As the Cleveland Indians cling to the fringes of the American League playoff scramble, their young shortstop, Francisco Lindor, has moved to the forefront of another race—the one for AL Rookie of the Year.
Lindor padded his resume with another big game Wednesday night at Progressive Field, going 3-for-4 with a booming home run and four RBI in a 5-1 victory over the AL Central-leading Kansas City Royals.
Lindor is now hitting .317 with nine home runs, 41 RBI and an .835 OPS. And he's been especially scalding in the season's second half, as MLB.com's August Fagerstrom noted:
You don't need to know all the ins and outs of that stat, weighted runs created plus, to understand that hanging out in Yoenis Cespedes territory is impressive. (If you want a wRC+ primer, FanGraphs has a good one here.)
Cespedes has gone nuts, particularly since landing on the New York Mets at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline. Lindor, with less media hype, is right there with him. And just as the Mets' masher is getting National League MVP chatter, Lindor belongs squarely in the AL ROY conversation.
Lindor's chief competition for the award is another shortstop, Carlos Correa of the Houston Astros. Recently, I made a case for the Minnesota Twins' Miguel Sano, and he remains in the mix as well.
Here, let's just toss the three players' stats on the table:
Sano has the edge in OPS, but he's played in fewer games and has spent most of his time at designated hitter, whereas Lindor and Correa patrol a premier, up-the-middle defensive position.
Correa has better power numbers than Lindor, though Lindor has been gaining in that department, adding nearly 40 points to his OPS since the beginning of September while Correa's OPS has dipped 25 points in the same stretch.
Where Lindor truly separates himself, however, is with the leather.
Prior to Wednesday's action, Lindor's seven defensive runs saved (DRS) was tied for fifth-best among big league shortstops, per FanGraphs. Correa, meanwhile, checked in at minus-two DRS.
Other stats, including ultimate zone rating (UZR), essentially agree. Lindor is the superior defender and already one of the very best in the game.
Correa enjoys the benefit of playing for a team that would be in the playoffs if the season ended Wednesday, though the Astros (77-69) have ceded first place in the AL West to the Texas Rangers and are now holding the second wild-card slot.
The Indians, meanwhile, are 72-72, four games off the wild-card pace. (Sano's Twins, interestingly, are also in the hunt at 75-70, 1.5 games back of Houston in the wild-card shuffle.) The Tribe could still slip in with a crazy finish, and they have won 14 of their last 20. But the odds are long.
Voters, though, don't generally give as much weight to postseason status when awarding Rookie of the Year as they do with, say, MVP. Neither of last year's ROY winners—Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets and Jose Abreu of the Chicago White Sox—played for October-bound clubs.
So is Lindor now officially the front-runner? Have the 21-year-old switch-hitter's smoldering stick and consistently slick glove vaulted him past Correa?
CBS Sports' Mike Axisa stopped short of that assertion, saying only that Lindor's play has ensured "that this is no longer a one-horse race."
I'll take it a step further and say Lindor is now the lead horse, by a nose. The season's final two weeks and change will decide things, and even Sano could sneak ahead with a torrid finish.
But if Lindor keeps swinging it like he has since the Midsummer Classic—and picking it like he has all along—he'll have a shiny new piece of hardware to stash in his trophy case.
"The level he's played at and the consistency he's shown is really exciting," skipper Terry Francona said of his budding star, per Jordan Bastian and Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com. "I think now that he's gotten a taste of it, you can see that it looks like he's trying to understand more, the impact of each out. With the skills he has, it gets real exciting in a hurry."
The Indians would surely rather have a crack at the postseason, given the choice. But a reigning Rookie of the Year in the middle of your infield is a pretty sweet consolation prize.
All statistics and standings current as of Sept. 16 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.
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