History in the Making: Reaching The Cleveland Indians All-Time Top 20

Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Francisco Lindor – 4.6 career WAR

Despite playing only 99 games, Francisco Lindor was one of the most valuable players on the Indians. Since WAR is a counting stat, if you extrapolate that out to 160 games and give him a chance to come to earth a bit, that’s still 7 WAR. Fringe MVP type stuff. I’ve read and heard people say that he is likely to cool off offensively, but going by his Steamer projections that boast an .812 OPS (compared to .821 in 2015) and the fact that Steamer is known to be a little conservative in nature, we might have just scratched the surface. Of course it’s hard to project a 21-year old with less than 100 games of MLB experience, but for the sake of it, let’s say he’s as good next year defensively and slightly worse offensively, and comes in with 6.5 WAR, at age 22.

You have to assume, if it keeps up, he’ll see the same type of deal that a lot of guys have gotten and the Indians buy out a few free agent years after he’s cleared arbitration in 2022, and he’s an Indian into 2024, when he’d be 30. Heck, let’s say 2023 and he’s 29 because his agent is smart and sees $100 million in his client’s future. He’d have to not improve at all from this year, and if he averages 5 WAR a year that’s still 44.6 as an Indian, good for 11th on the all time list behind Joe Sewell and ahead of Addie Joss, Larry Doby and Sam McDowell. Considering Andrelton Simmons, the best glove at short in the game, has averaged 3.6 WAR a year and can’t hit his way out of a paper bag, I think a better hitting, slightly worse fielding Lindor could do 5 to 6 a season. And considering he’s still got to develop some grown man strength and truly learn the world of Major LEague Baseball, he could have an MVP bat to with the glove. We’ll see how WAR gets calculated defensively as StatCast gets more useful and conclusions can be drawn from that wealth of data, but for now, we know he can field like an All-Star. .

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