Indians Promote Lonnie Chisenhall: How Much Will He Help Cleveland?

Tribe fans rejoiced Monday when the Cleveland Indians announced they had called up the organization’s top prospect, Lonnie Chisenhall. He didn’t disappoint in his MLB debut last night, going 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI in the Indians’ 5-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Chisenhall’s call-up was exciting, no doubt, and he made a great first impression. Cleveland fans have every reason to  enjoy seeing the promotion of a future franchise player. But as the Indians try to hang on at the top of the AL Central standings, the poignant question is: How much good will Chisenhall do?

In 65 games with Triple-A Columbus this year, Chiz hit .265/.352/.427 with seven homers, 44 runs, and 44 RBI. With a 110 wRC+, he was 10% better than the average International League hitter. That’s good for the minors, but how will he fare against MLB pitching? (more…)

Cleveland Indians Prospect Watch: Should Tribe Call Up Lonnie Chisenhall?

When the Cleveland Indians sent third baseman Lonnie Chisenhall back down to the minors after Spring Training, Tribe fans were disheartened.

The consensus top prospect in Cleveland’s farm system and one of the most promising minor leaguers in the game before the season, Chisenhall hit .500 with a 1.451 OPS in 12 games this spring before his reassignment. It wasn’t a surprise decision—the Indians brass didn’t completely rule out giving him a spot on the Tribe’s Opening Day roster, but GM Chris Antonetti had made it clear that he wanted Chisenhall to get more seasoning in Triple-A—but it was a disappointing one nonetheless.

But Indians fans quickly forgot their sorrows when Jack Hannahan started tearing the cover off the ball. The 2011 Tuffy Rhodes Award winner looked like an All-Star in April, hitting .273/.349/.481—35% better than the average MLB hitter, according to wRC+—while playing Gold Glove-caliber defense.

Through that first month, he earned 0.8 WAR, putting him on pace for 5.9 WAR over 162 games. Even forgetting about Chisenhall’s development and arbitration clock, going with Hannahan looked like a smart move.

But, in a cruel inversion of the nursery rhyme, April’s flowers turned to May showers. He completely fell off the wagon in May, falling to a .184 average and a .484 OPS. Even factoring in his solid glove, Hannahan has been basically replacement level (less than 0.1 WAR) since the end of April.

Interestingly, Hannahan’s decline has coincided with the start of call-up season. Every year, at least a handful of the game’s top prospects (like Cord Phelps last week) come up to get their first tastes of the big leagues around when school gets out. In other words, it’s about the time of year when we expected Chisenhall would get the call.

With the Cleveland’s once-comfortable AL Central lead now completely gone, the team could use a boost, and it just so happens that the organization’s top prospect would be able to fill one of the biggest holes in the Tribe’s lineup.

And so, the question is: should the Indians call up Chisenhall? (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…)

A Luck-Neutral Look at the Cleveland Indians’ Offense

The Cleveland Indians have finally hit a cold stretch. They’ve dropped five of their last nine games, and missed two chances to beat up on the Seattle Mariners this weekend when torrential rain hit Progressive Field.

And yet, the Indians still have the best record (24-13) and run differential (+41) in baseball. The second-place Detroit Tigers have won 10 of their  last 11 games and they’re still 3.5 games behind Cleveland in the AL Central standings. Anyway, finishing a game under .500 against the Athletics, Angels, and Rays isn’t much of a cold streak.

As the Tribe looks to start another winning streak tonight against the Kansas City Royals, it’s worth revisiting the issue of luck in Cleveland’s lineup. One of the best ways to quantify luck is Batting Average on Balls in Play, also known as “hit rate.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: the proportion of balls hit inside the confines of the diamond that result in the batter reaching base.

Almost every hitter’s BABIP ends up around .300, and while some batters’ natural hit rates vary from this mean—power hitters who make good contact and speedy guys who can run out infield hits tend to do better than slow-footed flyball hitters—most fluctuations are due to random chance. It takes far more than a month-and-a-half for BABIP to become reliable.

Thanks to The Hardball Times’ fantastically amazing 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 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 context-neutral slashlines for each of the nine Indians players with more than 75 plate appearances this year. Here are the results, sorted by the difference between their expected and actual OPSes:

(more…)

Are Cleveland Indians’ Hitters Really This Good?

The Cleveland Indians are no longer surprising flukes off to a hot start. With the best record in baseball (19-8) and no close competitors in the AL Central, this team is starting to be taken seriously.

ESPN had the Tribe at third in its weekly Power Rankings yesterday. FanGraphs’ Dave Cameron wrote: “Minnesota and Chicago are now going to have to put it into another gear to take the division back from the Tribe’s hands.” And Baseball Prospectus gave the Indians a 39.3% chance of winning the division after this weekend after their sweep of the Detroit Tigers.

With analysts now starting to concede that Cleveland’s success is at least somewhat legitimate, it’s worth looking again at how the Indians’ lineup would fare in a context-neutral environment. (more…)

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