This is the first of three Jason Kipnis centered Best of Burning River Baseball articles to come out on 7/13/15. It features an article written by Mike Melaragno from July of 2011. The original article is repeated in its entirety below, in black italics, with new commentary from Joseph Coblitz in red.
Before the season, most members of the media and baseball experts saw the Indians finishing a distant fourth or perhaps even fifth in the 2011 Central. For those who don’t remember, they finished in second place, 80-82, 15 games behind Detroit. However, the team jumped out to a big early lead, and although things have slowed down for the Tribe, at the All-Star break they are only half a game behind division-leading Detroit. Players such as Asdrubal Cabrera, Carlos Santana, Justin Masterson, Josh Tomlin, and Carlos Carrasco have led the charge.
Like all teams (especially those in the AL Central), the Indians have holes, especially with Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore taking their traditional stints to the disabled list. I know this is supposed to be about Kipnis, but when was the last time the Indians didn’t have trouble with an underproducing and often injured DH and center fielder? Such holes aren’t always easy to fill. However, during yesterday’s Cleveland-Toronto tilt, as the Blue Jays’ announce team raved about Orlando Cabrera‘s status as a veteran leader and good luck charm, it struck me again that the Indians do have a obvious solution in at least one spot. According to second base prospect Jason Kipnis (who hit a home run in Sunday night’s Futures Game), the team has his phone number. Why won’t they give him a call? This article came out on July 12th, Kipnis was called up ten days later on July 22nd and Cabrera was traded to the Giants for Thomas Neal on July 30th.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have no way of knowing what sort of miraculous effects Orlando Cabrera’s intangibles have on a team — maybe he really is the cause of Cleveland’s run at the division title this season. He was not capable of getting the Giants to the postseason, despite the fact that they won the World Series the year before and the year after. Leaving that possibility aside, he’s been statistically bad this season. .244/.277/.321 with Cleveland, then .222/.241/.270 with San Francisco before retiring at the end of the year. Yet he has started 70 games at second base. He might have made sense as a stopgap for the team before the season, but if they are serious about making a run at the division, it’s time to move on. This is essentially the same situation as this season considering Jose Ramirez and Francisco Lindor.
The real issue here is (now two time All-Star)Kipnis. Along with recent call-up Lonnie Chisenhall, Kipnis is widely regarded as one of Cleveland’s top prospects. Indeed, I’ve even seen him listed ahead of Chisenhall in one or two places. Chisenhall was ranked 25th by Baseball-American and 40th by BaseballProspectus while Kipnis was ranked 54th and 28th by those same organizations. It is interesting to compare Kipnis’ numbers in the minors to fellow-converted second baseman Dustin Ackley. While Ackley (23) is rightly considered the superior prospect (he was rated 12th and 25th by the above prospect rankings prior to 2011), Kipnis (24) is only a year older, his numbers on similar levels are every bit as good as Ackley’s. Contrary to predictions, Kipnis has been the vastly superior player. In the most simple comparison, Kipnis has been worth 16.4 WAR (4.9 in 2015) while Ackley has been worth 8.5 WAR (0.8 this year). While Kipnis’ fielding at second is described as a work in progress, I don’t think that’s any different than Ackley’s situation. Ackley: .990 FLD%, 12.9 UZR at 2B; Kipnis: .986 FLD%, -15.2 UZR. The Mariners probably are out of it for good this season, but they saw Ackley as ready, and called him up. They were actually only 7.5 games out when this article first appeared, but finished 29 games back in last place.
Of course, just because Seattle called their hot second base prospect up doesn’t mean that Cleveland should do the same. The more interesting comparison is with Cleveland’s own decision to call up Chisenhall (21) to play third base. Despite the exceptions I mentioned above, most prospect-watchers do consider Chisenhall to be the superior prospect to Kipnis, as his young age allows for greater upside Chisenhall: career 4.8 WAR, currently in AAA while Kipnis is currently in the MVP race. His glove is also better at his position. This shows how little we really know about prospects. In less games than Kipnis, he has been worth -14.2 runs compared to the average 3B according to UZR. In addition, this was his first positive UZR year since 2011. However, prior to the season few expected Chisenhall to be up before September. Moreover, Chisenhall wasn’t exactly tearing it up at AAA this season (.267/.353/.431 compared to Lindor’s .281/.348/.399 or Giovanny Urshela‘s .275/.301/.475), and had some injury issues as well. However, one might be able to understand the Indians’ decision to call Chisenhall up given that they are in the divisional race and that Jack Hanahan is only a stopgap himself. However, just about any justification of that sort used for calling up Chisenhall applies even more-so to Kipnis.
Hannahan is only a stopgap, but I would argue that he’s better than Cabrera (he at least isn’t worse this was true and at least he was worth a 0.8 WAR in 2012, more than Neal (in AAA) or Cabrera (retired)). Whatever their respective upsides, Kipnis’ bat is clearly better than Chisenhall’s at the moment (still true). If the team wants to preserve service time, then why would they call up Chisenhall? Maybe they were always planning on sending Chisenhall back to AAA in 2012, 2013 and 2015 while extending Kipnis for six years (plus a team option) to make his service time irrelevant.
There are other issues but they are easily set aside: the team does have more “depth” at second, but if they seriously wanted to give Luis Valbuena another chance, they wouldn’t have given Cabrera the job in the first place. And now Valbuena has 19 home runs for the Astros, so maybe he did deserve another chance. Joe suggests the team even trade from this depth. Which they did in the 2015 off-season by moving Joey Wendle for Brandon Moss and before then sending Jason Donald to Cincinnati in the Trevor Bauer trade. Cord Phelps is a more interesting issue, but it isn’t clear that the team views him as a serious option (rightly or wrongly). Rightly. If they are trying to win this season, they need to go with the best player at the position, and that this point, it’s Kipnis. He was worth 1.2 WAR in 36 games to end 2011. Hopefully for Tribe fans, he comes up after the break is over. He did. I’m sure the team has their reasons for the decisions they’ve made, but in light of the aggressive promotion of Chisenhall, I honestly can’t see why Kipnis isn’t up already. Just be patient, Mike, he’ll be up soon.
Jason Kipnis needs to be called up from Columbus… soon. He will be, but it still won’t be enough. Should have started calling for Lindor in 2011…
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