Cleveland Indians: Bradley Zimmer is franchise’s new best prospect
The steady flow of baseball’s top prospects to the majors has caused a lot of shuffling in top player rankings. Here at GotC, 13 of our top 20 prospects are in the majors or have played in the majors at some point this season.
Among those to make the majors is GotC’s No. 8 prospect Francisco Lindor, the defensive-wizard shortstop for the Cleveland Indians. Lindor, the Indians’ top prospect, will exhaust his rookie status with about a week’s worth of games, meaning he will lose his “prospect” label with most publications.
Lindor’s absence left the Indians’ top prospect ranking vacant until Tuesday when the Tribe promoted Lynchburg Hillcats outfielder Bradley Zimmer to Double-A. Technically, Zimmer is the Tribe’s No. 3 prospect according to MLB.com and No. 4 prospect according to Baseball Prospectus, but Zimmer is likely to jump those ahead of him by season’s end—more on that later.
Zimmer is the fourth of four consecutive first round draft picks the Indians used on centerfielders; they drafted Tyler Naquin and James Ramsey in 2012; Clint Frazier in 2013; and Zimmer in 2014. All four have the athleticism to stay in center, but Zimmer’s game is the most eclectic. He’s been dominating the Carolina League all season, and at the time of his promotion, Zimmer was among the league’s offensive leaders in every key category: he was first in stolen bases (38) and on-base-plus-slugging (.889), second in batting average (.305) and on base percentage (.401) and third in home runs (10) and slugging percentage (.488).
Those numbers are impressive by themselves, but by themselves they don’t show how staggeringly efficient he’s playing this season. Zimmer was successful on 86.5 percent of his stolen base attempts. Most sabermetrics show baserunners need to have around a 75 percent success rate in order to make stolen bases worthwhile, so Zimmer is not only using his speed efficiently, he’s leveraging it to improve his overall game.
It’s too early to tell how well Zimmer will hit as he progresses up the minors. At the time of his promotion, Zimmer had a .385 batting average on balls in play, which is well above the scorching .340 BABIP he posted in 2014. At this point, Zimmer has no trouble punishing minor league pitching. But a .385 clip is impossible to maintain. Even if his BABIP levels out well below his current pace, he’ll still be a very potent hitter.
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Zimmer, obviously, is one of the best players in the Carolina League and is well on his way to the majors. His season is somewhat similar to what current major leaguers did when they played in the CL. The closest comparisons are to Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer, Padres catcher Derek Norris and Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts:
- Zimmer—2015: .305 AVG/ .401 OBP/ .488 SLG/ 10 HR/ .385 BABIP/ 23.1 K%
- Hosmer—2010: .354 AVG/ .429 OBP/ .545 SLG/ 7 HR/ .382 BABIP/ 10. 4 K%
- Norris—2010: .235 AVG/ .419 OBP/ .419 SLG/ 12 HR/ .296 BABIP/ 23.6 K%
- Bogaerts—2012: .302 AVG/ .378 OBP/ .505 SLG/ 15 HR/ .353 BABIP/ 19.5 K%
These are obviously loose comparisons; Hosmer struck out much less than Zimmer; Norris drew lots more walks but had a similar power profile; Bogaerts was the closest across the board, albeit from the right-handed batters box; and none came even close to swiping as many bags as Zimmer. They are all encouraging comparisons, though, as Bogaerts is having a breakout season and Hosmer is having another productive one.
In order to be the top-ranked prospect in the Indians’ system, Zimmer will have to jump Frazier, who is rated above Zimmer by both publications listed above and was also a teammate in Lynchburg. Zimmer should be more highly rated by the end of the season due to his rapid promotion and Frazier’s more modest offensive success: entering play Wednesday, Frazier was slashing .254/.350/.395 and has 87 strikeouts in 82 games.
Zimmer’s more rapid development is not surprising and should not diminish Frazier’s great potential. Zimmer has much more baseball seasoning, as he played college baseball at the University of San Francisco—he was a .368/.461/.573/7 HR hitter his junior season—played on Team USA’s collegiate team in 2013 and played in the Futures Game Sunday. Frazier was drafted out of high school.
If Zimmer continues to produce a well-rounded profile, a September call-up in 2016 could be the first time we see Zimmer in the majors.