Cleveland’s Left Side Is the Best Side

At this point, it should surprise absolutely nobody paying even the remotest attention to the doings and transpirings of Major League Baseball that Jose Ramirez is having an MVP-type season. Ramirez may not, in fact, actually win the MVP award: Mookie Betts and Mike Trout have had similarly valuable seasons, while J.D. Martinez’s pursuit of the Triple Crown remains active. That said, one could easily make the argument that a very good defensive third baseman who’s produced a .292/.403/.607, 166 wRC+, and 8.1 WAR with another month go is clearly at least MVP-adjacent.

Perhaps the most telling tribute to Ramirez’s season is that he has somehow managed to overshadow Francisco Lindor’s own work a bit. The towering presence of Lindor’s talent and pedigree had previously — like sneaking a shot by Dikembe Mutombo — made such a thing seem unlikely.

If Ramirez is a superhero, though, Lindor’s more partner rather than sidekick. He gets to drive the Batmobile, solve the caper in 1890s London, and sing “Twist and Shout” in the Von Steuben Day Parade. Lindor ranks fourth in the American League in WAR among position players, hitting .291/.367/.533 and playing his typical interstellar defense at short. Some cities are built on rock ‘n’ roll, some on efficiency of infrastructure due to increased density, but Cleveland’s run-scoring is built on the backs of their shortstop and third-base pair.

To say that Lindor and Ramirez are a dangerous pair isn’t a flaming hot take. They’ve been so productive, however, that the time has come to ask not where the rank relative to their peers but to other shortstop/third-base combinations in major-league history. To answer this, I went through every team’s SS/3B pair — as defined by the players who received the most time at each position for their teams — since the beginning of the sport. I used their seasonal numbers because, after all, if Ramirez plays some scattered games at second base, as he did in 2016, does that really diminish how good the pair is?

To keep one partner from carrying too much of the burden for each pair, I ranked the SS/3B pairs by the geometric mean of their seasonal WAR. I’m aware that geometric mean goes wacky-tobaccy when one of the partners has a negative WAR. In this case, the pair with the most combined WAR with one player below replacement level is the 1985 Red Sox, with Wade Boggs (.368/.450/.478, 8.8 WAR) and Jackie Gutierrez (.218/.250/.273, -1.1 WAR). With them well out of even the top 200, I didn’t have to worry about that.

Lindor-Ramirez already ranked among the top 20 all-time in a season, with the 15th-best SS/3B season in MLB history last year. With Ramirez counting as a third baseman in 2016, as well, the pair squeeze into the top 100. What you see here is a list full of Hall of Fame talent, near-Hall of Fame talent, and Hall of Famers who happened to be teammates of Frankie Frisch. I had forgotten Jason Bartlett’s crazy season (.320/.389/.490, 5.2 WAR) from 2009 before seeing this table. Fun fact: Bartlett received no MVP votes in 2009, but he did get a weird fifth-place vote in 2008 after producing a .286/.329/.361 with a 1.8 WAR, which caused much internet tooth-gnashing at the time.

For those who like historical ineptitude sprinkled in with their greatness, Jim Levey and Art Scharein of the 1933 St. Louis Browns somehow managed to combine for -6.4 WAR, a number almost unimaginably horrid — imagine having two Chris Davisi at the same time and them being even worse than the real one.

The thing about the above is that we still have some of the 2018 season remaining, with the chance that Lindor and Ramirez can catch another iconic Indian pair, Lou Boudreau and Ken Keltner, for the single-season crown. So, let’s run the table again, with the projected Lindor/Ramirez final results. We’ll also add the 2019-21 ZiPS projections for the duo, with Francisco Lindor currently eligible for free agency after the 2021 season.

If Lindor and Ramirez play up to their projections, they would own five of the top-20 3B/SS seasons in MLB history. Overall, that wouldn’t put them past Boudreau/Keltner, who played nine seasons together as the full-time SS/3B combo for the Indians from 1940 to -49 (Ken Keltner served in the military in 1945). In terms of total WAR for the seasons as a pair, assuming Lindor departs after 2021, Lindor/Ramirez’s projected 81.1 WAR would rank fifth among pairs in MLB history, behind Johnny Logan/Eddie Mathews, Lou Boudreau/Ken Keltner, Bert Campaneris/Sal Bando, and Derek Jeter/Alex Rodriguez. Filling out the top 10 are Larry Bowa/Mike Schmidt, Bill Russell/Ron Cey, Don Kessinger/Ron Santo, Mark Belanger/Brooks Robinson, and Jack Barry/Frank Baker.

Suffice it to say, making certain that they keep Lindor past 2021 is a high priority for Cleveland. Lindor already turned down a long-term extension prior to the 2017 season, rumored to be in the $100 million range. With two more excellent seasons in the bag, the price tag for a Lindor extension isn’t any lighter. If Lindor/Ramirez both make it to Cooperstown someday, it’d be fitting if they were inducted simultaneously, as representatives of the 2015-25 Indians, similar to the Alan Trammell/Lou Whitaker Hall of Fame weekend we never got to have.