Cleveland Indians: The ideal starting lineup in 2018

1. Jose Ramirez – 3B

Ramirez experienced something of a power surge in 2017, blasting 29 homers and nearly tripling his number (11) from the year before. While his high home run total and .957 OPS are normally indicative of a middle-of-the-order bat, Ramirez is not your garden-variety slugger.

He is instead a complete hitter who has happened to add power to his repertoire. To grade him solely on his ability to drive the ball out of the park and plate runs would be to miss the most valuable element of his game: his knack for getting on base.

Ramirez is the toughest out for the opposition to get, and they should have to deal with him right out of the gate. No team wants to walk the leadoff hitter, which will force the Indians’ adversaries to throw him more strikes. Having to place a few pitches in Ramirez’s wheelhouse early on for fear of giving him a free pass to start the game will create loads of stress on opposing pitchers.

What’s more, even if pitchers don’t give in, he brings Brett Gardner-levels of peskiness to the plate with his ability to foul balls off and make them work. He virtually never strikes out, and puts up quality at-bats more consistently than anyone else on the Indians’ roster.

The suggestion that Ramirez bat leadoff is by no means an insinuation that his 2017 power numbers were some sort of unsustainable fluke. He can most definitely continue to put up similar numbers going forward. The one thing that is certainly not going anywhere, however, is his ability to grind out at-bats and force pitchers to earn it if they want to send him packing.

For that reason, he is worth a look at the very top of the Indians’ lineup in 2018.

2. Bradley Zimmer – CF

For all the positive takeaways from Zimmer’s debut tour with the Tribe, the one glaring downside to his game was how often he took that long, lonely walk back to the dugout. He slumped badly late in the season and wound up tied for second on the team in strikeouts with 99 despite only appearing in 101 games.

Diving into some of the numbers that influenced his high strikeout rate, we see that, according to Fangraphs, he had a swinging strike percentage of 13.9. We also see that when he chased pitches outside the zone, he made contact only 47.5 percent of the time.

These numbers in particular indicate two things. The swinging strike rate suggests Zimmer was anxious at the plate, trying to force damage with his bat rather than staying patient and drawing walks. The second number suggests he was often fooled by pitches that broke out of the strike zone.

What kind of players are routinely anxious and easily fooled by tough pitches? Young, inexperienced ones, which is precisely what Zimmer was in 2017. He proved early in the season that he can hit big league pitching, and he’s not the first young player to go through a miserable slump.

Have a little faith in Zimmer. He has all the tools to turn the corner in 2018 and transform into one of baseball’s brightest young stars. If he has the breakout year Indians fans are hoping for, he could absolutely wind up as a fixture near the top of the order in the second half of the season.

3. Francisco Lindor – SS

Is there really a significant enough difference between Lindor and Ramirez to justify flip-flopping them in the order?

Fair question. They are very similar hitters with virtually identical home run and RBI numbers over the past two seasons (Lindor: 48/167, Ramirez: 40/159), though Ramirez has the edge in batting average. The deciding factors are consistency and plate discipline.

In 2017, Ramirez offered at a slightly lower percentage of pitches outside the zone (25.4) than did Lindor (30.7), and although that’s not a humongous gap, it does reflect a difference in plate approach. Lindor developed an undeniable tendency to swing for the downs when he found his power, and he had to endure a few slumps as a result.

We’re admittedly comparing apples to apples here, but if the one difference between the two is in on-base percentage, let’s give the player with the higher number a shot in the leadoff role.

Also, the Indians went to extra innings in Game 7 of the World Series with Lindor as the three-hitter.