Cleveland Indians: What’s a Zim got to do?
By Jim Turvey
Bradley Zimmer is absolutely slaying for the Cleveland Indians right now, but he can’t seem to get a full-time gig on the squad just yet.
Let’s begin this article by noting that Terry Francona has more baseball knowledge in his pinky finger than I will have in my entire body. He’s a true baseball lifer, having been around the sport as a kid because his father was a major leaguer, and he went on to have a 10-year playing career as a first baseman/outfielder for five different teams throughout the 1980s.
He’s been arguably the best manager in baseball for the better part of the past decade, as he led the Red Sox to a pair of World Series titles and brought Cleveland to the brink of their first title in over six decades with their magical run last postseason. His bona fides are as legitimate as you’ll find in the sport today, and he is one of my personal baseball heroes.
That being said, how is Bradley Zimmer not getting full-time at bats and everyday starts for Cleveland?!
For the uninitiated, Zimmer is a 24-year-old rookie center fielder who started the season in Triple-A as the top prospect in Cleveland’s system. Zimmer got the call up to the majors when Abraham Almonte was placed on the 10-day DL in mid-May, but it was only a matter of time. Zimmer was slashing .294/.371/.532 at Triple-A Columbus, with five homers and nine steals in just 33 games. Zimmer was Cleveland’s first-round pick in the 2014 draft (21st overall) and had moved into the aforementioned position of being their top prospect as quickly as the 2015 season. He’s a five-tool player who was polished after three years of college. (He was originally drafted by the Cubs in 2011 but didn’t sign.)
With all that said, there’s often a transition period. It can be tricky for even elite prospects to come up and produce at the same level in the bigs as they did in the minors – the gap between Triple-A and MLB is cavernous.
Zimmer has been doing his best to dispel that idea, though. Through 29 games, Zimmer is slashing .286/.368/.506 at the big league level. Those are basically the same numbers he was putting up at Triple-A in case you’re too lazy to scroll up three inches or you forgot what you just read. He has four homers and six steals in just 87 plate appearances, putting him on pace for basically a 30/30 season if he were to get the typical 650 or so plate appearances a full-time player gets in a season.
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But that’s the issue.
Since making his MLB debut on May 16, Zimmer has appeared in 29 of Cleveland’s 30 games, but 10 of those appearances have been off the bench. Zimmer has been in the starting lineup just 19 out of 30 games since making his MLB debut.
Now if this were some extremely young rookie like Byron Buxton, who was struggling like Bambi on the ice when he first came up, I’d see the logic in only having him in the lineup every other day. But this is a 24-year-old polished prospect who has a wRC+ of 133 on the season. That’s 24 points higher than Francisco Lindor, who is the face of the franchise. In fact, only Jose Ramirez and Lonnie Chisenhall have been better hitters (by wRC+) than Zimmer for Cleveland this season.
Yet still, Francona refuses to give Zimmer the full-time center fielder role. The other day, Austin Jackson got the start over Zimmer. Yes, that is the same Austin Jackson who has (rightfully) been abandoned by four teams in the past four seasons, and who had an OPS+ of 89 over the past three seasons. He’s been doing all right for Cleveland this season (120 OPS+ in 92 plate appearances), but again, this is Austin Jackson. We know what he is: not very good.
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On the other hand, the sky’s the limit for Zimmer. And maybe that’s why Francona is slow-playing it. As noted at the beginning of this article, Francona is a baseball god – he has earned the right to not have his decisions questioned. Still, one has to wonder how much longer Cleveland, who only recently took back first place in their division, will be willing to keep Zimmer in a part-time role, because it certainly looks as if he deserves more.