Cleveland Indians: Projecting Francisco Lindor’s arbitration price tag

Francisco Lindor

To begin making comparisons, we have to establish the base for which to compare and that obviously begins with Francisco Lindor.

During the shortened season, Lindor played in all 60 games for the Cleveland Indians, logging an American League-high 266 at-bats, the third time in his career he has led the league. However, the mass amount of at-bats didn’t translate as well as they have in the past.

During the 2020 season, Lindor slashed career-lows across the board at .258/.335/.415 and only had eight home runs and no triples. Totaling just 98 bases on the season, Lindor averaged 0.37 bases per at-bat, a steep drop off from the mark that he has become known for, averaging above 0.45 bases per at-at for each of the last three seasons.

Despite the lower numbers, Lindor was still one of the more impressive bats in the Cleveland lineup, which isn’t saying much, but his value has always been driven defensively, even before he made it to the majors.

In the field, Lindor maintained a .995 fielding percentage, having just one error on the abbreviated season. Every year since arriving to the big leagues his fielding percentage has improved, but doing that again next year will be a tall task.

On the contract side of things, Lindor was scheduled to make $17.5 million during the 2020 season at the age of 26 before everything was derailed. Assuming next year will hopefully be a full season, those are the numbers that we’ll focus on.