Cleveland Indians 2016 Steamer projections: Outfielders

In part two of "Steamer destroys everything we know and love" we look at the Cleveland Indians outfield. Other than Michael Brantley and probably Ryan Raburn, next year’s Tribe outfield will look completely different from what they had heading into 2015. One-half of the Raburn/David Murphy platoon is gone, Michael Bourn is gone, Nick Swisher is gone (if you really want to count him as an outfielder), and Lonnie Chisenhall is playing right field.

A lot could change heading into the offseason with the Indians having as much as $20 million to play with, but as it stands in October, the Tribe have an outfield of Brantley, Abraham Almonte, Ryan Raburn (assuming they take up his option), and Lonnie Chisenhall. How does Steamer project this new-look outfield to perform headed into their first season together?

In short: Please sign a free agent, Chernoff.

Lonnie Chisenhall

Based on his excellent half season at right field last season, I am going to assume that Chisenhall starts next season there. Steamer does not have him becoming Lonnie Baseball and taking the sport by storm ala Alex Gordon, but it would be one of Chisenhall’s better offensive seasons of his career.

Chisenhall’s 98 wRC+ would be the third best of his career, behind his breakout 2014 season and his 43 games played in 2012. It is a little concerning that Steamer does not see his strikeout rate drop, but instead increase to 19.5% (up from 19.1% in 2015). However, that is right along his career line as he has steadily been striking out more every year since 2012.

Who knows? Maybe Lonnie will struggle to start the season and need to be sent down to the Triple-A to eat some of those magical Columbus Clippers dime-a-dogs to power him for the second half again. But let’s hope for a full season of good Lonnie, instead.

Abraham Almonte

Abraham Almonte came out of nowhere after the Indians acquired him from the San Diego Padres for relief pitcher Marc RzepIdontwantospellhisnameeveragain. He was on pace to be the greatest Indians player that ever lived after his first week, hitting two home runs, four doubles, and a triple while manning center field for his new team. In baseball’s typical soul-sucking fashion, Almonte eventually evened out into a below-average hitter, which is what Steamer sees him as going forward.

Almonte’s projected 91 games would be the most played in his career, so Steamer has him getting some serious playing time in the outfield. His slash line takes a hit from the .250/.310/.409 he carried in 2015, but seven home runs would be a career high. Seeing him strike out at around 21% would be encouraging, and a sign that he really did improve his approach in 2015, considering he had 27.3 K% in 2014 and a 25.6 K% in 2013.

Michael Brantley

Excuse me, Steamer? Did I just hear you say that Michael Brantley is going to strike out in almost 10% of his at-bats? At least until this obvious glitch is patched up, Brantley is expected to strike out 9.7% of the time (his highest mark since 2013), and walk only 8.8% of the time.

Steamer has Brantley keeping up the 15 home run power he showed in 2015, but hitting fewer doubles and dropping his slugging percentage down to .445 as a result. A 2.7 fWAR would be Brantley’s lowest since 2013 and begin to show a downward trend for Doctor Smooth, something I cannot imagine happening.

I am not sure why Steamer seems to think a healthy Michael Brantley will do worse in 2016 than an oft-injured Michael Brantley did in 2015, but then again I am not the fancy calculatin’ math-whosa-whats-it.

Ryan Raburn

Because Steamer cannot (or will not tell us it can) determine how many at-bats a player will get against right- or left-handed pitching, we do not know for sure if these projections for Raburn are with him as a platoon. Given his lowly 135 projected plate appearances (a career low), that would appear to be the case, but Steamer also does not seem to think he can be a good platoon bat anymore.

Raburn’s 2015 season was undoubtedly a little flukey, but Steamer has him taking a precipitous drop next season. His .301/.393/.543 slash falls all the way to .236/.307/.396 and he hits half as many home runs as he did this season.

Again, as with all these outfield predictions, these are projections before the Indians make any moves in the offseason to add more outfielders. There is even a possibility that the Indians do not pick up Raburn’s option and choose to pay $100,000 to let him walk, instead.

(Steamer projections update throughout the offseason. All numbers in this article are based on 10/23 projections)