Thanks to an improved defense, the Indians are taking control of the AL Central
Cleveland rolled the Royals on Sunday and widened their lead in the tough AL Central
By
Dayn Perry
•
2 min read
On Sunday, the Indians whipped the defending World Series champion Royals by a score of 7-0 (box score) and in doing so notched their fifth consecutive victory and stretched their lead on those same Royals to 1 1/2 games in the tough AL Central. Speaking of the tough AL Central, the Indians are 18-7 within the division this season.
To state the obvious, this is a good team. Right now, they're on pace for 91 wins, and only two AL teams -- the Red Sox and Mariners -- best the Indians' plus-46 run differential. To bottom-line it, coming into Sunday's action, the SportsLine Projection Model gave the Tribe a 72 percent chance to win the division and an 82.4 percent chance to make the playoffs for the first time since 2013. As well, SportsLine pegs them for 92 wins, second-most in the AL.
Terry Francona's club has achieved this with a fairly balanced attack. Right now, the Indians rank fourth in the AL in runs scored and second in the AL in fewest runs allowed. Backing up that latter figure is a rotation ERA of 3.98 (good for fourth in the AL) and a bullpen ERA of 3.43 (sixth in the AL).
Another factor has been Cleveland's much-improved defense. The 2014 squad graded out as one of the worst defensive teams in recent history, but they've achieved a pretty quick turnaround. Now let's take a quick statistical look at how the Indians have progressed in terms of fielding the ball since 2014. To do this, we'll use Defensive Efficiency Rating (DER), which is simply the percentage of balls in play that a team converts into outs, and the Defense statistic (Def) available at FanGraphs, which measures how many runs relative to the league average that a team saves or squanders at each position. To the numbers ...
| Year | Indians' DER (AL rank) | Indians' Def (AL rank) |
| 2014 | .673 (15th) | -64.8 (14th) |
| 2015 | .700 (6th) | +23.0 (2nd) |
| 2016 | .710 (2nd) | +18.0 (2nd) |
That DER progression really brings it home. Quite simply, they've gone from one of the worst fielding teams in baseball to one of the best, and they've done it in less than two years' time. A big part of that improvement has been swapping out Asdrubal Cabrera, one of the worst defensive shortstops around, for Francisco Lindor, who might be the best defensive shortstop in baseball right now (especially with Andrelton Simmons laid up with an injury). They've also shown an increasing tendency to employ non-traditional defensive shifts. When it comes to countering batters with such shifts, the Indians have moved from 13th in the AL in number of non-traditional shifts in 2014, to 10th in 2015, to sixth this year. Whatever the underlying reasons, the Indians' vastly improved ability to turn fair-batted balls into outs has much to do with their 2016 success when it comes to run prevention.
On a broader level, also keep in mind that Cleveland in 2016 has achieved this level of success while getting only 43 plate appearances from Michael Brantley and only 27 innings from Carlos Carrasco. In other words, the Indians have thrived to date with limited contributions from those two core players.
In the end, you have a good team that's playing well and that projects to get even better during the remainder of the season. Nothing is to be assumed in a division that also houses the world-champion Royals and the revamped Tigers and White Sox, but the Indians indeed have the makings of a playoff club.
