Cleveland Indians: The ideal starting lineup in 2018

Chris O'Reilly

CLEVELAND, OH - OCTOBER 01: Jose Ramirez

The Cleveland Indians have a variety of ways to deploy their talent in 2018. All that’s left is to figure out which way gets them back to the Fall Classic.

After reports that the Cleveland Indians are preparing to enter the 2018 season with Jason Kipnis as their second baseman, one of the burning questions of the Tribe’s offseason appears to have been answered.

Coupled with Chris Antonetti’s admission that the front office is bowing out of the high-stakes free agent market, the Kipnis news allows Indians fans to begin piecing together what the starting lineup will look like come springtime.

The infield is spoken for, with Kipnis and Yonder Alonso manning the right side, Francisco Lindor locked in at shortstop and Jose Ramirez returning to third base. Yan Gomes and Roberto Perez figure once again to split catching duties, though Gomes will likely remain the number-one backstop.

Bradley Zimmer is poised to be the Tribe’s Opening Day center fielder, with Lonnie Chisenhall and Michael Brantley manning the corner outfield positions. If Brantley, who is currently recovering from offseason ankle surgery, is unavailable for the start of the season, one of the Indians’ utility outfielders could begin 2018 out there in his stead. Edwin Encarnacion will round out the starting lineup in his usual designated hitter role.

Based on recent history (and assuming Brantley is ready for Opening Day), it’s safe to guess the lineup on March 29 against the Seattle Mariners will look something like this:

Francisco Lindor – SS
Jason Kipnis – 2B
Jose Ramirez – 3B
Edwin Encarnacion – DH
Yonder Alonso – 1B
Michael Brantley – LF
Lonnie Chisenhall – RF
Bradley Zimmer – CF
Yan Gomes – C

In a perfect world, that lineup (or whatever lineup Terry Francona decides to go with) roars into the season with authority, stays fully healthy and never lets up. But as any baseball fan knows, the rigor of a 162-game season doesn’t often allow for that perfect world.

Some players will outperform preseason expectations. Some, for one reason or another, will underachieve. And of course, no team emerges unscathed from a long season without suffering a few injuries. The hope is that through all these ups and downs, a team finds the best version of itself along the way.

That is the goal after all, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how promising the April 1 lineup appears if the September 1 lineup isn’t battling for the postseason, does it?

With that in mind, let’s use our imaginations a little bit. Let’s pretend it is indeed the first week of September and the Indians are gearing up for their third consecutive playoff run. Francona has shuffled the lineup a few dozen times in response to slumps, breakouts and injuries, but the roster is now healthy and he must fine-tune it for the home stretch.

Let’s think outside the box, take some gambles, and construct the ideal lineup for an Indians World Series run.

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.

4. Edwin Encarnacion – DH

This one requires no explanation. When we think about cleanup hitters, we think about Edwin Encarnacion. Since 2012, he hasn’t hit fewer than 34 home runs, and has only missed the 100-RBI mark one time (98 in 2014, in 128 games).

Even if his numbers regress with age, we are still looking at 25-30 homers and 85 RBIs.

5. Michael Brantley – LF

The five-hole is where we really start to notice the losses of Carlos Santana and Jay Bruce. The power numbers take a sizable dive, and the Indians are without two big bats to protect Encarnacion in the middle of the order.

Enter Michael Brantley, who offers a much different style of protection.

More from Away Back Gone

Much like his teammate Ramirez, Brantley is a patient hitter who doesn’t give away at-bats. He can drive the ball to all fields, and has no problem sending a pitcher’s pitch through the infield for a base hit.

Last season, teams could afford to shy away from Encarnacion (evidenced by his team-leading 104 walks) knowing that there were two strikeout candidates due up next in Santana and Bruce. Such will not be the case with Brantley, who rarely strikes out.

If opposing pitchers want to play it safe with Encarnacion, more power to them. Brantley will do just fine making them pay for it.

He won’t launch many home runs, but he won’t have to. He’ll have plenty of RBI opportunities with the stars in front of him on base.

The only thing that has held Brantley back of late has been his health. He will return to form in 2018 and reclaim his role as a middle-of-the-order bat.

6. Yonder Alonso – 1B

As the newest member of the Indians’ infield, Alonso finds himself in the unenviable position of trying to replace Santana in the hearts and minds of Tribe fans. If he brings his 2017 power numbers with him to Progressive Field, it would do wonders to assuage the loss of a long-time fan favorite.

Thanks to what appears to have been an adjustment in his swing, Alonso put up career numbers in home runs and OPS last season. An unfortunate side effect was that he also set a career high in strikeouts. Moreover, he is a downright liability against left-handed pitching, posting a sub-.200 average against southpaws in 2017.

Still, even with the strikeouts and inefficiency against lefties, he managed a .340 on-base percentage thanks to 68 walks (again, a career high).

Overall, he profiles well as a middle-of-the-order hitter, which is exactly why the Indians nabbed him off the bargain shelf. Temper expectations, but if last year is any indication, Cleveland could do worse than batting Alonso sixth.

7. Lonnie Chisenhall – RF

The bottom of the order starts to get pretty lefty-heavy, but the Indians simply don’t have a reliable right-handed bat outside of Encarnacion, and Chisenhall is by far the best of the remaining outfield options.

He’s never gotten 500 at-bats in a season, but he’s made the best of limited chances, posting a batting average of .280 or better in three of the last four years. He was on pace for a career year in 2017, slashing a torrid .305/.376/.578 through the All-Star break. Injuries caused him to miss all but 18 games in the second half, however.

Part of his impressive showing included a .340 average against lefties. It was an admittedly small sample size (47 at-bats), but even if he can keep that number in the high-.200 range, he could become a matchup-proof hitter in the bottom third of the order.

Hopefully Chisenhall returns to form in 2018. If so, he deepens an already lethal lineup, and makes the departure of Bruce a little easier to cope with.

8. Yan Gomes – C

Straight from the Joe Maddon school of thought, here is the rarely-practiced “bat your worst hitter eighth” concept.

There’s not an overwhelming need to dive into Gomes’ offensive numbers. His value is almost entirely as a defensive catcher, and in a lineup with this much firepower, the Indians don’t need much else from him.

If the Indians bat him eighth instead of ninth, however, it opens up the door for the second leadoff hitter approach. Instead of having an offensive liability hitting before the lineup turns over to the superstars at the top, the Indians could have…

9. Jason Kipnis – 2B

This idea goes against traditional ways of thinking, for sure. No one could fault the Indians for batting their worst hitter ninth, just like no one bats an eyelash over National League lineups featuring the pitcher in the same spot. But in the American League, it pays to have a hitter in the nine-hole who isn’t an automatic out.

Over the course of his career, Kipnis has seen an average of 4.01 pitches per plate appearance, which is slightly higher than teammates Ramirez and Brantley, who are known for grinding at the dish. In 2016, which was Kipnis’ last full season, he trailed only Santana and Mike Napoli for the team-lead in walks.

He would bring a veteran plate approach to a spot in the order where pitchers would much prefer to see someone who won’t make them work too hard.

Additionally, a proven hitter like Kipnis could not be attacked the same way a typical bottom-of-the-lineup bat normally is. In many cases, opposing teams can challenge the ninth hitter without much fear he’s going to do any damage. Kipnis, on the other hand, creates a dilemma: Go right at him and risk giving up a big hit, or get cute and risk walking him to set the table for the lead-off hitter.

Next: Top 5 home run hitters in franchise history

There’s no telling what lies ahead for the Indians in 2018. Any one of these suggestions, along with the theories behind them, could turn out to be disastrously wrong. Any of a number of them could wind up being spot-on, too. One thing is for certain, though: if the Indians hoist the Commissioner’s Trophy this fall, no one will care what lineup it took to do it.

Chris O'Reilly

32 years old, proudly representing the Cleveland Indians fan base alone and unafraid in eastern Pennsylvania. I could talk baseball with any friend, family member or complete stranger who's willing to listen. I'm hoping to turn that into a career someday. I still call it The Jake.