Indians Hitting Coach Compares Michael Brantley to…Garret Anderson?

I was listening to the post-game radio show Monday night after the second game of the doubleheader in Minnesota. All the players were exhausted after have played three games and travelled 1,200 miles in 36 hours, so Tom Hamilton & Co. talked to Cleveland Indians hitting coach Bruce Fields.

It was an interesting interview—Fields talked about the progress Tribe hitters have made and his increasing comfort in working with them. He talked about working with Carlos Santana. And then the subject turned to Michael Brantley.

Fields started to make a comparison between Brantley and another MLB hitter, and I instantly started to guess who it would be. Kenny Lofton was an obvious choice for a number of reasons. Carl Crawford seemed plausible. Maybe even a pre-2011 Asdrubal Cabrera?

I thought I had misheard when Fields finished his thought and announced that Brantley reminded him of Garret Anderson.

I have nothing but respect for Mr. Fields and the work he has done with the Indians’ hitters. But, in the words of SI.com’s John Donovan: “#$!&@* the heck?” Does comparing Brantley to Anderson make any sense at all? (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…)

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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