Is Cleveland Being Too Conservative With Francisco Lindor?

There’s a lot going on with the Cleveland Indians right now. They’re not playing to expectations, but the expectations remain. The team has the highest projected rest-of-season win percentage, and our playoff odds have them just a hair underneath the Kansas City Royals, who have played far better than Cleveland this year.

The Indians haven’t really played that poorly, though. On a component level, they’re doing a lot of things correctly. Their offense and baserunning are top notch, as is their starting rotation. For all the fits Cody Allen gave the team at the season’s start, their reliever FIP- is middle of the pack. Their defense has been a problem, though. By Def, they rank 28th; they are 26th by UZR/150 and 25th by DRS. As it is pondered how to fix the Indians’ defense, attention obviously turns to the farm system, where top prospect Francisco Lindor currently resides. As one with flashy leather tools on his tool belt, it would seem natural that Lindor would be summoned to help the cause — especially when the incumbent shortstop Jose Ramirez isn’t hitting all that well. Is that fair? Are the Indians being too conservative with Lindor?

First, can Lindor fix the Indians defense? Yes and no. On the one hand, the team’s only plus defenders so far are their catchers, Jason Kipnis and Lonnie Chisenhall. The rest of the lot is in the red, so Lindor should be able to help somewhere, right? While some of that can be chalked up to an incredibly limited sample size (like the eight innings Nick Swisher played in right field), players like Michael Bourn and David Murphy may have lost a step. Perhaps it’s time to talk about benching Bourn, since he’s not hitting, fielding or running the bases very well, but Murphy is rocking a sweet 130 wRC+. The same is true for two other defensive sieves, Michael Brantley and Carlos Santana. Neither of them can be replaced in the lineup, and the team simply has to live with their results in the field.

Let’s get back to Bourn for a moment. Were contracts not a factor, the team could easily move on from Bourn or Swisher and install Tyler Holt as the team’s center fielder. He has the defensive pedigree, so at least the Indians would be getting plus production from him on one side of the ledger. That doesn’t really help Lindor, and it would be odd to promote him to play at a position he’s never played before when the incumbent at his position is so disappointing. That would be Ramirez. Ramirez has improved his walk rate and is sporting a god-awful .208 BABIP (fifth-lowest in the majors), and that should come around eventually, despite the fact he’s hitting far fewer line drives than he did last season. But it’s June, and Ramirez may not have the chops to play shortstop. Lindor does. He’s hitting well in Triple-A, after not hitting well there last year as a 20-year-old.

So why the wait? Are the Indians being too conservative before they call up the Puerto Rico native? To figure this out, I looked at the last six years of our top prospects lists, including this year’s (so, back to 2010). Lindor has been a top 20 prospect three years in a row, which is abnormal. Over this period, the only other position players to join him in that regard are Jesus Montero, Wil Myers and Miguel Sano (who was set back a year by injury). In all, there were 42 position players who were top 20 prospects at least once. Of them, four have yet to reach Triple-A — Byron Buxton, J.P. Crawford, Alex Jackson and Sano. Another four are in Triple-A — Javier Baez (575 PAs and counting as of Thursday), Carlos Correa (97), Corey Seager (130) and Lindor (402). Here is how much time the other 34 spent at Triple-A:

Triple-A PAs for Top Position Player Prospects, 2010 to 2015

Player	Triple-A PA	Stick Age
Joey Gallo	0	21*
Manny Machado	0	19
Giancarlo Stanton	0	20
Christian Yelich	9	22
Jason Heyward	13	20
Addison Russell	46	21
Bryce Harper	84	19
Mike Trout	93	20
Eric Hosmer	118	21
Jorge Soler	127	22
Blake Swihart	145	23
Jurickson Profar	166	20
Mike Zunino	229	22
Carlos Santana	246	24
Xander Bogaerts	256	20
Brandon Belt	273	23
Pedro Alvarez	278	23
Gregory Polanco	314	22
George Springer	327	24
Kris Bryant	330	23
Buster Posey	359	23
Travis d’Arnaud	440	25
Oscar Taveras	448	22
Justin Smoak	462	23
Alcides Escobar	487	22
Freddie Freeman	519	20
Domonic Brown	531	25
Joc Pederson	553	22
Dustin Ackley	568	23
Devin Mesoraco	576	24
Wil Myers	728	22
Jesus Montero	967	21
Desmond Jennings	992	24
Chris Carter	1277	25

A couple of notes. First, “stick age” is the year that the player stuck in the majors. I put an asterisk next to Joey Gallo because it’s too early to tell if he’s going to stick, though he probably will. For some of these guys, particularly Domonic Brown, this was a judgment call. Same with Trout, who I say did not stick until 20 years old. (If you remember, Trout came up toward the end of his age-19 season, then was sent back to Triple-A the next April.) You’ll have to trust me on the other ages.

The average for the group is 352 PAs, and the median is 296. But the main takeaway is these guys are all over the map. When we see a guy like Gallo promoted to the majors without ever having played Triple-A and he homers in his first two games, it’s natural to wonder what Lindor is doing in Columbus, Ohio. But as we see here, there have been successful players who have logged more than 500 PAs at Triple-A before getting the call.

The one thing that gives me a little pause is that when we break out the six middle infielders on this list — Dustin Ackley, Xander Bogaerts, Alcides Escobar, Manny Machado, Jurickson Profar and Addison Russell — the average drops down to 254 PAs, presumably because their defense was deemed good enough to carry them even if their bat wasn’t up to snuff. Including Machado is a judgment call, of course, since he hasn’t actually been a middle infielder in the majors. But even if you take him out of the equation, the 305 PA average is lower than in general.

This gives us the sense that the Indians have been a little conservative with Lindor, but what about compared to his teammates? We see Santana on the list at 246 PAs, but what about a some others?

• Jason Kipnis: 400
• Michael Brantley: 844
• Jose Ramirez: 277
• Lonnie Chisenhall: ?

That’s pretty much it. The Indians haven’t had a lot of position players come up and stick in recent years. I put a question mark next to Chisenhall because he’s a bit confounding. He had 292 PAs in Triple-A before his major league debut. Then he came up for 223 PAs at the big-league level in 2011. Then in 2012, he spent the first two months of the season in Triple-A before graduating to the majors for most of the rest of the year (though he was hurt for part of the season). Then in 2013, he started the year in the majors, only to be sent down for a month from mid-May to mid-June, and then he finally stuck for good. So you could go as low as 292, or as high as 543. Either way, Lindor isn’t approaching the peak, which was Brantley — and all of his Triple-A PAs came in the Indians’ system, in case you were wondering. But the bottom line is that there is no clear pattern in this small sample of players.

Francisco Lindor could help the Indians with his glove right now, and perhaps his bat — if Ramirez doesn’t start piling up enough hits to keep the wolves at bay. With Ramirez not hitting at all, and other minor leaguers like Joey Gallo coming up and hitting the ball to the moon, the perception can become that Lindor is being kept down unnecessarily. That may be true in a few weeks, but it isn’t clear at this stage that the Indians are being too conservative with Lindor. He is just in his age-21 season, after all, and he should have plenty of big league baseball in front of him. And while Lindor should help, he isn’t going to cure the defensive ills of Michael Bourn, Michael Brantley, David Murphy or Carlos Santana. Still, if the Indians are going to catch the Royals and/or Twins, they’ll need all the help they can get, so hopefully the clock is ticking to get Lindor to the majors.