Cleveland Is Now the Underdog
79 years ago Friday, Germany invaded France and the Low Countries, triggering a new phase of World War II and leading to France’s surrender six weeks later. Contrary to popular belief, the French army was not weak, and fought well. In the end, their failure was one of planning and imagination. While the Maginot Line actually held until everything else collapsed — again, contrary to what many people today think — the French leadership widely assumed they could easily take the offensive in Belgium, keeping the fighting on their left out of France, and that the Ardennes were unsuitable for any kind of invasion. Neither of those things turned out to be true and what with most of the reserve the French had in Northern Belgium or the Netherlands, they were unable to counterattack; the German crossing of the Meuse in the first week doomed them.
The Cleveland Indians, while obviously finding themselves in a considerably sunnier position than being in a life-or-death struggle with an invader trying to wipe them off the map, have struggled in 2019 and are currently looking up at the Minnesota Twins by a four-game margin; their scuffling is largely the result of same failures of planning and imagination the French exhibited. The team had a viable plan for winning this season, but it involved believing in a number of very specific things being true. Now that some of those things have turned out not to be true, the team finds itself backed into a corner, with many weaknesses that can’t be easily painted over. The fight for the AL Central is very real.
Cleveland’s argument for winning the Central relied on the team’s strengths, the things that no other team in the division could match. There was a very good case to be made for the projected five-man rotation to be the best in baseball; ZiPS pegged them to go 71-41 with a 3.47 ERA in 911 innings, combining for 20.5 WAR. The other four teams in the division combined only possessed a single starting pitcher who projected at a level high enough to even make Cleveland’s rotation — Jose Berrios of the Twins.
The team’s offense in 2018 could hardly be described as a poor one, ranking third in the American League in runs scored. But it was also an unbalanced offense, with two-thirds of the team’s position player WAR coming from just three players: the two MVP candidates in Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez, and a healthy Michael Brantley. Brantley departed in free agency, with the team not even making him a qualifying offer that could have kept him on a one-year, $17.9 million contract, but the other two remained. Both still just in their mid-twenties and at key positions, the offense could hold the line with Lindor and Ramirez.
The bottom 18 players on the 25-man roster were expected to be mostly even with those of each of the other teams in the division; the rotation, Lindor, and Ramirez were thought to provide a top-of-the-team nobody could match. And if something went wrong, well, it was a two-team division thanks to the rebuilds, and Cleveland had bested the Twins by 13 and 17 wins in the previous two years.
Like the French in 1940, Cleveland believed a lot of things to be true that turned out to not be so. Mike Clevinger had back issues in his second start, knocking him off the roster; he can’t even theoretically return until June. Corey Kluber’s ERA was two runs worse than his FIP. There was an expectation that he’d be fine, but those expectations were dashed by a 102 mph liner off the bat of Brian Anderson that shattered Kluber’s forearm. He has no timetable for return, but the seriousness of the fracture means it won’t be quick, and Kluber believing he can “pitch again in 2019” is largely damning with faint optimism.
On the offense, Jose Ramirez’s missing BABIP from the final two months of the 2018 season has not returned. And while Lindor came back from a spring training ankle injury fairly quickly, his bat, while better than J-Ram’s, is still missing more than 100 points of OPS compared to 2018. Based on the preseason ZiPS projections, Lindor and Ramirez ought to have been worth 2.9 WAR by this point of the season. Instead, they’ve been worth 0.3, lopping an instant 2.6 wins off Cleveland’s record so far.
It’s worse than that. Projections aren’t set in stone, but are instead snapshots of a player at a given point. Every plate appearance or inning pitched provides new information, and projections change over time as a result. So to add to the 2.6 wins already lost is an additional number of future wins, stemming from the decreased rest-of-season projections due to the poor starts of Lindor and especially Ramirez. That’s another 1.2 wins, putting the Indians at four wins that they’re now unlikely to get back.
With the Kluber/Clevinger injuries, and only a minor projection downgrade for Carlos Carrasco, ZiPS now projects the front five to be worth 15.2 wins when 2019 is all said and done. Add in the likely replacements, none of whom ZiPS is excited about (in 2019 at least), and their increased playing time adds about half of a win back to the total rotation projection.
In sum, the combination of injuries and underperformance has cost the Indians about eight wins from the pre-2019 assumptions, at least in the eyes of ZiPS. How serious would lopping off eight wins from Cleveland in the preseason projections have been? Quite serious.
The consequences of losing eight wins, even with ZiPS believing Cleveland was clearly the best team in the division, look especially dire when you put the preseason divisional projection next to a reconfigured one, taking those wins away from the team in March.
| Team | W | L | GB | PCT | DIV% | WC% | PLAYOFF% | WS WIN% | #1 PICK | AVG DRAFT POS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleveland Indians | 96 | 66 | — | .593 | 92.3% | 3.6% | 95.9% | 14.2% | 0.0% | 26.3 |
| Minnesota Twins | 83 | 79 | 13 | .512 | 7.7% | 19.8% | 27.4% | 1.6% | 0.0% | 17.0 |
| Kansas City Royals | 68 | 94 | 28 | .420 | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 2.2% | 6.0 |
| Chicago White Sox | 68 | 94 | 28 | .420 | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 2.4% | 6.0 |
| Detroit Tigers | 68 | 94 | 28 | .420 | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 2.5% | 5.9 |
| Team | W | L | GB | PCT | DIV% | WC% | PLAYOFF% | WS WIN% | #1 PICK | AVG DRAFT POS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleveland Indians | 88 | 74 | — | .543 | 66.7% | 5.3% | 72.0% | 6.9% | 0.0% | 20.8 |
| Minnesota Twins | 84 | 78 | 4 | .519 | 32.4% | 8.0% | 40.4% | 3.2% | 0.0% | 17.4 |
| Chicago White Sox | 69 | 93 | 19 | .426 | 0.4% | 0.1% | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.4% | 6.4 |
| Kansas City Royals | 69 | 93 | 19 | .426 | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.4% | 0.0% | 0.3% | 6.3 |
| Detroit Tigers | 69 | 93 | 19 | .426 | 0.3% | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.0% | 0.5% | 6.1 |
Those missing wins are enough to knock Cleveland’s projected edge from 13 games to four. And remember, these projections consider no improvement in any other AL Central team from their projections other than the additional wins they’d swipe from the Indians. So that much slimmer four-game edge doesn’t consider Martin Perez’s new cutter and surprising velocity, or that Jorge Polanco is already more than halfway to his career-best home run total. It doesn’t consider the surprising resilience of the Tigers and White Sox have shown at staying in the neighborhood of .500.
These reconfigured projections peg Cleveland with a four-game lead when everyone starts at zero. As of today, they do not start at zero, but four wins behind. You don’t need a mathemagician to tell you that, or really, even a certain middle-aged sportswriter who does weird math-projection things.
The assumptions made here knock a full quarter of a playoff run and a full quarter of a divisional title from Cleveland. When you look at today’s projections, which include the wins already baked into the cake and the changed projection assumptions from the other teams, it gets considerably worse.
| Team | W | L | GB | PCT | DIV% | WC% | PLAYOFF% | WS WIN% | #1 PICK | AVG DRAFT POS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota Twins | 95 | 67 | — | .586 | 69.0% | 18.9% | 87.9% | 11.7% | 0.0% | 26.1 |
| Cleveland Indians | 91 | 71 | 4 | .562 | 30.9% | 35.4% | 66.2% | 6.1% | 0.0% | 23.4 |
| Detroit Tigers | 75 | 87 | 20 | .463 | 0.2% | 0.8% | 0.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 10.0 |
| Kansas City Royals | 71 | 91 | 24 | .438 | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% | 7.1 |
| Chicago White Sox | 70 | 92 | 25 | .432 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.3% | 6.5 |
Simply put, assuming 50 innings from Kluber in August and September, Cleveland is now projected to have only as strong a roster as the Minnesota Twins. The season’s far from over, but Cleveland is now the underdog.
“Now Dan,” you may be saying. “Bad things happen to all teams and it’s unfair to blame Cleveland for injuries or an AL MVP candidate hitting like Ozzie Guillen!” While that’s correct, what’s hurting the roster is that there wasn’t anything to fall back on. When it comes to injuries, Cleveland can’t hold a candle to the Dodgers of the last few years or the Yankees this year, and those teams assembled sufficient depth to deal with emergencies. The Dodgers would have liked if their assumption that A.J. Pollock would be healthy for a full season came true, but they didn’t depend on it; the team has a number of outfield options and has barely missed a beat. The Yankees would prefer to have not lost half their starting lineup, but they have a strategic reserve in the form of DJ LeMahieu, Mike Tauchman, Gio Urshela, and a number of prospects they retained, among others.
Cleveland’s outfield ranks 26th in baseball in WAR and LF/CF/RF, in the depth chart projections, rank 27th, 23rd, and 28th respectively. They even rank 29th in the designated hitter projections, an impressive feat considering 15 teams only play a DH in interleague road games. There was no unfortunate happenstance that caused this; it is simply what ought to have been expected coming into the season. Not a single Indians outfielder projected to collect even two wins in 2019, and the one with the best projection, Leonys Martin, just spent the final months of the 2018 season fighting a life-threatening infection.
The outfield ranked 17th in WAR in 2018, and that was with the presence of Michael Brantley, who hit .309/.364/.468 with 17 homers. But in one of this offseason’s most concerning transactions, Cleveland didn’t even deem Brantley worthy of a qualifying offer. If you’re unwilling to sign your team’s third-best player to a two-year, $32 million contract, pennies in major league terms, at the team’s weakest spot what are you willing to do?
In Cleveland’s case, practically nothing for the outfield. Jake Bauers was acquired in the Seattle/Cleveland/Tampa Bay three-way trade that also brought Santana back to town, but while young, Bauers was an outfielder who had a .700 OPS for the Rays in 2018 and has never had an .800 OPS at any level in the minors. Carlos Gonzalez was brought in after failing to match an .800 OPS in Coors Field each of the last two seasons. Hanley Ramirez was given the DH job on a silver platter after amassing 1.1 WAR over the last four seasons, and Cameron Maybin was signed to hang around in Columbus. He’s now in the Bronx. The team’s big offseason move was re-signing Oliver Perez for a one-year, $2.5 million contract. He was the only player to sign to a major league free agent contract with Cleveland the entire offseason.
When the front lines faltered, Cleveland has found little to fill in the gaps. They can’t be blamed for everything that’s gone wrong this season, but they can be faulted for a lack of ambition. The team’s window of contention is not a wide one and three years down the road, most of the team’s core is likely going to get too expensive for the team to keep. In an offseason in which they should have continued to try to keep that window open as widely as possible, they instead propped it with a flimsy plastic ruler and simply hoped for the best.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Holy Moses — 95 wins is the mean projection for the Twins? I felt bullish at 88 this spring.
A 12-win improvement in projections over 35 games is pretty impressive for a team that was already projected over .500.
It’s amazing what 57 games against the rotting corpses of the White Sox, Royals, and Tigers will do…
Yup, Cleveland wasn’t over .500 against anyone other division but the AL Central last year and they still won 91 games.
They were 49-27 vs teams in the AL Central
They were only 42-44 in games vs everyone else.
Well one would assume that dumpstering the bad teams would be included in a projection. It’s the rest of the pack they’ve performed against that’s probably improving their projections.
I have a really hard time seeing Minnesota as a 95 win team. I’d love to be proved wrong though
They’re 23-12 right now, so they’d need to go 72-55 the rest of the way to get to 95 wins, assuming a full 162. That’s .570 ball. I can see it, especially with the unbalanced schedule.
They already are done with Houston (4-3) and Toronto (4-3) and have only played 4 games against KC/CHI/DET combined so far. They’ve banked some wins.
Appleman clearly told the writers to tell us why the favorites are struggling. First the Nats, now this. Good content though, so I’m not complaining.
Dave’s on vacation!
So clearly he told the writers not to do so, and they rebelled once he went on vacation!
I’ve been curious about this, before the season I believe the projection was for 95 wins for Cleveland. Even with health and normal production from Lindor and Ramirez this seemed awfully optimistic. Do those team projections take into account at all the unbalance for a team like this? With nearly all the positive value tied up in 3 hitters and the starting pitching staff, they’re definitely more vulnerable to downside risk than a more balanced team. But if I recall the projections were showing Cleveland as having something like a top-5 offense for run-scoring. At the same time, I believe only 3 players projected with a wRC+ above 100, Ramirez, Lindor and Santana. Bauers was right around 100, everyone else was projected below average and has lived up to that billing. On the other hand I believe the Twins had 9 players projected as above average hitters … but overall somehow these 2 offenses had similar run-scoring projections? How did that add up?
Projections probably had more to do with the expected wretched state of the division than anything else.
Ahh so the arrogant plan to not improve, and even sell, thinking there would still be a smooth path to the division title in the bad AL Central backfired. Well at least Dolan saved a few bucks! The weird part is that Cleveland’s window is closing pretty soon anyway and they probably have a bunch of years coming up where they can run low payrolls without anybody caring. Would’ve been nice to make a final real push or two but alas, the urge to not pay players was just too powerful to overcome.
It’s a shame that merely a division title appeared to be the goal of a franchise that hasn’t won the World Series in something like 70 years.
The worst part of that arrogant plan is that everyone knew the Twins had gotten better and were gunning for the Indians. The rest of the division is clearly still rebuilding, but the Twins were clearly trying to contend, yet Cleveland simply dismissed them as if they were going to be the same team they were last year.
I know it’s early, but a fire sale style reload might be the Indians best option this year. Trade Lindor (2.5 years remaining), Bauer (1.5), and Hand (1.5) and re establish your window for 2020 on. The farm system isn’t great, but you’d have Mercado, Jones, Karinchak and Mckenzie to compliment those ginormous hauls. While Ramirez, Kluber, Carrasco, Clevinger and Bieber are still under contract long term.
The problem is that no one is going to be willing to pay the ransom it would take to get Lindor. The Rays aren’t trading Wander Franco, the Brewers don’t have the secondary pieces behind Hiura, the Mets could trade Rosario but don’t have anyone else aside from Alonso that would be of interest (who isn’t going anywhere), and the Yankees don’t have a big headliner and aren’t going to trade the 7 or 8 pieces it would take to land Lindor.
Bauer and Hand are more likely because they have less team control, and because everyone needs pitchers, but even then you’re looking at a level of prospects that teams get really squeamish about. Given how much prospects are valued right now, teams can reasonably expect to “buy” but “selling” is harder.
hadn’t really considered potential destinations, but with a talent like Lindor under contract for so long, I’d assume someone would pony up. I can’t recall the last time someone with as much trade value was moved (Sale is probably the closest) but I think teams have shown with the Harper/machado deals that they’re willing to go the extra mile for elite players. Might take a three team deal tho.
I just don’t know who would be interested. On the one hand, Lindor would literally be an upgrade for any team. On the other, it’s not like Harper and Machado were going to teams that had top-line incumbent third basemen or right fielders. With the exception of the Yankees, Brewers, Mets, and Rays, the teams with bad shortstops are also the bad teams. The Dodgers are not trying to upgrade on Corey Seager. The Astros are not trying to upgrade on Correa. The Cardinals are not trying to upgrade on DeJong. They have bigger fish to fry.
I think the Yankees might be happy to trade Andujar, German, and lottery tickets to get Lindor. Maybe Torres instead of Andujar?
Then the Indians have the new guy play third and move Ramirez to second (short for the short term?).
German lets the Indians trade one of their cheap pitchers (Carrasco?).
The Mets could hang on to Dominic Smith and include him in the package though, but ,otherwise, I agree. The Indians will ask for a ransom, and they should.
But why?
Even if they pull off the fire sale *perfectly*, and end up with a bunch of talent, and then that talent coalesces into an incredible core, (say a fabulous rotation and a couple of young MVP candidate position players) all they’ve really done is punted several years to get back to the opportunity they have right now and are choosing to do nothing with.
And that’s if nothing goes wrong.
Over the last three years, they’ve made major moves for Miller, Encarnacion, Bruce, Smith, Hand and Martin, while giving up serious prospects. Despite the active approach and the consistent winning, fans aren’t going to the games. IMO hard to blame them for cutting payroll this year.
Regardless, they’ve made their aggressive moves and came close, but ultimately empty. Personally I don’t want to forge onward with a 6% WS chance, a similar figure next year, then watch Bauer, Hand, and eventually Lindor walk for draft picks, especially when the front office doesn’t seem interested in spending to fix the rest of the roster.
If they properly execute a sale (something the Indians FO has historically done very well) like you said, I’d imagine our chances of winning a World Series in 2020 on would far exceed the ~10% chance we might have before lindor leaves.
A 6% chance at winning the World Series is actually really good! (Don’t forget that the average chance with 30 teams is only a little over 3%.) If they sold now, there’s no way those odds will be any better for several years to come. They need to go for it while they still can. Even their management will try to improve at the trade deadline if they’re still in contention at that point.
Two Bad Teams
Interesting concept, but that’s not what this article is about!
“The team’s window of contention is not a wide one and three years down the road, most of the team’s core is likely going to get too expensive for the team to keep. In an offseason in which they should have continued to try to keep that window open as widely as possible, they instead propped it with a flimsy plastic ruler and simply hoped for the best.”
I’m not entirely convinced that this is bad strategy and they should have reinvested. Given their location in their division and their potential paths in each outcome, it may be that cheap and flimsy was a very good way to go. They’re probably not going to come out of it very well because of the way the bad luck has happened – Kluber has certainly destroyed his trade value, and Ramirez and Lindor, who would have brought immense prospect hauls if the team failed in any other way, may not now. But that doesn’t necessarily make the decision to work that way bad.
If the idea is that either they do well or they blow it up, singing a few averagish guys to market value three-year contracts is probably going to hamper the blowup more than it improves the odds of doing well. If things had gone well they would have had several positions that could easily have been improved upon midseason at low cost – though they’re probably the team hurt most by the last-minute removal of August trading – and with the knowledge advantage of delay that’s worth somewhere in the neighborhood of what those free agents would have been.
It’s also worth mentioning that they’ve gotten here by basically everything imaginable going right for the Twins. Which is fun as a Twins fan, but hard to blame the Cleveland front office for.
If ownership had just committed to keeping payroll what it was last year, they could’ve retained Brantley and signed another free agent. I thought it was a mistake to not trade Kluber this offseason, as long as they reinvested the savings into the offense. Imagine and offseason where ownership commits to keep payroll at 135 million and they flip Kluber for the best prospect package available. That would’ve given them around $36 million to play with. Could’ve offered Brantley the QO/negotiated multi-year contract with him, and could’ve gone after Nelson Cruz, Moustakas, etc. Instead they kept Kluber, spent 4.5 million on Danny Salazar, and the front office compounded this by flipping Yandy Diaz, a better bet for near-term production, for Jake Bauers (gotta say their Gomes trade is actually looking pretty good and has worked out in their favor already) If this team just had Brantley and Yandy Diaz still they’d have a high likelihood of making the playoffs, and Brantley could’ve been had for a very reasonable cost
Even today they’re projected to make the playoffs two times in three. They have a high likelihood of making the playoffs already.
As fans we like to see teams spend money to compete immediately (well, as a Twins fan I was delighted by the Cleveland offseason, but you know what I mean) but that doesn’t make it necessarily good strategy even for teams within their “window.” For a team that’s going to be on its way out within the lifetime of any free agency contracts it signs this year, there’s some amount of immediate playoff odds which is worth less than maintaining a high-quality rebuild inflection point. I’m not sure how we determine that number, but it seems worth doing.
There are plenty of players they could’ve signed to one or two-year deals that would’ve fit within their open window.
Heck, even now they could just sign Matt Holliday to a pro-rated one-year deal and likely improve their offense.
Then again, they may have tried to trade Kluber and not gotten an offer to their liking. In that case, they were much better off keeping Kluber rather than just giving him up for whatever they could get for him.
Eh. by Baseruns, Cleveland has been the luckiest team in baseball and should be 8 games back, not 4.
Baseruns misses all the luck upstream of plate appearance results. I suppose it’s semantic, but the fact that the team’s offense has produced so few baseruns is itself unluckly, unless you think Lindor and Ramirez are, in fact, mediocre or terrible hitters now (I don’t).
Fair enough. I guess it hinges on what you identify as “luck” – sequencing? Injuries? Short term over/underperformance, whether or not supported by peripherals?
I suppose I would say the Cleveland front office has been unlucky, on balance, even if the players have been lucky to get those wins, given their performance. Looking just at baseruns in this case is sort of like saying someone is lucky for surviving a lightening strike.
They were never going to blow it up this season anyway, so your argument against signing some free agent role players is inherently flawed. Even if they’re out of it completely by the end of July, they still have enough core talent to keep them for now and try again next year.
Also, while they weren’t expected to be quite this good (so far), everyone knew that the Twins had gotten better and were a legitimate division contender.
A good reminder by Dan that the projections, are, well, projections, and that teams shouldn’t stop trying to improve because they’ve done enough to walk away with the division. Of note: The Twins have a +44 run differential; Cleveland has -14. The latter is lucky to be above .500.
There were three things that Dan hits in the article that Cleveland should have considered:
-Improve the outfield. I think there is good reason to think they could have done this. Giving Brantley the QO would have been a good start, and maybe could have given them the leverage to get a deal similar to the one Houston gave him. Adam Jones was out there for a while too although admittedly, he looked totally done. Aside from Brantley, I don’t know how much they could or should have done here.
-Not improving the DH spot. Nelson Cruz signed for so little and Melky Cabrera (who was also with the team in 2018!) got a minor league contract. Maybe they should have tried to get Seattle to throw in a mostly-paid-for Jay Bruce in the Encarnacion deal too. Not keeping Encarnacion looks like a mistake now, but I’m not sure we could have called that, and Santana has played well. This is an area they should have definitely prioritized, given how cheap it was.
-The bullpen. They really should have tried to improve the bullpen. This is a difficult area to improve, and they were absolutely right to let Miller and Allen walk, and signing free agents is a fool’s errand, and the Wittgren trade was really good, but they needed to figure out a way to get their hands on more guys with the potential to pitch in the bullpen. They literally didn’t have any prospects rated by the Fangraphs crew in AAA, so they weren’t getting help that way. And unlike in the outfield–where they stockpiled a bunch of Jordan Luplows and hoped some would pan out–they didn’t even really do that for the bullpen.
Here’s my take on this:
1) I think they knew Brantley wanted a multi-year contract and that wasn’t a path they were willing to go down. They still feel burnt by the Hafner, Swisher, and Bourn contracts and didn’t want to risk repeating that with Brantley’s injury history.
2) Cabrera was coming off a 0.4 WAR season. Jones a 0.5 WAR season. Bruce a 0.1 WAR season. I honestly don’t see what the value of acquiring any of those players would be. They did pick up CarGo (1.7 WAR) and Hanley Ramirez (-0.2 WAR). Neither of those two have helped out but it’s hard to know ahead of time which rapidly declining veteran might have one last push left.
3) Nelson Cruz signed for $14 million. I don’t think the Indians front office would consider that “so little”.
4) They did tried to improve the outfield by acquiring younger players with upside like Luplow and Bauers. Maybe they haven’t worked out yet but I think it WAY too soon to give up on them. Of course, they were also hopeful that Greg Allen would continue to build on his decent finish to 2018. And that Zimmer would come back and help (still possible).
5) Trading EE was as much about getting out from under his contract. Plus it brought back Santana, a popular player who can also play the field (and who has played nearly as well as EE this year). From there they were able to dump Alonso’s contract.
6) The bullpen has actually been very good this year. Last year they had a 4.60 ERA (25th in the majors), 4.53 FIP (26th), and 0 WAR (27th). This year it’s a 3.25 ERA (2nd in the majors), 3.74 FIP (6th), and 1.5 WAR (6th). They had reason to believe that guys like Otero, Olson, and Cimber would pitcher better. And that’s mostly been correct. In addtion to Wittgren, they also brought in Tyler Clippard, and Chih-Wei Hu (still in the minors). Anyway, the bullpen has been the primary bright spot this season so I really don’t see what the complaint is.
0 WAR was 27th for an entire bullpen? heh
1) and Kipnis
+475 Indians not to make playoffs was probably my favorite bet preseason. Twins were 27/10 to win division , but if you actually think it is highly unlikely that two AL Central teams make the playoffs. For me, I saw the Indians and a struggling Jram who hits like a pitcher vs a breaking ball, a superstar in Lindor and maybe 2-3 other players who deserved to be in the MLB, Their rotation is old, and eventually father time was going to get Kluber who seems on the verge of breaking every single year.
Still slamming Ramirez while honoring Lindor I see. It’s amazing how often you see this from so many people on here. WAR totals for the past 3 seasons, excluding 2019 since it’s May 9th: Ramirez 19.2; Lindor 18.9. Jose Ramirez is elite folks, he just is. There is a very high probability that he has more elite season in the future as well based on his skill set.
I get this is fangraphs, not rotographs, but if you look at what he did in the second half last year you run as fast as possible away. Lindor is coming back from an injury.
At what point do you start thinking what you see currently is the truth? He has posted a sub 100 wRC+ over his last 500 plate appearances. Is that not enough to say that is closer to his true talent level? What reason do we have to believe it is not?
Statcast paints even a bleaker photo. You can look at his hard hit percentage and think it is trending the right direction, until you realize what hard hit is for him. Out of 353 qualified hitters he is 127th in barrels, 221st in max velocity, 205th in max distance. The one positive we can take is his average EV is 85th , but then you look at the max ev next to his name and he sticks out like a sore thumb. He steals bases because he is quick, but he also isn’t fast as he is in the bottom half of the league in sprint speed as well (27.0 behind such burners as Ryan O’hearn and Hunter Renfroe).
Obviously there are brighter days ahead for him, and I can expect him to be an average or better player moving forward, but to expect him to all of a sudden become who he used to be is a fools errand.
Wrong. JRam is who he is, which is basically what he has been his entire career. He’s not a Giancarlo Stanton or Joey Gallo. But neither is Bregman, or Correa, or Lindor, or most players for that matter. JRam’s statcast is more or less in line with his 2017-2018 self, though not entirely so as his (luck neutral) xBA and xSLG are just .255 and .434, respectively. And in many ways, his statcast line looks better than it did in 2018. More of an all fields approach. Hitting it harder. Near 20 degree average launch angle. Still walking. Still not K’g much.
To further add to this picture are his home/road splits. He’s a near 900 OPS player at home. He’s abysmal right now in a few more ABs on the road. That will normalize out. He’s not broken. I expect his road split will come up to his home split soon enough. And that’s not based on just comparing them, the underlying statcast data supports it.
So the, “JRAM is closer to a 100 wRC+ player” take is super bad. Maybe he never enjoys the campaign like he did from opening day to 8/17/18, but he’s not league average. He’s still a top 10-20 overall talent in my mind.
Tribefan87 defending the tribe. Ha. Why is that take super bad? 500 at bats of below average mlb hitter. Why would that be incorrect?
It is blatant distortion to count 190 PAs of historically great hitting as the start of a 500-PA span of “below average.” It’s basically dishonest. You wanted the maximum number of PAs in your claim, so you included a stretch of superstar hitting because it was just enough offset by the subsequent slump.
When people complain that “you can make statistics say whatever you want,” they’re talking about just what you’ve done here.
You’re mistaken about Ramirez’s “second half. “ Thru 3/4 of last year, he had a 1.045 OPS and was on track for a top-5 bWAR season EVER at 3B.
In that context, some regression was highly likely, and it did come. But if you run like hell from every rising young star who had a bad last 36 games of a season, you’ll look foolish most of the time.
Ramirez’s 14.7 bWAR over age 24-25 ranks 26th in the modern era. Look at all the past guys in that range, you see mostly HOFers, a few who were felled by injury, and none who just stopped being stars. The odds are excellent that he has great years ahead.
And btw, even if you’re right on his wRC+ for the last 500 PAs, it’s a deliberate distortion. His slump goes back about 310 PAs, but in the 190 before that his OPS was almost 1.200.
Keep in mind that his last 80 ABs (since April 20th) he’s posted a 114 wRC+. So really, he’s had 230 PAs where he struggled at the end of last year and beginning of this year, not 500. Despite not hitting for as much power, he’s actually been a really useful player hitting .281/.387/.422 (OPS of .809) since Lindor came back and Jose moved from 2nd to 3rd in the lineup in game 2 of the April 20th double header.
Obviously, you’ve never heard the concept of a “down year” (although technically split among two calendar years in this case). Without some kind of lingering injury or sudden age-related decline, a player’s last 3-year track record is much more indicative of his true talent level than his last 500 PA.
The rotation is old? Huh? Bauer, Bieber, and Clevinger are all 28 or younger if I’m not mistaken. Kluber is just 33. Speaking of, Kluber is on the “verge” of breaking every year? What the what? 200+IP for 4-5 consecutive years? 2.85 ERA over that span? Huh? And while he wasn’t having a great year, I think he was starting to turn the corner as he was throwing his 2 seamer less (which he desperately needed to do). I don’t get this take at all.
That is 3 good young pitchers. You are mostly right regarding pitching. I do feel that Kluber has seemed close to the edge for a while. He reminds me of Kershaw going into last year. Not sure how you can search comments, but I said that late last year.
Regardless, I’d be fine w a gentleman’s wager that Jram posts a sub 110 wrc this year at 1-1. Or, if you lay 1.5 to 1 on sub 100.
Kluber’s FIP was still under 4.00 despite having a rough start to this season before taking a liner off his arm.
“That is 3 good young pitchers” – Two of those three were top 15 pitchers in all of baseball by WAR last year, and the 3rd wasn’t even up for a whole season. Even if you expected regression due to age from Kluber and Carrasco (both top 10 pitchers by WAR in 2018), what do you think they would regress to? The worst pitchers in the league?
This article has a WWII reference, and Audrey’s article “A Modern History of Self-Inflicted Baseball Injuries” ahs a “Pride and Prejudice” reference, on the same day. It’s as if these writers know about more than just baseball or something!
Cleveland’s unchallenged reign in the ALC appears to be done. J-Ram is still strangely broken, the bullpen is a shadow of a shadow of its former self, and the injuries to the rotation are expected at this point and will probably continue to prevent it from becoming the carrying force it could be. The rest of the position players are a mess, and there’s not many reinforcements coming soon– only two of their 45FV or higher prospects are both A) position players and B) at AA or higher.
Meanwhile, The Twins might regress a little, but they’re young and likely not going anywhere, and Royce Lewis & Alex Kiriloff could elevate them to elite status when they hit the bigs. The White Sox have seen three ex-top-prospects break out (Anderson, Moncada, Giolito), while Robert and Madrigal are rising. The rotation will look a lot better with the addition of Kopech and Cease by next year. The Tigers have had a couple of non-top-prospects break out (Boyd, Turnbull), and look to add Mize & Manning to that suddenly impressive future rotation. Even the Royals might not be as far away as they seemed– Hunter Dozier is Here, unexpectedly, Mondesi & Merrifield are great as expected, and Alex Gordon is suddenly Alex Gordon again. They’ll need more little-thought-of prospects to surprise, though.
Any of those first three might use this offseason to sign/trade for a star to take the leap in 2020, too.
TL;DR, the AL Central was a joke last year, but it might be highly competitive as soon as next year– the rebuilders are coming into their own and will likely make Cleveland pay for not going for it this year.
I’ll help you clear some things up, since it appears you aren’t watching the Indians:
1. Jose Ramirez has played a ton better in his last 80 or so PAs – .281/.387/.422 for a wRC+ of 114.
2. The bullpen is much better than last year’s – the biggest culprits that caused their failures were guys like Allen and Miller, who have ERAs of 7.20 and 5.11 elsewhere this year, respectively, and FIPs that are even worse. The current bullpen is 6th in WAR, 2nd in ERA, and 6th in FIP in all of baseball.
3. How is a line drive to the arm that put Kluber out expected?
In your world, apparently every prospect for all the other AL Central teams pan out to make their teams a formidable force, and guys who weren’t highly touted but have had a good stretch will continue to be great players, while the Indians will develop no prospects. Gotcha.
What’s pretty amazing is that even with the injuries to Kluber and Clev sharply reducing their projected innings, FanGraphs still thinks Cleveland will have the most productive rotation in the AL over the rest of the season. Still lots of healthy talent on this team.
The rotation is fearsome, even with the injuries. Go Twins!
And yet somehow, after today’s victory, the Indians are 20-16, their second best start under Francona. I have no idea why, but his teams with the Indians always start off slowly and then play better as the year goes along. Even that 2013 team started off 5-10, and was below .500 as late as 69 games into the season (34-35).
2018: 18-18 (91-71)
2017: 19-17 (102-60)
2016: 19-17 (94-67)
2015: 14-22 (81-80)
2014: 17-19 (85-77)
2013: 21-15 (92-70)
5 regulars hitting way over their established baseline: Garver, Polanco, Schoop, Buxton, Kepler. Only Marwin is underachieving. It’s not a shock that a young group shows improvement, but this performance is very unlikely. Show me 5 teams that went from a 96 OPS+ to 118 in one season.
I’m no Cleveland fan. I’d love to see Minnesota do well. But I’ve seen a lot of seasons, so I don’t leap to conclusions.
Oops, I replied to the wrong comment. Meant to reply to Carter below.
Comments seem very pro Indians. Here is the reality thus far however:
Indians vs Twins
Polanco 2.1 WAR, Lindor 0.2
Garver 1.3 WAR Placewki .1
Rosario .9 WAR Cargo -.3
Schoop .9 WAR Kipnis . -.1, Stamets -.7
Buxton .8, Martin .3
I mean, I could go on and on. It is basically every single position except first base where Santana owns the edge. Point is, if you look at the teams side by side which teams look better? Is it even close? Sure, we could reasonably expect Lindor to outpeform Polanco, but Polanco also has a very high baseline. We could also reasonably expect JRam to be better than Sano/Astudillo, but that is about it. Twins have the edge at most positions, and with Kluber likely done for most the rest of the year, and Clevinger on IL at least until June, and the team outperforming their baseruns in an absurd fashion you should be able to see the writing on the wall.
So far the Indians offense has been historically bad. They’ve kept afloat at 20-16 despite having an offense that, a couple days ago, would literally have tied the full season record for lowest wRC+ with the 1920 A’s. 3/4s of the players on the team have hit below their career norm, and some by a significant degree. The team will hit better.
On the flipside, most of the Twins team is playing better than they’re expected to: 38 year old Cruz, Polanco, Garver, Rosario, all hitting better than their career averages. Schoop, Castro, Kepler, and Buxton have suddenly gone from below average hitters to average (Buxton) or well above (everyone else). Last year this team had a wRC+ of 95, and they lost their best hitter from last year (Escobar) in a trade at the deadline. They’re at 116 so far this year – simply adding Cruz doesn’t make a below average lineup Top 5 in the league. This team will not hit this well all season.
Regression to the mean is a real thing – teams have hot and cold streaks, and usually people don’t notice as much because they have months worth of stats to hide exceptionally good or bad spells in performance. When the Twins hot streak (or the Indians cold streak) happens to start the season, the stats are skewed for a long time making them look better or worse than they’re actually performing. Keep waving that Twins flag, but If you think Mitch Garver is going to have a .700+ slugging, you’re going to be sadly mistaken when September rolls around.
Cruz has only hit better than his career norm only if you discount the second half of his career.
Rosario? He is hitting worse than he did last year. And significantly worse than his mean projection.
I agree, there are some outliers. But eventually Buxton was going to be an average hitter.
Obviously the Twins are playing over their heads, that is not the point. The point is how miserable the Indians lineup looks. Sure, they have to hit a little better, probably? But JRam has been bad for nearly a years worth of at bats now, but who else is going to rebound? Lindor? Sure, Santana is actually playing well. The rest of their lineup doesn’t belong in the MLB.
I’m not contradicting anything in this fine post. But it is worth noting that Minnesota is 15-4 against sub-.500 teams so far, including 6-0 vs. Baltimore, completing that season series. They’re 8-8 vs. .500+, which doesn’t jibe with their #1 overall mark. They haven’t played Tampa, or Boston. They do still have most of their slate against the weak ALC teams, but I’ll still be shocked if they actually win 95.
I’m probably wrong, but if a team performs at .500 against the top half of the teams, projecting 95 wins doesn’t seem too unreasonable. I’m not sure what the rest of schedule projects to, but put in 35-35 against the good teams, going 60-32 against the bad ones doesn’t seem crazy to me (since they are already 15-4, that’s 45-28 from here, in my entirely made up schedule breakdown). Good teams are supposed to beat up on bad ones, and the AL has some real stinkers – the 6 worst MLB teams by fangraphs projections after the Marlins (who may not count as MLB), including 3 in their division.
I was just going by gut, so I decided to check …
The last 12 teams with between 94 and 96 wins (2013-18), against foes who finished at least .500:
— Averaged 41.9 wins and 35.5 losses.
That’s a .541 W%, or 87.7 wins per 162.
— 10 teams were at least 2 games over .500, one was .500 even, one was under.
— 9 were at least 3 games over, 7 at least 4 games over, and 6 at least 5 games over.
So, no, playing .500 against teams at .500+ doesn’t much correlate with a 95-win season. Of course, specific divisions and leagues are significant variables.
When this posted, MIN were on pace for 37-37 vs. .500+, so 95 wins would take 58-30 or better vs. sub-.500, which is at least a .659 W%.
Let’s see how those prior 12 teams fared against sub-.500:
— Average 53.3 wins, 31.4 losses, .629 W%
— Only 3 logged at least 58 such wins.
— 4 had at least .659 W%
— Just one reached both thresholds.
I’d say 3 of those 12 teams built to 94-96 wins MAINLY by beating up weak teams: the Nats of 2014 and ‘16, and the 2014 Dodgers. You can make your own comparison of those divisions and this year’s ALC. But it’s pretty uncommon to reach 95 wins or so by that route.
Also, the AL is projected to have more teams finish under .500 than above it by the end of the season, anyway, especially when you remove the Twins themselves from the equation.
I love the term ‘mathemagician’ used by Dan!
Reddit’s takeaway from this piece is apparently that I think the Minnesota Twins are Nazis.
https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesotatwins/comments/bmqxsx/fangraphs_cleveland_is_now_the_underdog/
Kepler was born in Germany, so I guess it checks out?
Then again, no one who speaks German could be an evil man.
I’m not saying this because I’m a Tigers fan, my team isn’t fighting the same fight the Indians are. But I really hope the Indians fall flat on their faces for taking the division for granted. They did nothing to improve their team, they assumed the division was in the bag, Minny would be a cute wild card team, and they’d get another opportunity to fail in the playoffs for the 100th time. Keep doing what you’re doing Twins, it’s very impressive.
Regression may hit hard for the Twins with Polanco and Garver already exceeding their zips projections with BABIPs of .362 and .390 (!) respectively.
Baseball Propectus has the division odds at 55% Twins, 45% Tribe, which seems much more reasonable than the 70-30 FG Odds.
If those guys keep hitting the ball like they are and BABIP regression drops Polanco from a 180 wRC+ and Garver from a 200 wRC+ to like 135 each… Welll, I’m pretty OK with that.
I really doubt that France was projected to win WWII by 13 games. Nobody thought they were THAT much better than Germany.
The article misses a couple of aces in the hole held by the Twins.
1. Sano is coming back. If he’s fixed, that’s a big gain.
2. The Twins have many more trade chips for a mid-season acquisition. In fact, if the Indians do decide to rebuild and put Lindor on the table, Royce Lewis could be the best headliner any team could offer.
As a twins fan I got this winter what I wanted. Joe Mauer….gone, big bopper to replace him. Call Nelly Cruz old all you want he’s changed the dynamic of the Twins. Instead of some 10 pitch single I front of the left fielder we now have a slugger. It has changed how the guys around him are getting pitched. While I may not have added Cron and just kept Austin the moves the Twins have made are working and they were inexpensive. You guys are also forgetting the depth the Twins have…Austidillo can rake and Sano will certainly be an offensive upgrade over Marwin. If we could give only give Buxton Austidillo’s hitting skills and Cal Ripken’s durability he might score 150 runs.