The middle infield is where we find the two crown jewels of the Astros organization, both in real life and for fantasy baseball purposes.
Five hitters from Houston's lineup have a chance to be taken within the first 100 picks of fantasy drafts, but second baseman Jose Altuve and shortstop Carlos Correa are each being selected as the first player at their respective positions in NFBC drafts.
It should come as no surprise that Altuve is trending as a top-five pick and going as early as second overall. In fact, he recently went for a higher bid than Mike Trout in AL LABR, which is a prominent league of industry experts.
However, even while leading the league with a projected .320 batting average, Altuve is just the 13th hitter in numberFire's nF metric. Here is how Altuve's projections match up with his double play partner.
| nF rank | nF | name | POS | ADP | PA | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OPS | MIN | MAX |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | 7.52 | Jose Altuve | 2B-1 | 4.6 | 681 | 101 | 18 | 78 | 32 | .320 | .853 | 2 | 8 |
| 32 | 5.13 | Carlos Correa | SS-1 | 16.7 | 641 | 89 | 21 | 98 | 15 | .283 | .831 | 12 | 23 |
The nF score takes a player’s statistics and adjusts for their ability to score runs, home runs, RBI, stolen bases and batting average by weighting each category evenly while being adjusted based on position and position scarcity. The score signifies the number of runs per game a player would be expected to contribute over a league-average player per game (27 plate appearances).
In other words, a lineup full of nine Altuves would score 7.52 runs per game more than a lineup full of nine league-average players. Only Altuve and Colorado Rockies center fielder Charlie Blackmon (who is elite) are projected by numberFire to score 100 runs and steal more than 25 bases in 2017.
Last year, the AL batting champ slugged 24 homers and drove in 96 runs, and his RBI total was aided by hitting third in the lineup. That trend has continued in his first five Spring Training starts, and if it carries into the regular season, he has a good chance of outperforming his projection and perhaps collecting 100 runs scored and 100 RBI.