Cleveland Indians go Boom or Bust with Domingo Santana

The Cleveland Indians are bringing in OF Domingo Santana on a one year, MLB deal. Santana could be the answer to an Indians outfield that has struggled mightily for production over the past few years.

The Cleveland Indians have made their budgetary constraints known to everyone from trading Corey Kluber to potentially trading franchise icon Francisco Lindor. One area of improvement the Indians have needed is in the outfield, where in 2019, they were in the bottom half for production. Since the Indians don’t have money refuse to increase payroll, they have to get creative when searching for MLB solutions.

Enter OF Domingo Santana who the Indians have agreed to an MLB deal with pending a physical. Santana is a few years removed from a monster season that saw him have a 127 wRC+, launch 30 home runs, and total a career best 3.3 fWAR. This past season wasn’t as kind to Santana as he was a replacement level player in 2019. Santana still hit a respectable .253/.329/.441 but gave all that offense back as he was horrid defensively to the tune of -17 DRS. Statcast’s OAA was equally down on Santana ranking him as one of the worst defenders in baseball.

Santana’s primary calling card throughout his career has been power. While he is a flawed player, he’s proven that he can be a 3 win player and the Indians will hope he can recapture that form. Looking at his offensive profile, there isn’t anything meaningfully different between his plate discipline numbers, batted ball profile, or exit velocities from 2019 and his career 2017 season.

There are actually several reasons for optimism in Santana’s offensive profile. First, Santana posted a .347 BABIP which was a career worst. Next, Santana just posted his second best season by xwOBACON (expected wOBA on Contact) at .483 which was .002 off from his career 2017 year. For a guy who gets a majority of his value from balls flying over the fence, Santana may have just been unlucky with his batted balls. Since Santana strikes out 32% of the time, every ball in play matters more than the average hitter. If Santana could either make more contact or put the ball in the air, he could return to his career best level from 2017.

Defensively, Santana was actually worth +6 DRS as an outfielder for the Brewers in 2018, a far cry from the -17 DRS in 2019. Santana is an average runner, has a decent arm, and has been at least average on defense recently, so -17 DRS isn’t likely his true talent level. Whether its positioning or taking actual interest in defense, Santana has the tools to be at least an average or slightly below defender.

Santana either needs to change his offensive approach, which may be difficult at this stage of his career, or improve defensively so he doesn’t give away all of his offensive value in the OF. The Indians are betting on Santana to do one of these things which will make him a solid contributor in 2020.

For a team like the Cleveland Indians, players like Domingo Santana can be worth taking a flyer on, especially since sometimes, they recapture their previous form.