We made it.
It was a pretty rocky two months in Arizona, but we are less than a week from opening day. There are a couple of questions left to be answered, but we basically know what the roster looks like and (knocks loudly on wooden coffee table) the team is going to walk out of camp pretty healthy.
So what is going to happen in 162 games this season?
Andy Baskin’s great line for this question is “you are going to win 60 and you are going to lose 60. It’s about what you do with the middle 42.” He is 100 percent right on this, even if he did steal it from someone. No matter how crummy and injury ridden you are, odds are high you will finish winning 60 games or more and will lose 60 games or more. Speaking of 60 games, we need to establish something right off the top.
Take everything that happened in 2020 and toss it out the window.
They played 60 games last season, which is the equivalent of 37 percent of a full 162 game season. Think of it this way, you would have bailed after the first 37 percent of Parks and Recreation had your friends not warned you how slow it started. There is no way you would have stuck with the first 37 percent of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, if you did not know it would get better and let’s be honest, you would have thought Lost was one of the 10 best shows in TV history after watching 37 percent.
Before you start trying to debunk throwing out all of 2020 by screaming about Shane Bieber, remember, Bieber was really good in 2019 as well. He did not come out of nowhere to win the 2020 Cy Young, but we call all agree he is not Bob Gibson or peak Pedro Martinez. He ended the season with a peak Pedro numbers which were starting to come back to earth in his later starts. This is not meant to be an insult to Bieber, it is just the truth.
2020 was ripe for players to over achieve or under achieve. It’s why when projecting what will happen in 2021, you should just toss it out the window.
Plus you toss in all the starting and stopping, pandemic rules and only playing nine teams, it’s easy to see how this can go sideways for some guys.
So the rule I am running with for 2021 is, if a player is good in 2019, they are probably going to be good in 2021. If a player was mediocre to bad in 2019, then looked great in 2020, be skeptical of improvement made in 2020.
Now we have solved the 2020 conundrum, let’s get this preview underway with the first pitch from the man of the hour, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Man, if that is not a microcosm of 2020, I give up. Dr.
Fauci should toss out the first pitch again this year for redemption. If it goes as poorly as last year, at least he can grab his right arm and claim he got the vaccine the day before.
The Infield
The infield is pretty much set.
Jose Ramirez will be the everyday third baseman. He will be one of the ten best players in baseball and an absolute joy to watch. Since 2016, Jose Ramirez is fifth among hitters in WAR. I don’t think you need any more stats to know how good Ramirez is, you have seen him play. He will play a great third base, walk like a champ, steal bases and crush home runs.
We need to have a heart to heart as a fan base about shortstop. Francisco Lindor’s do not grow on trees. They are precious, should be treasured and signed to long term contracts.
That did not happen here. They traded him for your current starting shortstop, Andres Giminez, Amed Rosario (Oh, we will get to that fun fest shortly) and a bunch of prospects. It royally bites the organization could not pony up the cash to pay one of the ten best players in baseball, but here we are.
Do not compare Giminez to Lindor. If you try to compare one of the ten best players in baseball to essentially a rookie, you are setting yourself up for serious disappointment.
Giminez has four above average tools, (the five tools scouts look for in potential players are hit for average, hit for power, fielding, speed and strength of arm. If you want to know more about scouting read Keith Law, Eric Longenhagen and the guys at MLB Pipeline. DO NOT watch Trouble with the Curve! It is two hours of your life that could be better spent watching better Amy Adams and Clint Eastwood movies.) but does not have one tool which really stands out. The below average tool scouts see is Giminez does not hit for much power.
Last season, in 132 PA Gimenez hit 263/333/398 with 3 HR and a 104 wRC+. He played decent defense and is projected to be an above average player in the years to come. Keep in mind though, rookies are usually bad, so be patient.
Ceasar Hernandez had a really nice season last year for this ball club at second base. He hit 283/355/408 in 2020 which is on pace with the rest of his career, while playing a solid second base. He only hit 3 HR last season, but in 2018 he hit 15 and 2019 he hit 14, so there is some pop in the stick and this team needs all the pop it can get.
First base will be patrolled by (heavy sigh) Jake Bauers. Bauers, the man who spent 2020 in the Phantom Zone and could not find his way into an outfield that was outslugged by most catchers, is starting over Bobby Bradley, who crushes baseballs that are currently orbiting Mars. Terry Francona explained that he made the decision because Bauers is out of options. Splendid, we all have to watch a first-baseman who was 196th in exit velocity in 2019 to start the season and we don’t even have a “best shape of my life” story to hang our hope on.
Please make the Bauers experiment short. If he is not walking and making soft contact by May, Bobby Bradley needs to be the everyday starter at first and Jake Bauers needs to be playing for Baltimore.
OUTFIELD
The 2006 Cincinnati Reds rolled out an outfield of Adam Dunn, 35 year old Ken Griffey Jr. and Austin Kearns. That outfield hit 83 HR and put up a -3.7 defensive WAR, according to Baseball reference. It was a beer league softball outfield. If you put it in the gap, you were going to be standing on second or third with little to no hustle. I bring up the ultimate beer league softball outfield because Cleveland may rival it in 2021 and probably hit less than 83 HR. Any ball hit hard into the outfield is going to be an adventure.
I am going to give you two sets of stats from 2020:
Player A- 257/321/476 13 HR 3 SB 110 wRC+ 0.9 WAR
Player B- 194/270/300 11 HR 9 SB 54 wRC+ -0.9 WAR
Player A is your new starting left fielder Eddie Rosario.
Player B is the entire Indians outfield in 2020.
Eddie Rosario hit more home runs, in two thirds less PA, than your whole outfield. Just let that sink in.
Eddie Rosario will be your everyday left fielder. He will try to hit every pitch thrown to him, be a below average defender, he will hit 30 or more home runs and everyone will love him.
Now this is where the fun begins…
Centerfield is going to be an adventure. Hell, the whole outfield is going to be an adventure. Amed Rosario has played three innings in the outfield and has recorded one out in his entire MLB career. Ben Gamel has played 270 innings, but has a career average of -2.12 dWAR. So your choices for centerfield on the MLB roster is the guy who has seen one flyball in his outfield career and the guy who costs you wins because of his crummy defense.
I know outfield defense is at the bottom of the priority list, but it’s not like their bats are going to save the day.
In 2019, Amed Rosario hit 287/323/432 with 15 HR and 19 SB in 655 PA. He fell off in 2020, but I am throwing that out the window for the reasons stated 1000 words ago. He has a bit of a Pedro Cerrano problem.
Rosario had a 319 batting average with a 471 slugging percentage against fastballs in 2019, which is exactly what you are looking for in a highly touted prospect. Against breaking balls, bats were scared into a 251/402 BA/SLG. He had a 33.9 percent WHIFF rate on breaking balls to bring home the full Cerrano. There is pop in the bat. Rosario averaged 89.3 MPH off the bat and maxed out at 110 MPH. He just needs to walk a touch more and solve the breaking ball issue.
Gamel has bounced around three different teams in his 5 years in the majors. In 2019 he put up a good season with the stick in Milwaukee hitting 242/337/373 with 7 HR in 356 PA. He can draw walks like a champ, but hitting baseballs hard has not really been his calling card. I won’t lie folks, I know having an above average walk rate is good thing, but this one puzzles me. It feels like Domingo Santana last season, you hope he can hit a little better than a 373 slugging percentage and continue to walk. If he can’t, he will be on a different team and someone else will be in center field.
Right field is Josh Naylor territory. The 23 year old will be sent out there most days and told to try his best at a position he has no business playing. Naylor’s future is at first base, but the Bauers Bradley log jam has caused a little improvisation to get Naylor’s bat in the lineup. Naylor hits baseballs hard; he just hits them into the ground. He had an average exit velocity of 89.6 MPH in 2019 but a launch angle of 4.5 degrees. If you are not here for a trigonometry lesson, he hits baseballs like this:
We have all crushed a worm-burner off the tee. I crushed about three of them last week. The difference is I am a horrible golfer who pays money to tear a hole in these courses and Naylor is a professional baseball player in the middle of the launch angle revolution. If he could hit the ball on a line in the air, he could easily hit 30 out if not more. In 2020, the launch angle increased to 7.8 degrees, so less off the ground. If he can get the ball in the air consistently, the Indians have a middle of the order hitter.
As you read this, you realize this season is going to be a little different than the last few seasons. There are far more question marks than sure things in this line up. The good thing is the pitching staff has more sure things in it.
Later in the week, we will tackle the pitching staff, DH and the catcher position.
Anyone 16 and older is now eligible for the COVID-19 Vaccine. If you have not scheduled an appointment, you can go to gettheshot.coronavirus.ohio.gov and get signed up. I got mine at the Wolstein Center and was in and out in 20 minutes. The sooner we all get vaccinated the sooner we can all drink beer at the ball yard and high five strangers.
