2020 ZiPS Projections: Cleveland Indians

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cleveland Indians.

Batters

The bad news is that the Indians have a very run-of-the-mill offense with an outfield that has been, is, and ought to be a significant hole, one that they’ve done little to fill. The good news is that the Indians have a very run-of-the-mill offense with an outfield that has been, is, and ought to be, a significant hole, one that they’ve done little to fill, but an offense that also features Francisco Lindor and José Ramírez.

There’s little doubt at this point that Lindor, the slick-fielding shortstop prospect whose bat profiled a bit like Luis Alicea’s, has evolved into Francisco Lindor, the best shortstop in baseball. After all, Manny Machado‘s a third baseman, Carlos Correa has an injury record to overcome, Corey Seager’s a step behind, and Xander Bogaerts can’t match the glove. Alicea was a perfectly good player for a long time, but this Lindor is on a Hall of Fame trajectory, with ZiPS now projecting him to finish with around 80 wins, a .279/.339/.490 career line, 443 homers, and 2600 hits. He’s become the kind of player Cleveland will have a hard time doing without, which is why fans of the 2020 team should be worried about the trade rumors.

ZiPS is largely unconcerned with José Ramírez’s decidedly mixed results in 2019. Given his age and history, it would be surprising if 2019’s overall line represented a new, much less exciting baseline expectation. It’s not completely unheard of for a young star infielder to simply disappear in their mid-to-late 20s — Cleveland has had direct experience with that in Carlos Baerga — but it’s not the norm. ZiPS believes that DHing will suit Franmil Reyes and that Carlos Santana can age gracefully after his 2019 comeback season. Cesar Hernandez is no star at second, but he’s a serviceable stopgap and an improvement over hoping Jason Kipnis will turn back the clock five years.

The outfield, unfortunately, is still a mess, and ZiPS doesn’t see the team getting a league-average performance at any position. The system is prepared to believe in Jordan Luplow, both because of his offensive improvements and the fact that his small sample of defensive stats in the majors is consistent with ZiPS’ minor league estimates.

Pitchers

The rotation is one place that Cleveland really could have used an extra arm. ZiPS is hardly going to abandon Shane Bieber after projecting him as a top 15 starter out of the blue, so it shouldn’t be a shock that the projections still like him after that actually happened. Similarly, Mike Clevinger is another top-of-the-rotation candidate, and a full season of him would dull a lot of the pain from the team no longer having prime-year Corey Kluber. There’s obviously some uncertainty around Carlos Carrasco, but ZiPS still thinks Cookie will be one of the best third starters in the majors.

But there’s a drop to the rest of the rotation, and even if Cleveland signing Gerrit Cole was a completely unrealistic result, I’d have liked the team to go after an innings-eater such as Rick Porcello — who would likely be more useful to Cleveland than to most teams — or take a chance on someone like Alex Wood. Right now, the difference between what ZiPS projects for the Minnesota Twins and the Cleveland Indians is Josh Donaldson; it would be cruelly poetic (projectic?) if being one player short was what kept Cleveland out of the playoffs again in 2020.

What ZiPS does really like is the bullpen. James Karinchak’s command is shakier than Thomas Keefer’s, but he’s going to strike out an obscene number of batters with that fastball and knuckle-curve. The only reliever the computer is really down on is Adam Cimber. That makes me sad because he’s both a submariner and shares a name with one of Caesar’s assassins, which amuses a history nut like me. ZiPS also likes some of the spare relievers Cleveland has hanging around at the back of the depth chart, like James Hoyt and Phil Maton. Emmanuel Clase gets a terrific projection for a very young reliever with limited major league experience, but given that he was the important piece in the Kluber trade (even a much reduced Kluber), I can hardly claim ZiPS is pulling this one out of the blue.

Prospects

ZiPS remains downright frosty on Bobby Bradley, a first base prospect ZiPS has never seen developing into an offensive force. It still doesn’t, at no point projecting Bradley to have even a .750 OPS as his baseline expectation during his career. If ZiPS is frosty on Bradley, it’s downright heat-death-of-the-universey on Jake Bauers, who while technically no longer a prospect, remains the age of one. Combining major league performance with minor league translations, ZiPS has yet to see a Bauers season as having a .400 SLG or a .700 OPS.

One player who ZiPS really does like is Nolan Jones. His 2020 projection already puts him in the middle of the league at third base. ZiPS takes the side that Jones will be able to handle third defensively in the majors, and his zDEF minor league estimates have improved by leaps and bounds, from -10 in a half-year in 2017 to -4 runs in 2018, to three runs in the black in 2019.

One pedantic note for 2020: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth charts playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2020 due to injury, and players who were released in 2019. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in June to form a ska-cowpunk Luxembourgian bubblegum pop-death metal band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article.

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