Cleveland Indians: Estimating Francisco Lindor’s 2016 Season

Part II: What can the Cleveland Indians expect from shortstop Francisco Lindor?

Last time, we looked at whether or not we can expect Cleveland Indians’ Francisco Lindor to repeat last season’s level of success. We established that the youngster will probably regress from last year’s results, but we also left the door open for further improvement in his defense. In this post, we will take another step and put some numbers on what Lindor might achieve in 2016.

First, let’s predict Lindor’s defense for 2016 using a mixture of our own judgment and Steamer’s projections for next year. As noted in the last post, Steamer does not believe in Lindor’s ability to be an elite defender. It suggests that his glove work will be worth roughly five runs above average.

Before we get bent out of shape over a defensive evaluation and discard the rest of the projection as total rubbish, we need to remember how finicky defensive metrics are. There is no great way to estimate how many runs a player has saved with his glove because there are so many variable to include. A player’s fielding percentage is misleading because it does not account for a fielder’s range and aggressiveness. Some defensive metrics have accounted for these factors, but they still cannot account for everything.

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Even further, Francisco Lindor has a reputation of being an elite defender, but a projections system does not read the news. All that a projection system can do is crunch numbers and churn out results that are good, but not perfect. That is where we enter the picture. We, as sentient human beings, can adjust factors that we know are inaccurate. At the very least, we can appreciate the inaccuracies.

Now, I will take the very unscientific step of handpicking a defensive value for the shortstop. Since defensive runs saved and ultimate zone rating, two advanced fielding statistics, value his 2015 performance as roughly ten runs above average, I have a hard time believing that his defense will decline below that level with roughly a 50% increase in playing time next season. So, let’s expand last year’s fielding stats over the course of a season and reduce the number by 15%. Why 15%? Because I am 85% confident that his defense will improve or stay the same. This yields just greater than 13 runs above average.

With a new fielding value in hand, it is time for us to adjust next year’s WAR projection for Lindor. Summing Steamer’s projected values for offense and base running with our value for fielding gives us an estimated WAR of 3.8, which ranks third amongst last year’s WAR leaders at shortstop. That is good, but it is not great.

To take Lindor from good to great, let’s see if we can improve his expected offense. Steamer currently projects the switch-hitter to slash .269/.319/.391, which is significantly worse than last year’s .313/.353/.482 triple-slash. Some regression is to be expected since Lindor has never shown that much offensive talent aside from a brief stint in Double-A back in 2013.

Rather than manually adjusting next year’s batting line, let’s adjust last year’s line and draw conclusions from the new data. While it may seem counterintuitive to change the past, examining the nuances in Lindor’s batted-ball data may allow us to better determine his true offensive potential. Unfortunately, there are no such data from the minor leagues, so we will only be able to use last year’s sample size. Fortunately, he amassed enough batted balls for this to not be problematic.

With no further ado, running my expected batting average formula yields and expected average of .285, 28 points lower than Lindor’s batting average last year. This tells us that Lindor over performed last year, which is a good indicator of future regression.

But this number is actually a good thing, because a .285 batting average is 16 points higher than what Steamer expects next year. If we assume that all the extra hits are singles – which is almost certainly not true – we get an adjusted batting line of .285/.335/.407. This last step is not great, since it expects that Lindor will post the same batting average in 2016 as he did in 2015, but it is one possible way to get an idea of what Lindor could produce next year. Rather than building our own sophisticated projection model, we can use this as a rough estimation.

If we continue using this triple-slash, we can calculate offensive runs added and combine that figure with our defensive value. And from that, we can project Lindor’s WAR for next season. It may not be a great predictor of the future, but it is something.

But wait! We have a handy WAR calculator housed here at Wahoo’s on First! Way back in 2012, former editor Lewie Pollis uploaded his own WAR calculator to the site. Rather than working out the math, we can use his great tool instead.

Now that we have a more convenient way to do this, let’s plug in our values and see what kind of season we can project for Francisco Lindor. Using our slash-line of .285/.335/.407, our fielding value of 13 runs above average, and an assumed league-average base running – a fair assumption given Lindor’s history – we get a projected 4.9 WAR.

This figure is much better than the earlier ones. I do not know how accurate it may be, but I like it a lot more than the others. While Steamer may not love Lindor’s bat or glove, I have confidence in him to be not only an elite defender but also to be an average – or better – batter. Finally, let us remember that we are conservative with Lindor’s defensive value but aggressive with his offensive output. Meshing these two together means that we are probably somewhat close with our estimation.

Next: Will Francisco Lindor Repeat His 2015 Season?

Just as a final note, I want to note that a projected five-win season is no small feat for a 22-year-old, and most 22-year-olds are still in the minor leagues. Projecting a season like this is not a knock on Lindor’s future; it a reminder of what is to come. Lindor still has many years before he reaches his prime years. Meshing additional development and experience leaves the door open for an eight or nine-win season. But it is too soon to project a season like that. Projections are conservative by nature, as a player is more likely to regress to league-average than breakout. As much as I would love to predict Lindor to be an eight-win player next year, I just cannot overlook the fact that last year looks like an outlier. While I may think that Lindor will be a five-win player next year, I will be in the stands cheering for him to be even better.