Cleveland Indians: Will Francisco Lindor Repeat His 2015 Season?

The Cleveland Indians need sustained success from shortstop Francisco Lindor

As nearly every fan of the Cleveland Indians knows, Francisco Lindor had a great year in 2015. In 438 plate appearances, he slashed an impressive .313/.353/.482, and his wRC+ (weighted runs created plus) rates as 28% better than league average. He slugged a surprising 12 home runs on his way to setting a new personal record in the isolated power department.

This success has caused many fans to assume that he will be a star player in the next few years. Adjusting last year’s output to a full season yields just over seven wins above a replacement-level player. That is beyond all-star level. If he sustains what he did last year in the future, we could be looking at the next all-time great Cleveland Indian.

But that last statement hinges on one huge word: sustain. Sustainability in the baseball community is what sets a player apart from the pack. If a player cannot sustain several years of success, he could very quickly find himself staring down the barrel of a non-tender, a la Pedro Alvarez. Even further, the belief of future sustainability and gentle aging sets apart the one-year deals from the five-year contracts.

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While Francisco Lindor is several years away from considering a long-term pact with any team, sustaining last year’s surprise offensive output is a must for both the Indians. If Lindor cannot thrive next season, consider the Indians dead in the water. Must I remind anyone of what happened to the Indians when Jason Kipnis flopped in 2014?

Since we have established the importance of Lindor playing well next season, let us examine whether it is a likely outcome. A way to project a player’s future is through, well, projections. So, let us examine Steamer’s projections for the shortstop. Clearly, Steamer does not believe in the switch-hitter’s ability to replicate 2015 in 2016. The projection estimates batting and base running that are slightly below league-average that good, but not great, fielding offsets. In total, Steamer projects a WAR of 3.1 for the 22-year-old.

Rather than ending the post there, I want to dig deeper for two reasons. First, I believe that Lindor will be a better fielder than the algorithm believes. Steamer thinks that the shortstop’s defense will be worth just five runs better than average. That is quite a low number for a former top prospect whose biggest claim to fame is his glove. For this sole reason, I am willing to assume that Lindor’s actual fielding value will be much higher than the projected value in 2016.

The second reason why I believe Steamer’s projection to be too conservative is that I have a hunch that some underlying statistics might cast a more positive glow on the youngster. Let us start this hunt by looking at Lindor’s batted ball data. These data often allow us to get a good idea of what a player’s deserved batting average is.

Looking over these data gives us a pretty clear picture of the type of player he is. While his line drive rate is pretty normal, his groundball rate comes in 12% greater than league-average. This is pretty interesting since groundball heavy batters tend not to post batting averages above .300, and only two of the 25 most groundball-prone batters did so last year. However, this is more interesting because these players tend not to hit the ball very hard, hence a tendency to hit the ball into the dirt.

Unfortunately for the Indians, Lindor does not hit the ball very hard. Over his 390 career at-bats, he has hit a below average percent of balls with a hard velocity, as measured by Baseball Info Solutions. This certainly does not make it look like Lindor will be able to match last year’s great offensive performance of a 128 weighted runs created plus.

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As disappointing as this may be, we should remember that Lindor has surprised us so far with his bat. Entering the season, most Indians fans expected him to be worse than the average player with his bat. Perhaps last year gave us some false hope about whether these assumptions are true.