Series Preview: Cleveland Indians Cross-Ohio Series - Lindor, Santana, and Salazar

Francisco Lindor.  Photo by Keith Allison

Having bid adieu to the Phillies for 2016, the Reds begin a strange cross-Ohio four-game series on Monday.  They will play the first two games in Cleveland, and then drive down I-71 to conclude the series with a pair of games in Cincinnati.  It's an interesting format that makes the series seem like its own little event.  I'm a fan.

The Indians have underperformed for the last several years.  Their last playoff appearance was 2013, despite perennially receiving rave reviews in the preseasons.  This year is no different, with many projection systems picking the Indians to win, or at least be within spitting distance of the AL Central crown.  In large part, these ratings are driven by their outstanding pitching staff, which is anchored by Corey Kluber, who is backed by Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar, along with a solid cast of supporting actors.  While Carrasco is currently on the shelf with a hamstring injury, their rotation, as a whole, has performed as expected so far.  The thing you'll also hear about them is how much better their fielding got in the second half last year.  Their UZR, at least, confirms this: they've been outstanding across the diamond.  In contrast, their offense has struggled a bit without Michael Brantley, and their bullpen hasn't been catching the world afire.  Nevertheless, despite the .500 record, they are still given a 62% chance at making the playoffs this year.  They're currently 5 games behind the White Sox, which, to me, look like an inferior team.

Position Players

This squad isn't quite up to full strength.  The superb Michael Brantley returned sooner than expected from injury, but compiled only 39 AB's before going back on the DL with shoulder inflammation.  They are also minus Lonnie Chisenhall, at least for the moment, who is on bereavement leave.  For the time being, however, they are running out former Red Marlon Byrd and Rajai Davis, a guy that I'm honestly surprised has not yet been a Redleg given the front office's attraction to speedy outfielders.  Jose Ramirez was previously a shortstop, but has been hitting remarkably well while roaming about the outfield.  His power is entirely doubles-based, but he makes excellent contact and, for now at least, is getting plenty of hits to fall in.

This will be my first time watching Francisco Lindor.  While he might not have the power of Carlos Correa, Lindor is already in the conversation for best shortstop in the American League.  That's driven by a good, contact-based approached, and excellent fielding.  I'm a big fan of several of the Indians' other players.  Carlos Santana isn't catching much these days, but he is one of those rare players who walks as often as he strikes out--and yet still has good power that makes him a fit in the heart of the order.  The Indians often hit him leadoff, which I love.  Yan Gomes is also a favorite; he's had a miserable season at the plate so far, but in the past has shown that he can hit, and usually is rated as excellent via the framing metrics.  Mike Napoli is looking like a good pick-up.  He offers a nice dose of right-handed power in the middle of the order, and didn't cost a ton to sign.

I'm kind of surprised to see Tucker Barnhart's fielding rated as negative at this point in the season.  Baseball Prospectus's framing metric, which is the best I know of, rates him as 6th-worst in the major leagues right now at -3 runs.  He's with some good catchers on that list, though; Salvador Perez is just one spot ahead of him.  Things can change.  Nevertheless, I have noticed that Tucker's arm hasn't seemed to have a lot of zip on it at times, and he's not always as mobile as I'd hoped when blocking pitches.  Of course, his pitchers might have something to do with the number of wild pitches he's allowed.  I'm probably just expecting too much of him, but I'd really like him to be a brilliant defensive catcher.  He's in line for a lot of playing time, but hopefully he won't get over-used.  I'd like to see him get a rest in day games, for example, and that hasn't always been happening.

Joey Votto didn't have a great series against Philadelphia, but he has himself almost back up to a league-average wRC+.  His BABIP is still low, and he still looks awkward at times, but he's hitting with a lot more power now than he did earlier in the season.  I don't know what to say about Jay Bruce's ever-declining UZR, but I reject it.  He might have missed a ball or two early on, and whiffed on that double today, but he still looks at least very solid to me in right field.

Probable Starters

The Reds will face an interesting set of pitchers in this series.  Danny Salazar has been pretty awesome.  He walks a lot of batters, but he's been inducing a ton of ground balls while striking just about everyone else out.  Cody Anderson and Josh Tomlin have yielded the exact same peripherals thus far, but with wildly different outcomes.  Anderson throws 94 mph, while Tomlin is a classic soft-tosser...who relies on his fastball more than any other starter in this series.  And finally, to cap off the series, we have the excellent Corey Kluber, who does everything right.

Bullpens

Cody Allen was superb last year.  This year, he's declined in velocity, and with that decline has come a drop in strikeouts and a huge increase in his walk rate.  He's been pretty shaky thus far, but is still being placed in high-leverage situations.  Bryan Shaw has also struggled.  Fortunately, the Indians have gotten decent outcomes out of the rest of their pen.  Probably the most dominant has been Joba Chamberlain, who has been superb in his first year with Cleveland.

Cleveland Indians Series Preview

Michael Brantley leads Cleveland's offense, but watch out for their pitching.
Photo credit: Keith Allison

The annual "Battle for Ohio" begins tomorrow night.  In the past, this has sometimes been a battle between two legitimate contenders.  Or, at the minimum, a battle between a legitimate contender and a team that is trying to get back in the race.  This year, it's a battle between two disappointments.  How's that for a headliner?

This preseason, the Indians were a fairly trendy pick as a team on the rise.  They have fascinating talent in the starting rotation and a mix of talented youth and veteran position players.  So far, at least, it just hasn't come together.  A lot about how you evaluate this team will come down to how you evaluate players.  The starting rotation, in particular, has put up extremely strong peripherals...but their actual results haven't been pretty.  You don't see a split of almost 50 points between ERA- and xFIP- on a team level very often this deep into a season, but that's what the Indians are dealing with thus far.  Their fielding rates out as pretty bad, which I think was expected, but not so bad to explain that kind of split.  Most of the time, when players show these kinds of numbers, one can predict a significant rebound.

Their position players have hit pretty well so far, though probably not enough to really overcome their fielding struggles.  The team has some interesting ideas in their roster construction, however, which I'll mention below.

Despite the poor start, the projection systems still like Cleveland to improve.  And they've been playing better of late; less than a week ago, they were a sub-0.400 team.  As a result, they still have legitimate playoff aspirations.  This is bolstered by the fact that their top-shelf catcher Yan Gomes is apparently getting closer to a return.  That will be a nice shot in the arm for this team.

Position Players

The thing I like about the way the Indians have constructed their roster is that there really aren't any wasted spots.  While we likely won't see it, because the Reds don't have any left-handers in the rotation, they are currently doing a platoon that gets Mike Aviles and Ryan Raburn in the lineup against lefties.  Aviles, in particular, can play just about anywhere.  The catcher spot is always a shared position.  And David Murphy has almost always been a legitimate offensive threat, especially against right-handed pitchers, and has been important as they weathered Nick Swisher's absence earlier this year.  The result is that they can mix and match their players, taking advantage of platoon advantages, and (ideally) putting their players in the best possible situation to succeed.

This is the kind of thing that the Rays and the Athletics have been doing in recent years, and I think it's something we'll continue to see with teams; they'll treat fewer and fewer players as "starters," and instead use platoons to simultaneously leverage their talent, keep players fresh, and ensure a solid bench.  You have to invest more in your "bench" players this way, but you also don't really have to pay for starters.  You can can hide guys who can't hit same-handed pitching by pairing them with an opposite-handed player who has the opposite problem.  You don't need guys to be everyday players when they can be platoon assets.  It's sort of the opposite strategy to what the Reds have been doing under Jocketty.

Other things: Jason Kipnis seems to be back.  Michael Brantley exploded last year as a 6-fWAR player after many years as a post-hype sleeper, and, if anything, appears to be even better this year.  I mean, sheesh, here's a thing: he's walking almost twice as often as he's striking out.  He's never really been a patient hitter and has always made good contact, but people are afraid of him now and he's being patient in turn.  And more than that, you just don't see guys with .200+ ISO's and 6% strikeout rates very often.  He just looks amazing.  But most of the rest of the team, save for Ryan Raburn in his platoon role, hasn't hit much yet.

Probable Starters

I'm kind of bummed that we don't get to see Danny Salazar, but the three pitchers the Reds do draw are still really interesting.  Carlos Carrasco looks like a fairly extreme, classic case of a guy who's gotten massively unlucky.  He's talented, and his peripherals are almost as good as Corey Kluber's, but he's been hammered thus far.  Reigning Cy Young winner Corey Kluber had been having a rough season as well.  But two starts ago he struck out 18, and then he followed it up with a second dominant performance earlier this week.  He'll be tough.

Finally, we have the always-fascinating Trevor Bauer.  If you haven't, go back and listen to August Fagerstrom's excellent FanGraphs interview of Bauer from last August.  He has a lot of interesting ideas about how to pitch; once you get past the jargon (which was intially eyeroll-inducing), I thought his specific ideas about how to determine what pitch to throw were really interesting.

As a baseball fan, it's a fun rotation to watch.  As a Reds fan, I'll be hoping to see some improvements from DeSclafani; he's going to have to get his walk rate under control, though my impression is that his stuff has been too hittable when he has gone into the zone of late.  The hits off of him in his last start weren't cheap ones.

Bullpens

Maybe it's because their starters have been hit so hard, but it doesn't seem like there have been a lot of high-leverage innings for this bullpen.  Their main cog, closer Cody Allen, has not had a good season thus far, though he did manage to avoid not messing up Kluber's amazing starter the other night.  I've always liked Marc Rzepczynski.  Maybe it's the name.  Maybe it's because I once drafted him in my deep fantasy league.  But he's the principle lefty threat in their bullpen who is not assigned to mop-up duties.