Burning River Baseball Predicts the Future: 2017 Tribe

Every year the staff at Burning River Baseball (and invited guests) try our best to predict what will happen in the upcoming season. No, we don’t go as far as saying “Carlos Santana will take a walk on June 13th in the third inning,” but even so, it’s still pretty hard. The first of two prediction sets, this one will focus solely on the Cleveland Indians. The first set of predictions today are the triple crown stats. While they are going out of style in analysis, it’s still fun to follow the home runs and ERA leaders. The second group features predictions for our end of season Burning River Awards. These should be a little easier to predict, but somehow with the variability in the baseball season, often turn out to be just as difficult. Predicting this year are Joseph Coblitz, Mike Melaragno, Caitlin Boron, John Hutchison, Justin Lada, Gavin Potter and from the Cleveland Baseball & Brews Podcast, Brad Wojdyla.

Last year, Jose Ramirez was a huge surprise as the team’s leader in average, but many were on top of the combination of Carlos Santana and Mike Napoli leading in the power/production numbers. This time, while John has stuck with Santana to be the home run leader and Mike and Cait both think he will lead in RBI, Edwin Encarnacion is the extreme favorite to take home both this year. There doesn’t seem likely to be many outside competitors either as the pair appear to be the only ones who are capable of hitting out at least 30 and knocking in 100.

As far as average, it again appears to be a two dog race as four picked Francisco Lindor (who came in second last year on the Indians and 11th in the AL) and two picked Ramirez to repeat. Brad’s pick of Michael Brantley is a confident one given his injury situation and his biggest obstacle this year could be actually qualifying for the batting title. If he does play regularly, Brantley could be a surprise contender for nearly all the predictions being made today.

Corey Kluber had an incredible season in 2016 leading up to an even more impressive post-season run and in doing so, swept the triple crown for Cleveland (3rd in wins, 4th in ERA, 5th in K’s in the AL). This year, everyone (except Mike) thinks Kluber will lead the team again in at least one category with John, Justin and Gavin predicting another clean sweep. His primary area of contention appears to be in strike outs where Danny Salazar received two votes and Carlos Carrasco one. While the potential is still there, this would be quite the upset as Kluber has not only lead the Indians in strike outs in each of the past three years, but has all of the Indians 200 strike out seasons except one since 2008 (Carrasco 2015).

The final group of predictions are the most interesting ones as we look at who we think will win our awards given out at the end of every season (and who will be selected to the All-Star Game). To start, Ramirez ran away with the most improved player in 2016, but the most obvious candidate for 2016, Brantley, was only chosen by Brad. Trevor Bauer had a decent season last year, but both Mike and John think he’s due for a breakout season while Justin and Gavin think Yan Gomes will come back from one of the worst seasons in Indians history. Cait has Michael Martinez not only making the team, but coming back from one of the worst careers in baseball history to have a productive season. I’ve taken the difficult route as Naquin had a good year, but struggled in the second half, particularly defensively.

Naquin was the easy winner of the 2016 Rookie of the Year and this year, there are two obvious contenders. The votes were nearly split evenly with the majority going to Brandley Zimmer over Yandy Diaz.

The race for top reliever in 2016 was tightly contested, but ultimately won by Andrew Miller over Cody Allen even before the post-season. This year, the predictions run along the same line as Miller took four votes and Allen two with Mike going with Zach McAllister with the outside shot.

Francisco Lindor was not only the top defender in Cleveland last year, but the best overall defender in the AL, winning the Platinum Glove. This year, the whole crew (again, except Mike) thinks he will remain as the top defender.

Another contested 2016 award, Santana was given the top offensive award with much competition and the same will likely be true this year. As with the home runs and RBI, Encarnacion is again the favorite, but Santana’s top competitor in 2016 Ramirez was another pick as was Lindor.

Despite Miller’s dominance and the outside picks in the triple crown voting, Corey Kluber is expected to repeat as the Tribe’s top pitcher in 2017. Mike is sticking with his Bauer pick while I’ve gone with Salazar, but overall, the odds favor Kluber.

Our MVP encapsulates all aspects of the game and no player excels at all aspects in quite the way Lindor does. Outside of Mike’s pick of Bauer and Brad’s of Encarnacion, Lindor was the consensus pick. Expect Ramirez to give him a run for his money and strong competition from at least Kluber with many others having a solid chance.

Finally, picking a single All-Star for 2017 is easier than most of our predictions as most likely the Indians will have multiple selections. Last year, they had three and every single voter picked Lindor this year, one of those selections. The other two, Kluber and Salazar, each have a good chance of going back as do Miller (who went in 2016 with New York), Ramirez and Allen among others. With Terry Francona as manager of the AL All-Star team, this could be a return to the late 1990’s when the AL All-Star team looked like a small version of the Indians starting line-up.

Stay tuned later this week when Cait presents our league-wide predictions, then at the end of the year when we review these predictions and see how silly we all were.