Cleveland’s Next Anonymous and Great Third Baseman

After having produced one of the best overall lines on Cleveland’s World Series club and subsequently received a $26 million extension, Jose Ramirez enters the 2017 campaign as a core member of the Indians’ major-league club. For as obvious as that sounds, it represents a departure from his status at this same point last year.

Known as a useful defender with good contact skills, Ramirez also began the 2016 campaign having produced just a 78 wRC+ over his first 635 major-league plate appearances (a number of which he’d compiled while holding Francisco Lindor‘s place before the latter’s promotion). Nevertheless, he exhibited sufficient promise and present-day skill to make the Opening Day club and was used in a multi-positional role over the first four months of Cleveland’s season, recording starts at second base, third base, shortstop, and left field — the majority coming at that last position. When teammate Juan Uribe’s season ended at the end of July, Ramirez assumed third-base duties on a regular basis. Supplementing his contact ability with unprecedented power, Ramirez ultimately produced a nearly five-win season.

Officially speaking, Ramirez is now Cleveland’s starting third baseman. He also retains positional flexibility, however. So when it became clear that Jason Kipnis would have to begin the season on the disabled list, Ramirez represented an obvious choice to slide across the infield. The less obvious choice was who should fill the spot vacated by Ramirez.

One of the solutions to that quandary is utilityman Michael Martinez. Martinez has the benefit and drawback, from Cleveland’s perspective, of being a known commodity. One knows that Martinez can field almost any position. One also knows, however, that he can’t hit sufficiently to support any of them. He’s the Platonic ideal of a replacement player.

The other solution is Yandy Diaz. Signed out of Cuba in 2013 for $300,000, Diaz has been a fixture within the author’s Fringe Five columm, appearing among the top-10 finishers on the arbitrarily calculated leaderboards for that column both in 2015 and 2016. In many ways, Diaz is a clone of Ramirez.

He’s probably not the prospect Ramirez ever was — if for no other reason than he’s already 25. Ramirez, meanwhile, debuted a couple weeks before his 21st birthday. Debut age and career success correlate pretty strongly. And even though Diaz signed as a slightly older player, he didn’t advance with any great speed through the minors. So the pedigrees are a bit different.

As for other elements of the profile, however, there’s quite a bit of similarity. Consider Eric Longenhagen’s comments on Diaz from the former’s prospect list for Cleveland. Please consider even harder the bolded passages.

Diaz’s downward bat path results in unimpactful ground-ball contact and, at age 25, he doesn’t project to hit for the kind of power befitting an everyday corner guy. But he has an excellent eye for the strike zone, runs fairly well, and plays great defense at third and should yield big-league value in a utility role. Diaz has a 70 arm, a great first step over at third, good hands and a quick transfer. There are scouts who think he could play a passable shortstop. He played at several different positions (second base, third, left field, right) this year in preparation for his utility destiny but he’s best, and plus, at third base. His eccentric swing produces very little strong contact, but he takes good at-bats. Some think he could be a low-end regular based on the quality of his approach. Diaz was signed for $300,000.

A contact-heavy offensive approach, plus defense, overall athleticism: this is basically the Jose Ramirez starter package. What’s allowed Ramirez to transcend the “low-end regular” label and become “team fixture” is the addition of some power last year. Diaz has lacked generally lacked that, typically recording isolated-power figures between .080 and .100. The can work in the majors only if it’s complemented by above-average contact skills (which Diaz possesses) and elite defense (which he doesn’t).

Consider, by way of example, the seven qualifiers last year who produced an ISO figure in that range:

Even with an average defensive mark of +7.7 runs, this group couldn’t pull off even an average WAR figure.

However, there’s promise! Diaz definitively broke the .100-ISO threshold last year in his first exposure to Triple-A, recording a career-high .136 mark in 416 plate appearances. Columbus’s park inflates homers and runs, but not to a degree that would account for all of Diaz’s improvement in that area.

And then there’s this spring. Obviously, the sample sizes are insufficient to draw any conclusions from Diaz’s statistical line. However, there are indications that he might be prepared to offer a level of power commensurate with at least average overall production.

Indications like this opposite-field home run, for example:

A single home run isn’t sufficient evidence to outweigh a player’s established levels. But the point here isn’t to indicate that Diaz is a monster power hitter, but rather that he possesses sufficient power now simply to cross the .100-ISO threshold. Because an examination of the 10 qualifiers who resided in the .100-120 range last year produces more promising results:

Even with the inclusion of defensive liabilities such as Yonder Alonso, this group profiles as roughly a league-average one. In light of his contact skills and plus defense at third, that appears well within Diaz’s reach.