I'm trying to do a better job of incorporating positional scarcity in our dollar values for the magazine and site this year, rather than simply computing "earn" values. After all, it's one thing to say that said scarcity exists, it's another to put a number on it. There's a few ways to address this, and I think at least with catchers, it's working.

However, there is one problem that I keep running into. What happens if the scarcity for a position only exists at certain tiers within the position?

This is primarily just a problem for Troy Tulowitzki and Hanley Ramirez. Not only do they stand out so far above all other shortstops, but there's just not much of a second or third tier. However, there are plenty of shortstops that grade out with positive values (especially in mixed league formats), more than the minimum 12 plus another 12 middle infielders among the top 168 hitters (in a 12-team format). Thus, a typical calculation of inflated middle infield values is pretty low. But that leaves Tulo and Hanley short, I think. How do you account for that, beyond just saying "... you need to account for that ..." on Draft Day?

I haven't found a precise answer (to the extent that |STAR|any|STAR| answer can be precise - after all, we're talking about the fuzzy nature of projections as our base assumption) yet. It's possible that my premise is wrong, but I don't think it is. It's just that the line-drawing involved seems somewhat arbitrary.