The Francisco Lindor Effect Is Ridiculous
The Indians have won 10 games in a row! That’s really good, and it’s allowed them to storm out in front in the American League Central. Sure, things can change in a hurry — 10 games ago, the Indians and the Royals were tied. But there’s no sense in just dismissing whole hot streaks, and the Indians now have one of the better records in baseball. For a few years, they’ve gotten some preseason stat hype, and now they resemble an actual contender. A contender that, mind you, has been doing almost all of this without Michael Brantley. Not bad.
I wrote last week about how the Indians’ patchwork outfield has overachieved. That’s been a part of this success. Of course, the rotation has also been critical, and now it looks like even Trevor Bauer might be figuring something out. On the bases, the Indians have been remarkably good, so that’s a quiet strength of theirs. I want to take this opportunity to call attention to another. For a while, the Indians were known for being horrible in the field. Last season, they turned that around. This season, they’ve been up to something special.
My focus is going to be on grounders in particular, because I want to show you the kind of difference Francisco Lindor can make. A month and a half ago, I posted an InstaGraphs about the Cubs defending grounders. At that point, the Cubs led baseball in lowest slugging percentage allowed on grounders, according to Baseball-Reference. At that point, of course, the Cubs led baseball in lots of stuff. Anyway, since then, the season sample size has doubled. Here’s the new big-league landscape.
In first place, now, we have the Cleveland Indians, edging out the Cubs and Red Sox. The Cubs have been good! The Red Sox have been good. The Indians have been a little bit better, by this measure. Grounders are almost exclusively about the infield, so we can say the Indians’ infield has been terrific. They rate well enough, too, by DRS and UZR, but those numbers can get confused by the various shifts. I like looking at the team picture when I can. Slugging allowed is slugging allowed, and it doesn’t tell you any lies.
How would the Indians’ performance stack up in recent history? Using the Play Index, I examined the past decade. For every team, I found slugging allowed on grounders, then I factored in the league-average slugging allowed on grounders, to calculate a SLG- number. In the table, you’ll see the top 10. As should always be noted, it’s important to point out this season isn’t half over, so numbers will move. But this is for the sake of perspective.
| Team | Season | GB SLG | League GB SLG | SLG- |
| Athletics | 2014 | 0.223 | 0.268 | 83 |
| Blue Jays | 2007 | 0.226 | 0.267 | 85 |
| Indians | 2016 | 0.224 | 0.263 | 85 |
| Padres | 2007 | 0.231 | 0.267 | 87 |
| Blue Jays | 2008 | 0.222 | 0.256 | 87 |
| Giants | 2014 | 0.233 | 0.268 | 87 |
| Athletics | 2010 | 0.221 | 0.253 | 87 |
| Cubs | 2016 | 0.23 | 0.263 | 87 |
| Red Sox | 2016 | 0.231 | 0.263 | 88 |
| Blue Jays | 2011 | 0.226 | 0.256 | 88 |
If the Indians were to finish like this, they’d be third-best by this measure in the decade. They’ve been 15% better than average, which is fairly near to the 2014 A’s. Three teams are represented from just this season, which is a reminder of the limited sample sizes. They could also just be really good infields. Numbers can always be revisited down the line.
Once I get going with numbers, it’s hard for me to stop. So now I want to show you a little information from StatCorner, which issues team-scale reports. StatCorner has a team runs-above-average statistic for grounders. So far I’ve focused on slugging allowed, but StatCorner also folds in errors and whatnot. It’s not perfect, but it’s fairly complete, and it’s a solid estimator. In the plot below, check out the Indians’ infield over the past decade. This is where they’ve come in relative to average against grounders, and for the 2016 number, I’ve expressed it in RAA per 162 games.
It couldn’t possibly be any clearer when Francisco Lindor showed up. I don’t want to say this is all just about him, because any infield is always more than just the shortstop, but Lindor has been absolutely critical. Before Lindor came around, the Indians fluctuated around average. They did that for years. As soon as Lindor arrived, the Indians took off, and this year they’re on an unbelievable pace. StatCorner has the Indians on track to be about 82 runs better than average against grounders. The highest team mark in the decade is +70 runs, belonging to the 2007 Blue Jays. The 2013 Orioles are in fifth, at +51. The Indians are already at +38 — that would rank them 14th in the decade, even though they haven’t played half their schedule. You see how this is astonishing.
Extreme paces tend not to keep up. That’s the nature of extremes. So the Indians could well fall off this pace. Separately, as much as Lindor is phenomenal, the Indians’ infield contains other players, and the defenders aren’t in control of their shifts. This is a team thing, more than it’s a player thing, so I don’t want to make it all about the shortstop. But that shortstop is a true difference-maker. With Lindor at the center of it, this year’s Indians have welcomed opposing ground balls. That’s helped to drive the team’s success, and if certain paces continue, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Lindor could win himself an MVP.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Actually, if this keeps up it’s very possible for Lindor to be MVP, if voters go by the typical combo of team and player performance. Only Machado has the edge over him right now in those two areas.
Don’t disagree that those two are great shortstops on teams that are winning more than they lose, but I do disagree that you left Xander out of your list that is supposed to include the typical combo of team and player performance at SS in the AL.
D’oh! As a Red Sox fan I can’t believe I didn’t give Xander a mention. Probably because of their position in the standings, which I really focused on heavily. Also, if the Sox do work their way back towards the top he’d be more likely to split votes with JBJ, Ortiz, Mookie, etc.
If the season ended today and I had to bet on who the Top 5 would be in the AL MVP voting, I’d bet Machado, Lindor, Desmond, Xander, and Altuve.
Eh hem.
What kind of a bizarre statistic is slugging percentage on grounders to focus on? It looks like you wanted to find something the indians are #1 in at the moment.
I could see using batting average. You could maybe use slugging for corner infielders as there is a chance they prevent doubles/triples down the line.
I suppose you could argue that if Lindor is covering more ground at short, then the third baseman can hug the line, thus preventing doubles. Hard to prove that that, however.
I would assume a good shortstop also saves doubles on hard-hit balls that otherwise would’ve gone into the gap in the outfield
Hard to remember the last time i saw a shortstop do this.
Lol, I’ll have to check to see how many leaping catches of line drives that Bogaerts made last year with Hanley in left.
You’ve never seen anyone get a double on a grounder through short? It’s not super frequent, but I have certainly seen players get to second base on grounders that are hit both past the shortstop and second baseman. A deflection off the SS glove will do it, or just a fast guy at bat where the outfielders have to go a little ways to grab it. Heck, here’s Dee Gordon getting a double on a ground ball to second that didn’t even leave the infield:
http://www.si.com/mlb/strike-zone/2014/04/26/video-dee-gordon-infield-double-dodgers-rockies
Here’s a grounder to short for a Puig double:
http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/6479266/v29728287/nymlad-puig-gets-into-scoring-position-with-double
I was going to post this, minus the ad-hominem. At first when I read through this I thought maybe I had misremembered Lindor’s position, since I can only imagine you get doubles off of ground balls towards corner infielders.
The Indians are awesome by grounder batting average, too. Slugging doesn’t change very much since extra-base hits on grounders are pretty rare. It just captures an additional element. And ultimately this is about the infield as a whole, and not *just* Lindor, even though Lindor is the biggest component.
It doesn’t look to me like the article is about the whole infield at all. You don’t even mention anyone other thar lindor, you just say that the infield became great when lindor showed up. And opposing teams slugging average seems like a completely bizarre statistic to focus on when trying to demonstrate the defensive value of a shortstop. Can you imagine a scout going to a manager and saying ‘there’s this really great shortshop i saw, opponent’s slugging percentage on ground balls is the lowest i’ve ever seen’. Sounds pretty strange. A 1st or 3rd baseman okay, but a shortstop? It’s so weird that i could only guess that there was some other reason. Can you explain what that reason is other than ‘adding another element’? Adding other elements can confuse things rather than clarifying them.
The difference between opposing slugging and opposing batting average is incredibly small. And there wouldn’t be anything weird about looking at opposing batting average, or BABIP, right? After all, that just measures the rate at which grounders turn into hits. Slugging adds just a hint of something else, since you don’t want to give up big hits down the line. That would be a silly thing to focus on if I were only interested in Lindor, but I’m not. I’m interested in the whole infield. Lindor just happens to be the biggest part of the turnaround. I don’t think that’s controversial. He’s only part of it, but he’s the biggest part, no question.
If there’s almost no difference, why not give the batting average statistics also? Would the indians (and when you wrote the earlier article the cubs) be first in that also?
I teach and do research in a research university and i review scientific papers and research proposals, and a big part of this is checking how researchers are using statistics. If a researcher uses a new and unproven statistic, the question is why, and if it’s particularly used to demonstrate a particular point, then that’s suspicious and methodologicallt unsound. Both times you’ve used this statistic, it’s been in the context of an article the point of which was to demonstrate that the team which did best by thus particular metric was good. That’s suspicious.
Since you teach, do and review research for a research university, I’m sure you could figure out how to look up AVG on grounders..
Indians tied with the Cubs for first… Giants, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cards, Rangers following… so it doesn’t make a lot of difference, but even so, I’m not sure why one would suspect AVG would trump SLG in this case.
Because SLG takes into consideration extra-base hits, grounders which go for extra-base hits are normally hard-hit balls down the lines, and this is affected by 1st basemen, 3rd basemen, left fielders, right fielders, and pitchers–but not shortstops.
The title of this article mentions ‘the francisco lindor effect’. The final line of the article mentions him as an mvp candidate. No other member of the infield is even mentioned by name. There is no way that this article can be said to be about the indians infield in general. The element added by counting slg rather than avg would seem to reflect the abilities of the 3bman and 1bman, and maybe the lf and rf (in the sense of getting to hard hit grounders down the line fast and getting them in to hold the batter to a single) much more than the shortstop. Or maybe as some have suggested here the ability of the pitchers to not give up hard-hit grounders. But to use this as the basis for evaluating a shortstop makes no sense.
I think Jeff may have buried the lede by putting that final graph of annual runs saved towards the end. That’s the real story behind the title.
OMG. shut up
Completely agree with you. Lindor is so special on defense that he allows the rest of the defense to play to the fact that he has them covered in ways few other players can. Putting a spotlight on the biggest reason for the turnaround is apt and well-done here.
I assume this is a joke. Brandon Crawford is defensively better than Lindor in the great majority of stats (Def, UZR, UZR/150, RngR, DPR, RZR, DRS, rGDP, and rGFP–Lindor is only better at rPM, OOZ, and ErrR), I look at pretty much every Giant game and know who affects who and how, and I would never make such a claim about him. Let’s try to keep this discussion based on statistical facts, okay?
fart
johnforthegiants is 8 upvotes away from joining the 30/30 club for comments.
At this time John is a few ups and a few downs away from the 30/50 club. A group that includes ’87 Eric Davis, ’90 Barry Lamar Bonds, and ’12 Mike Trout was 1 steal away. Very prestigious group, I’m impressed.
When using your slugging approach, I wonder if you should account for the quality of ground balls a team is seeing. For instance, Indians pitchers rank 20th in GB exit velocity and 23rd in GB launch angle. There is definitely a correlation between GB slugging and these two variables–it’s just a question of whether or not the differences in team averages for launch angle and exit velocity are significant enough to affect the slugging percentage results.
This makes me wonder, to what extent are we misunderstanding baseball defense by attempting to isolate individual performance? We seem to be working on baseball assumptions, (defense is the sum of a bunch of individual performances) when it might be more akin to basketball, where because of the team/cooperative element, the unit can be greater than the sum of its parts, or one star player can elevate the rest of a below average unit. Like, is Francisco Lindor a type of LeBron James of baseball defense, where everything and everyone are just better when he’s there? Jason Kipnis had an established track record as a below-average defensive second baseman, and all of a sudden, upon Lindor reaching the majors, he’s above average. Is that on Kipnis, or is Lindor actually improving Kipnis’s defense also? Are there any other fielders who have a similar effect?
“Like, is Francisco Lindor a type of LeBron James of baseball defense, where everything and everyone are just better when he’s there?”
No, he’s not. The issue is that defensive stats are incredibly volatile (a.k.a., non-predictive) in baseball — even a couple years’ worth. So mining for something like the “Lindor effect” will always produce a couple guys who appear to be creating it. It’s the nature of variance.
The bottom line is that our methods for evaluating and predicting defense are incredibly primitive. This is fine in and of itself, but when writers fail to realize this and think that shortstops who score well using incredibly flawed metrics are the greatest of all time, it’s not good.
I was thinking about Lindor as the MVP today and was hoping August would have a chat so I could ask him what he thinks Lindor would have to do offensively to become the front runner for the honor. He’s currently on pace to have a 20/20 season while slashing north of .310/.370/.475, good for a 128 wRC+, on top of all that D(efense). If the Stros don’t make the playoffs and the O’s fizzle out, he has to be the MVP right? Or would it still go to Altuve or Machado? I know it doesn’t really matter, but this kid is phenomenal for all the reasons Jeff named…I said to my wife last night, “we’re so lucky to be alive” (Trout, Kershaw, Harper, Donaldson, all the shortstops) and she thought I was kidding. If I use a non-baseball-centric perspective, which I should, I can see how that’s silly sounding, but damnit, I meant it.
I wouldn’t discount a David Ortiz retirement vote for MVP if he continues to hit at an advanced rate.
But, I agree with your sentiments that it is an absolutely fantastic time to be following baseball (and you didn’t even mention a personal favorite of the non-Lindor category in Arenado and there are several others too).
I feel fairly confident stating that Lindor will not win the MVP. He’s 6th now in WAR and as we know, voters don’t care THATmuch about WAR. Certainly more than they used to, but still not that much. Heck, he’s 3rd in the AL in middle infielder WAR behind Bogaerts and Altuve who are both on winning teams that figure to be playoff contenders at the end. Then there’s Big Papi whose baserunning and defense won’t matter much if he finishes.335/35/125 while leading the Red Sox to the post-season.
Sorry, don’t see it myself.
However Lindor is turning out to be a fantastic SS. I didn’t think he could maintain the offensive numbers from last year but he’s doing pretty much the same thing. SS i stacked right now for sure – Correa, Lindor, Bogaerts, Seager, Machado (if he sticks there eventually), Crawford, etc.
Lessee. Either Lindor is magically stopping grounders down each line, the pitching staff is allowing fewer hard hit grounders, the corner IFs are playing closer to the pull-side lines (most likely cause by far), or the corner OFs are playing deeper and more toward the lines.
But let’s go with the magician angle.
Francisco Lindor is a huge portion of this equation, but also realize that there are a few other contributing factors in play:
1. Lonnie Chisenhall was moved off the hot corner to be replaced by a combination of Giovanny Urshela, Jose Ramirez, and Juan Uribe who are all far better defensively.
2. Carlos Santana started playing much more consistently at first base in July of 2015, but the position has also been supplemented defensively with Jerry Sands, Chris Johnson, and Mike Napoli (none whom have wowed, but have been decent enough).
3. Jason Kipnis has remained relatively healhty over this stretch.
4. Since we are discussing SLG, then it is also prevalent that the Indians OF defense has seen a significant upgrade in this timeframe (2016 with a combination of Chisenhall, Naquin, Davis, Byrd, and Jose Ramirez – though Davis and Naquin got off to rough starts their issues were on fly balls, not relays off grounders).
5. 2016 has seen the Indians SP dramatically increase their GB% as a group. Quite possibly to play into this increased efficiency, but I wonder if the increased chances also might help with the overall numbers?
As a group the GB% hasn’t really changed much. It has gone up 3% from last year, but was pretty much the same in 2014 and 2013 as it is 2016. Maybe we can overlook Kluber’s dominance in 2014 to check for a correlation but I don’t think it varies enough.
All the other points are spot on though. I thought they still had Chisenhall spot at 3B but I was sorely mistaken from my comment above. I’ll leave it unedited.
Thank you, appreciated. And, GB% is more pronounced when you look at the main SP the Indians use:
Kluber 42.45 to 49.7%
Bauer 39.2% to 50%
Salazar 43.9% to 48.1%
Tomlin 37.5% to 41.1%
Carrasco 51.2% to 51.6%
Now *this* is an interesting comment. Any idea why this might have happened? Have they pitches with different frequencies?
Both the Pirates and Indians tell all their pitchers to create GBs. The transition usually takes a couple years.
I read the boxscores each day and I can’t help but notice that Ramirez subs for Uribe in late-inning defense (often moving from left). Since Uribe has been a plus thirdbaseman I can only surmise that Ramirez is even better.
That’s a possible explanation, but Uribe also has a 74 wRC+, and Ramirez isn’t particularly great in the outfield. Might be the team wants a better outfielder later in the game, and prefers Ramirez’s bat to Uribe’s.
Jose Ramirez has much better range than Uribe at 3B. He had seemingly beaten him out for the spot in early May as he got more and more playing time until the Brantley re-injury forced Francona to keep using J-Ram in LF.
I think would there also be a way to use hard-hit data as a supplement? Med and Hard contact rates are pretty much the same as last three seasons (if anything, Hard-hit has gone up 3% in the last 3 years).
Is there anyway to differentiate hard-hit grounders? I can’t use statistics but I can say this is the first season that they have their entire rotation throwing much better and more fluid than in the past. Possible the contact hitters are making, even when good, are more likely to be hit in better spots due to the pitching performance/shift scouting routines, whereas in the past pitching mistakes, leaving pitches in the zone, lead to better groundball hits.
I don’t disregard the effect. In honesty, the Indians have gotten much younger in the infield, are two years removed from the Santana 3rd/1st experiment, and were able to utilize better defensive players with bats like Chisenhall over Aviles. Having these guys consistently behind the pitcher builds stability with the battery being more comfortable in pitching to contact, and infielders who all can rely on each other due to experience and continuity I don’t feel they had for a real long time.
My point is, they had nowhere to go but up, but also wonder if how the pitchers are throwing better together for the first time (especially since their use of two-seam and cutter has increased for Salazar and Bauer and believe other pitchers across the board; team percentage use of change-up and cutter increased 4% from last season). these pitches get hammered located above the zone, but jamming a hitter or missing the sweet spot builds up some easy grounders.
Just wonder if increased use of hitting bats for softer ground-ball contact, not seen in the percentage due to lack of change, might also be a catalyst along with F Lindy.
There’s precedence for an MVP winning based on playing great defense and being a ‘leader’ on a winning team. Looking around the AL at likely playoff teams, the MVP is going to be on the Red Sox (Ortiz?) or Rangers (um… Desmond?) or Cleveland. Maybe it could come from a Wild Card, but just looking at the projected division winners, there isn’t a clear cut guy who jumps off the page screaming ‘give him the MVP!’ I could absolutely see the narrative as ‘Lindor singlehandedly improved the Cleveland defense, which improved the run prevention, and his offense is at an All-Star level, so he led his team to the playoffs.’
As a Blue Jays fan I am perplexed how the 2007, 2008, and 2011 teams made that leaderboard…..I am pretty sure we had Troy Glaus and Royce Clayton on the left side of the infield…
I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the turf? Maybe.
SS John Mcdonald. He was a vacuum.
A soft-groundball artist named Roy might have had a little to do with it. The whole concept of using SLG allowed to grade infielders is terrible. It really would have saved everyone some time had he never written the article in the first place.
Am I reading your chart incorrectly, or did the Indians’ defensive spike begin a full season before Lindor joined the team (halfway through the 2015 campaign).
It looks like it went back up above average before Lindor’s arrival; the exchange of Asdrubal Cabrera for Jose Ramirez pre-Lindor was a fairly big positive to begin with, where Jose was at least average while Asdrubal was well below average
I don’t think the line is meaningful, just the data point that represents each year. So, 2014 was below average, 2015 was very good (half-season of Lindor) and 2016 is phenomenal.
Fun “Best SS Crop of All Time” Fact:
Of the current top 10 position players in WAR, 4 are shortstops 23 years old or younger. Three other 23-or-younger shortstops are on track for a full season WAR of 2.5 or better:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=ss&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2016&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=14,23&filter=&players=0
I’m not going to argue with this because, per observation, something very similar happened in Baltimore when Machado took over third. It improved the entire infield defense.
Friendly reminder to any SS defense article, Simmons has 3 more DRS than Lindor in about 57% of his innings played.
in the last 365 days only Trout and Donaldson have been more valuable. And it is CLOSE
When you see something change like it appears that the Tribal defense has, you look for what happened to cause the change. Aside from Lindor’s arrival, did anything ELSE change? Any other players change positions or playing time? Any added use of shifts (this would not be surprising). Coincidence does not necessarily equal causation; what else can it be?
Literally too many things to list. Better pitching, refusing to pitch down and in, better OF defense, better corner IF defense, defensive positioning, variance. That’s just a small sample of the things that go into creating an abnormal SLG-allowed number over a couple seasons.
But apparently,
Al Gore:Internet :: Lindor:Groundball Doubles Prevention