Fantasy Baseball: Late-Round Targets at Each Position for 2017

Shortstop: Marcus Semien

In most seasons, a shortstop who hit 27 home runs the previous year would have no business being on a "late-round target" list for fantasy. That's just how wacky last year's power surge was. But even if long balls are more abundant now, we shouldn't be ignoring Marcus Semien.

Semien has been around for a while, but he's still just entering his age-26 season. He confirmed that his improved strikeout rate in 2015 was not an aberration as he nearly duplicated it at 22.4% in 2016. Despite that, his batting average sunk all the way to .238 thanks to a career-low batting average on balls in play of .268. It had been .312 the year before that and .310 two years prior, so we should see a rebound in this category.

If Semien can boost his average, then there's not much holding him back from being a respectable fantasy asset. He had a 42.9% fly-ball rate that helped him launch those 27 dingers, and he added 10 stolen bases to boot. He's projected to bat sixth for the Oakland Athletics, according to Roster Resource, up from his bottom-third perch last year. All around, this dude looks pretty solid, especially with an ADP of 223.2, the 22nd shortstop off the board.

Other candidates: Jedd Gyorko, Tim Anderson