Jose Reyes is annually considered one of the elite fantasy shortstops in baseball.  There is no doubt about his talent and abilities.  He can score plenty of runs and steal a lot of bases for your fantasy club, but I am here to explain why I annually stay away from drafting him.  By looking at his numbers, his health, other shortstop options later in your draft,  better uses of that early pick, and his recent move to Toronto, I’ll explain why you should be saying “No Way Jose” on draft day.

First, take a look at Reyes’ numbers from the last four seasons. This is his average over the last 4 seasons if he played a full 162 game season every year.

That’s pretty impressive, certainly worth a consideration for a late 2^nd round, early 3^rd round pick right?  Unfortunately, although this is fantasy baseball, reality still exists, and Reyes’ reality is that he hasn’t exactly been Cal Ripken in terms of attendance over the last four seasons.  Reyes, who turns 30 in June, has a history of several significant injuries, specifically leg injuries, which are poison for a guy whose biggest boost in value comes from his stolen base production.  His health issues drastically affect his value in terms of wins to his team.  WARP (wins above replacement) measures how many more wins a player is worth to his team over his average replacement.  Going into last season, Reyes’ career WARP was 29.3, but due to the time he missed over the three seasons prior to last year (191 games missed), his WARP in that time dropped to 2.9, hardly a boastful number for a player being drafted in the top 30.

A lot of people will argue that Reyes played the whole year in 2012, which puts to rest the question if he can last a full season anymore.  You can make that argument, but Reyes was just traded to Toronto, which means he will now be playing half of his games on turf, which as everyone knows, takes a pretty harsh toll on the legs.  Do you want to gamble on an injury prone player for the sake of stolen bases that early in your draft?  Who could you draft in that spot instead of him? Let’s take a look at the offensive players with an ADP (average draft position) similar to Reyes so far this year, with their stats from last season.

Up against those five players, the only stat Reyes leads in is steals by about 20. Spread those 20 steals across your fantasy season of 22 weeks and Reyes increases your stolen base production by less than one per week over these players, each of whom hits for considerably more power and run production than Reyes.

I understand the looming annual perception about how shallow shortstop is, and I’ve had several discussions about this to justify why Reyes is such an important pick.  Well here are other eligible players at shortstop and their current 2013 ADP to ease your concerns about a shortstop shortage and the need to grab one so early:

Ben Zobrist – 58

Jimmy Rollins – 78

Ian Desmond – 66

Elvis Andrus – 90

Asdrubal Cabrera – 101

Martin Prado – 106

Derek Jeter – 147

Alexei Ramirez – 221

Jean Segura – 322 (Milwaukee Brewers Rookie, starting SS – SLEEPER PICK)

Aside from steals, these players put up just as good, if not better numbers out of your other  stat categories than Jose Reyes.  In addition to this, I believe Reyes can very well see some time on the DL this season playing on turf in Toronto, and in addition to that, I’d much rather have any of the other five players from the first chart for that late 20s/early 30s draft pick.  I can ration my steals out elsewhere.  So to make a long story short, I say “No way Jose” in 2013.  Let another owner draft him that high.