Jason Kipnis, Cleveland Indians
The past couple years have been tough for Jason Kipnis. Upon entering 2017, he had posted a wRC+ below 100 just once in his career. He’s unfortunately fallen below that benchmark in each of the past two seasons (81 in ’17, 89 in ’18). His performance has been so lackluster that the Indians haven’t found a trade partner in order to offload at least part of his remaining contract.
It’s worth noting that if we take out Kipnis’ first two months out of this past year, his numbers would’ve looked much different. Through the end of May, he struggled to a .199/.283/.303 triple slash with three homers and 22 RBI in 238 plate appearances, good for a 59 wRC+. His didn’t set the world on fire in his final 363 plate appearances, but Cleveland will gladly take the .251/.336/.445 line with 15 homers and 53 RBI (109 wRC+) that he produced again.
While we know spring-training stats don’t mean much, Kipnis quickly became the poster child for that in 2018. He broke camp with an 1.193 OPS and eight extra-base hits in 52 at-bats before those horrendous struggles to begin the regular season.
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