Cleveland Indians: What’s wrong with the offense?
The Cleveland Indians offense has been abysmal to start the season. Is this just a blip at the beginning of a long season or is their reason for concern?
Through the first nine games of the season, the Cleveland Indians surprisingly have one of the worst offenses in all of baseball. The team is tied for 26th in the game in runs scored and are dead last with a wRC+ of just 49.
Their pitching has kept them in games and their heads above water thus far, but if they are going to get to where they want to be this offense will need to wake up. So why are they in this position and what is wrong with this offense?
First of all, they are getting nothing from their infield to this point. No one on the dirt has been even close to average offensively thus far with the best contributor being Yonder Alonso with merely an 87 wRC+. The other infielders are much closer to 0 in this offensive stat than they are the league average 100.
Most frustrating so far are the stars on the left side of the infield, Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez. Ramirez finished third in AL MVP voting a year ago and now, through nine games, is sporting a -1 wRC+. That’s worse than most pitchers! Lindor hasn’t been much better with just a 44 mark to this point in the season. With the disappointing start to the season offensively for the infield, the outfield has to be producing much better right? Well, not really.
The Indians do at least have two outfielders who have been merely below average so far in Tyler Naquin and Lonnie Chisenhall. However, Chisenhall strained his calf muscle this weekend and will likely miss at least a month of the season. The other contributors in the outfield have been just as awful at the plate as the infielders.
No one in this group has a wRC+ above 55 to this point. The exciting, young center fielder, Bradley Zimmer, is hitting a cool .154/.185/ .154 for a whopping -10 wRC+. The alleged offensive savior, Michael Brantley, hasn’t been much better with just a 24 mark, albeit in just the tiniest of samples. Really no one in this lineup has hit thus far except Edwin Encarnacion and even he has a meager .194 batting average.
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The only way that this could be possible would be that the Indians just faced some really good pitching. Not so fast. Through three series, the Indians have faced three of the worst pitching staffs in baseball according to FIP.
The Royals rank 21st, the Angels 24th, and the Mariners are dead last with a 5.39 FIP to begin the season. These are the kind of teams that the Indians should be throttling and yet for some reason they haven’t. What is going on here?
The most likely answer here is simply bad luck and a small sample size. The Indians have the lowest batting average on balls in play thus far with just a .181 number, over 50 points behind the next lowest team.
This is the kind of thing that typically stabilizes over the course of a long season. League average is usually around .300 and there’s no reason that the club won’t eventually bring it back up to around that number. The team’s underlying numbers thus far seem fine. They aren’t striking out too often and they are still getting their walks.
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Also, the entire Cleveland Indians team is vastly under-performing based on their Statcast numbers. Expected wOBA suggests that the team’s current .240 wOBA is about 80 points lower than it should be. If the team is still performing like this in May, then it might be time to start worrying, but for now, Cleveland Indians fans should step away from the ledge and take their fingers off the panic button.