Grady Sizemore Injured Again: Can Ezequiel Carrera Replace Him?
On Sunday, Grady Sizemore felt extreme pain in his right knee as he rounded first base on a first-inning double. Unlike the relatively minor bone bruise he suffered in May, this injury could be devastating for Sizemore—he said it felt similar to when he hurt his left knee last May, an injury that cost him the rest of 2010 and the start of the 2011 season.
Rather than dwell on the scariness of that thought, though, I decided to focus on Sizemore’s replacement: Ezequiel Carrera. Looking at Carrera’s numbers, losing our franchise player might have as much impact as it seems.
Carrera, who came over from the Seattle Mariners in the Russell Branyan trade last July, has fared well in Triple-A Columbus this year, hitting .288/.373/.350 with two homers, 63 runs scored, and 35 steals in 81 games with the Clippers. Not bad for a center fielder with a solid glove.
How will that translate to the majors? (more…)
Which Cleveland Indians Deserve Your All-Star Votes?
Less than two weeks remain before the 2011 MLB All-Star voting closes, and Cleveland fans across the country are sure to be punching their ballots for Tribe players to get as many Indians on the AL team as possible.
Believe it or not, several Indians are already among the voting leaders as of the most recent update. But before we cast our final ballots, it behooves us to ask: what Cleveland players really should appear in the Midsummer Classic.
According to yesterday’s Baseball Prospectus playoff odds update, the Indians have a 15% chance of making the playoffs, meaning they have a roughly 4% chance of reaching the World Series. That’s a real, if small, chance that the outcome of the All-Star Game and its prize of home field advantage in the Fall Classic will matter to the Indians.
With that in mind, blindly punching the ticket for the Tribe’s players might not be in the Indians’ best interest. To help you make your decisions, I’ve categorized the nine Cleveland players on the ballot by how much hometown bias it would take to justify picking them. Happy voting!
Pull the Lever
Asdrubal Cabrera, Shortstop (second, 1,647,802). He leads all AL shortstops in average (.296), slugging percentage (.507), OPS (.850), and wRC+ (142). Alexei Ramirez’ big advantage with the glove probably makes him the better player (he leads Cabrera in WAR, 3.1 to 2.4), but Droobs’ star power, presence on the most surprising team in baseball, and clutch hitting make him a solid choice. And someone’s got to stop Derek Jeter. (more…)
Is Cleveland Indians’ Lineup in Trouble?
The wheels are starting to come off the wagon for the Cleveland Indians.
The Tribe had lost five games in a row before last night’s victory over the Twins. Scoring wasn’t the Indians’ biggest problem through the rough stretch—they’d given up 6.5 runs a game this month heading into Tuesday’s action. But with just seven runs scored in their last five games amidst Manny Acta’s lineup shuffling—even last night, Cleveland won 1-0—questions have begun to arise about the reliability of the Tribe’s lineup.
But before any judgment is passed down, we Indians fans owe it to ourselves to ask the question: Are Cleveland’s hitters playing poorly, or are they just getting unlucky?
To answer this question, we turn to Batting Average on Balls in Play, also known as “hit rate.” BABIP is exactly what it sounds like: the proportion of balls hit inside the confines of the diamond that result in the batter reaching base, which for most hitters is about 30% of the time. While some players have abnormal natural hit rates, most major variations from the mean—especially this early in the season—are due to random chance.
Thanks to The Hardball Times’ super-special awesome xBABIP calculator, we can get an estimate of what players’ hit rates would be in a luck-neutral environment based on factors like speed, power, strikeout rate, and batted-ball profile. By plugging his expected hit rate (xBABIP) in for his actual BABIP, we can get an idea of how a player would do in a completely neutral context.
Using their xBABIPs and Power Factors, I calculated luck-neutral slashlines for all 15 Indians to have come to the plate in 2011. Here are the results, sorted by the differences between their expected and actual OPS+’s: (more…)
Could Cleveland Indians Trade For Carlos Beltran?
The Cleveland Indians (33-24) have just suffered a four-game sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers, and their lead over the second-place Detroit Tigers (31-27) is down to just 2.5 games.
However, the Indians still have the best record in the American League (though now they’re tied with the Yankees), and a diminished lead in the AL Central still means they’re in first place. And with the season now more than a third of the way over, it’s time for the Tribe to start thinking about making some trades.
Yesterday, we looked at the places on the Indians’ roster where they could seek to upgrade before the Trade Deadline. As the Hot Stove starts to heat up, we’ll be analyzing all of the interesting rumors and proposals about players Cleveland could target.
Today, we’ll examine an idea for a trade target I first saw floated by FanGraphs’ Jonah Keri last week: Could the Indians go after Carlos Beltran? (more…)
Nine Cleveland Indians Would Qualify for Free Agent Compensation Picks
It’s way too early for the Cleveland Indians to be thinking about free agency—only four Tribe players are not under team control for the 2012 season, and there will (hopefully) be a pennant run at Progressive Field between now and November. But the latest updates of the Elias free agent rankings are still noteworthy.
Every offseason, the Elias Sports Bureau designates the top free agents on the market as either “Type A” or “Type B.” If the Type A or B player’s team offers him arbitration after his contract expires and the player rejects, his former team is compensated for its loss in the coming year’s amateur draft.
In every case, the team that unsuccessfully offered arbitration to a ranked free agent gets a “sandwich pick” between the first and second rounds of the draft. In addition, whoever signs a Type A free agent must give its first-round pick to the player’s former team (unless the signing team has one of the first 15 picks, in which case they lose give up their second-round pick).
According to MLBTradeRumors.com’s latest Elias Rankings Update, nine Cleveland Indians players would qualify as either Type A or Type B picks if their contracts expired tomorrow. (more…)
