Cleveland Indians: Keeping Francisco Lindor to start 2020 is the right move

The Cleveland Indians “expectation” is for Francisco Lindor to be their shortstop on Opening Day, so here’s why it is a very good move.

Francisco Lindor has been the headliner this offseason because the Cleveland Indians know that they cannot afford him when he hits free agency, but their talks with other teams have gone nowhere.

So, Indians President of Baseball Operations, Chris Antonetti, recently expressed his desire to have Lindor as his starting shortstop on Opening Day.

“I have never had a different expectation other than Francisco [Lindor] will be our shortstop Opening Day. That was my expectation at season’s end. That’s still my expectation as I’m sitting here today.”

And I agree with Antonetti here. Lindor should not be traded right now.

I understand that some people around baseball believe that the Cleveland Indians should trade Lindor right now because his value will go down as his contract gets closer to expiring.

But I look at this situation with another view.

The Indians are set on getting very talented players back for their star shortstop, but if teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers don’t want to give Cleveland what they want, then the Indians should be happy with having a top 5 player in the game on their team.

See, the fact of the matter is the Indians still have Lindor for two more seasons and they also happen to play in the weakest division in the American League, so they have a fighter’s chance at winning the division and making the postseason in 2020.

So it begs the question to why they would force a trade with another club and get a return back that they are not satisfied with?

They shouldn’t.

Cleveland could also take another route. If they really want to trade him, then they can wait until the deadline to do so. Why would they do that?

Because Lindor is going to help them win a lot of games before the Trade Deadline comes. And so I think that having Lindor for three and a half months would be a very valuable asset to the team in terms of staying in contention for the divisional crown instead of trading him before the season and then taking the chance of being lower in the standings at the All-Star break.

It makes more sense for the Cleveland Indians to hold onto their best player and most valuable asset, Francisco Lindor.