#70: Where does Dee Gordon rank among shortstops?

Ranking one-dimensional players is always difficult. How much much does their ability to completely dominate one category make up for their lack of production almost everywhere else? For years fantasy owners have been struggling with this question. It’s made Juan Pierre and Michael Bourn some of the most hotly contested fantasy players of the last decade and continuously spawns disagreements over when to draft closers. I’ve yet to come across a satisfactory answer to how much one category is worth, though I suppose point-based player rating systems like ESPN’s Player Rater and Baseball Professor’s own PSR system do their best to handle these statistical outliers. Dee Gordon is the latest player to fit this mold. Karl de Vries at RotoDiamond tackled this question earlier this week and compared Gordon’s ascension in the pantheon of fantasy shortstops to that of Rangers’ shortstop Elvis Andrus. I like this comparison because both players seem to have similar ceilings (even th...