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MLB Prospect & Future Call-Up
If I were an MLB prospect, I would hate the trade deadline. Almost every guy is mentioned in a tweet or rumor as trade bait that will ultimately leave them on a below .500 team (see: Addison Russell and Noah Syndergaard). But for Indians shortstop prospect Francisco Lindor, he couldn’t have asked for more during the deadline-- Cleveland not only didn’t trade him, they actually did ship off Asdrubal Cabrera to Washington. That leaves Jose Ramirez, a career .205 hitter and Mike Aviles to handle the everyday shortstop duties. Lindor is widely regarded as the Indians shortstop of the future, but the hole left by Cabrera's absence provides a great opportunity for him to get his feet wet in the majors before fully taking over the reins in 2015.
Whos is Francisco Lindor
Terry Francona and the Indians have no business starting guys like Aviles and Ramirez when they aren't part of the team's future plans. They are respectively batting .251 and .182 this year, and Aviles only has an option for next season. Meanwhile Lindor, despite being only 20 years old, will be a part of the Tribe for the long haul.
He hit .278 this season before being promoted to Triple-A. Additionally, not too many pundits expect the Indians to be there in October. I get that they are only 6.5 games back of the AL Central and four out of the Wild Card. But in order to sneak into the playoffs, they'll need to jump over some combination of Detroit, Kansas City, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and Toronto. That said, the Cabrera trade essentially signals that management is not confident in the team's chances to pull that off.
Lindor has also had an impressive line so far this year. Along with the .287 in Double-A, he hit six HR to go along with 51 R, 48 RBI, 25 SB and a .741 OPS. Even though his numbers have dropped a bit since the promotion to Triple-A, you can expect a little slip in production upon a recent promotion. One cause for concern is the SB/CS rate-- Lindor has been caught stealing at a 40% clip over the past three seasons, and while he does have the speed to contribute to your fantasy team’s production, he might not get the green light too much with those kinds of results.
The Fantasy Baseball Impact of Lindor
One thing I love about Lindor's minor league stats is the steady growth of his power. For those that don’t like the sabermetrics game, ISO shows a players isolated power by taking slugging percentage and subtracting batting average. For Lindor, his ISO has risen every year and every time he has been promoted, starting at .098 and currently sitting at .113 in Triple-A. Now, even though the current MLB average ISO is .137, Lindor is not a power hitter. Yet this does show his becoming a bigger, stronger player has paid off at the plate, and provides some hope that he could blossom into a big-league power threat as he fills out his frame in the coming years.
Overall, if and when Francisco Lindor does get his promotion to the Indians in 2014, he will likely not be the elite offensive shortstop he is destined to be. Odds are that he will be just another average infielder on waivers. But if you are in a deep league, or are making a playoff push and have a need at shortstop, there might not be many better options. When it comes to the weeks before the playoffs, throw out the fantasy rulebook. All you can do is go with whoever has the hot bat, and if that happens to be Lindor, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be playing him. Obviously if you are in a keeper/dynasty league, he is a much more attractive option-- owners in those formats should already be stashing him away for 2015 and beyond.
