was undeniably sub-par. His stats fell across the board and he delivered a performance that was nowhere close to what he was drafted for. A lot of drafters were burned by this drop-off and they would have struggled mightily to keep up with teams that had reliable production out of the shortstop position.

Still, the positional field continued to shrink and drafters were forced to shake off 2014 as a down year because there was simply no other options. Expectations were lessened but he still went off the board as a top 10 shortstop. however, there was quite a lot of hope going into the season. He had a great spring and it is clear that he has talent so thoughts of a bounce-back were there. Those hopes quickly faded at the start of the 2015 regular season.

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Through 48 games Andrus is hitting .241/.298/.614 with 2 homers, 17 RBI and 6 stolen bases. If he continues this pace he is going to see an up-tick in his RBI totals from a  year ago but what is scary is that he will only steal a touch over 20 bases. The guy that is drafted to be a high average/high steal guy is now nothing but a below average RBI player. He has slid in each of his last 2 seasons and if he doesn’t turn it around, he is slated to have what could be the worst season of his career.

You will want to get out of the Andrus situation but the reality is that if you have him, you are likely stuck with him. If you have your heart set on trading him the only way that may be possible is that you include him as part of a package and hope he slips by the other owner. Your best plan of attack is to wait on the next best thing. There will be another break-out star that catches the league by surprise but if you are in a redraft league, uber prospect Carlos Correa is likely unowned.

Correa has been mashing the ball at every level he has played at and he is just begging for a promotion. He will get his wish at some point this season, probably within the next few weeks. When he makes his arrival you will want to be first in line to pick him up. He is a dynamic player and he will make you forget about your unfortunate Elvis Andrus situation.

It’s not fun being down on a player but when you have a player in front of you that has been sliding uncontrollably for the past 2 seasons, there is not a lot to cheer about. Andrus is a great guy and is a fantastic baseball personality but he will simply not help your fantasy baseball team win. It’s time to move on. Good Luck.