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Indians are smart to keep Francisco Lindor in minors

By Brody Hilgenkamp|

Now that Spring Training games are officially underway, baseball fans can start checking box scores shamelessly again. Now is when players give fans their first glimpse of what to expect in the upcoming season; who will start where, how free agent acquisitions are performing and when the team’s hot young prospect will arrive.

The Cleveland Indians have a player who fits the last topic quite well.  He is a highly-touted shortstop with tons of potential who gives scouts a great deal of confidence in his ability to play at a high caliber.

He won’t be starting the season with the big club. Instead, the team’s shortstop will be…a slightly less highly-touted shortstop with lots of potential and who scouts are confident will be a productive player for the Tribe.

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MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian reported Monday that shortstop Francisco Lindor, the Indians’ highest-rated prospect, will not start the season on the major league roster. The Indians are sending him to Triple-A to start the season, and they are perfectly justified in doing so.  Yes, fans may be upset, but the Indians are smart to keep Lindor in the minors for three reasons:

  1. Lindor is only 21 years old and has played only 38 games at Triple-A. Rookies are arriving in the majors later and more polished than they have at any point in the games history, so a couple months in the minors to gain more experience still leaves Lindor ahead of baseball’s current age curve.
  2. They can gain another year of control over Lindor by leaving him in the minors. Holding him down means Lindor wouldn’t become a free agent until after the 2021 season. The Pirates faced a similar scenario with Gregory Polanco during Spring Training last year.
  3. As I mentioned above, the Indians have another great young option ready to take over at shortstop in Jose Ramirez. Ramirez, 22, is a career .306/.355/.411 hitter in the minors who knows how to handle the strike zone: he struck out in only 8.8 percent of plate appearances the past two seasons. Also encouraging is Ramirez’s 2014 performance in 68 games as a major leaguer–he hit a serviceable .262 and struck out in only 13.2 percent of plate appearances and was one of the best defensive shortstops, according to FanGraphs, over those 68 games.

The Indians were so confident in Ramirez they even traded Asdrubal Cabrera at the trade deadline last season.  The franchise has the luxury and ability to wait, but Lindor isn’t making it easy. Lindor hit a combined .276 with a .338 OBP between Double-A and Triple-A in 2014, continuing to show his ability to hit at every level of the minors. His success wasn’t an aberration, as evidence by his .319 BABIP, which is only slightly off his career .316 BABIP.

Of some concern is Lindor’s plate discipline—after striking out in only 9.1 percent of plate appearances in 2013, his K-rate nearly doubled to 17.1 percent in 2014.

But even if he does strike out more than he did in 2013, Lindor won’t be dead weight offensively, which is more than a lot of shortstops can say. The major league average weighted On Base Average was .310 in 2014; for shortstops it was .297. In many ways, similar to catchers, a shortstop’s greatest value is with his glove, so teams are willing to drag around a player with a .273 wOBA if he saves a boat-load of runs like the Braves did with Andrelton Simmons.

Lindor possesses the defensive tools to be an impact player as well. His fielding percent went up 19 points from 2013 to 2014, and his speed and strong arm profile very well at the position.

Or maybe I should just let Lindor show you himself:

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