Francisco Lindor’s Surprising Pop

Carlos Correa won the Rookie of the Year vote, and Carlos Correa is guy that most fantasy owners prefer, too. And mostly that’s because we’ll take Correa’s bat over the one Francisco Lindor was supposed to show. When it comes to the bat Lindor actually showed in his debut, though, things get closer. Just a little bit of power separates the two.

And that’s the problem with evaluating Lindor for next season. Power can be so fickle, and we all remember the Kevin Maases of the past. Past research doesn’t even agree on a proper sample for power numbers. We’re left grasping at straws when a young player comes up and is more powerful than they were supposed to be.

Heading into the season, Steamer projected Lindor for a .234/.282/.329 line that was commensurate with much of the scouting: his glove would float him. His minor league batting lines were a mix of impatience and patience, contact and strikeouts, power and powerless, so you can squint and see this greatness if you like. But the career minor league line — .279/.354/.384 with a 14% strikeout rate — doesn’t grab you by the lapel.

We don’t have much minor league data beyond the results, and it looks like MinorLeagueCentral got shut down. But before they shut down, they did have minor league batted ball data, and they had Lindor with a 50.5% ground-ball rate on the farm. He had a 50.8% ground-ball rate last year, so this growth didn’t come with the same swing changes that a hitter like Stephen Piscotty underwent.

That ground ball rate did come in a sample big enough to believe, too. And that’s the weirdest part about his power — 438 plate appearances is a good sample! The first time we looked at what sort of sample you need to evaluate power, 438 was almost enough. Pizza Cutter found that ISO stabilized in 550 plate appearances at least.

But look closer at his findings, as well as Derek Carty’s followup on the subject, and it’s weird that ISO stabilizes at all. Doubles and triples, for example, take more than one season to believe. Home runs, whether by HR/PA or HR/FB, seem to be the driver of ISO’s stabilization, since they stabilize in a half-season or quicker.

So, basically, it’s all about the home runs for Lindor. He’s projected to hit 12 homers in 661 plate appearances next year, and he hit 12 home runs in 438 plate appearances last year. One of the numbers will look “wrong” in retrospect.

Until we have better, bigger data sets for batted balls, though, there’s little we can do.

We can point to Lindor’s home run and fly ball distance as a possible marker, maybe. He was 241st last year, with a 266.9 foot average distance that placed him between Ian Kinsler, Andrelton Simmons, Eduardo Escobar on one end and Carlos Perez and Jason Kipnis on the other. But if you’re ready to count him out because of this grouping, there’s one name I left off the list on purpose: Michael Brantley.

Brantley and Lindor could be dopplegangers by ISO and batted ball distance, except that Lindor goes opposite field a little more and Brantley hits the ball in the air more. And these things are important. Let’s look at other players that have had similar pull/oppo and grounder/fly mixes. I’ll take the guys with plus-plus hard-hit rates out in order to find our best batted ball mix comps for Lindor.

Batted Ball Mix Comps for Francisco Lindor

Name	G	PA	HR	SB	ISO	wRC+	GB/FB	Pull%	Oppo%	Hard%
Francisco Lindor	99	438	12	12	0.169	128	1.77	34.6%	29.3%	25.2%
Gerardo Parra	155	589	14	14	0.161	108	1.60	37.7%	27.8%	28.9%
Ian Desmond	156	641	19	13	0.151	83	1.72	34.7%	29.3%	28.1%
Jason Kipnis	141	641	9	12	0.149	126	1.60	35.3%	28.6%	29.9%
Odubel Herrera	147	537	8	16	0.121	110	1.61	35.2%	32.5%	26.3%
Ender Inciarte	132	561	6	21	0.105	100	2.03	34.0%	33.2%	26.0%
Ryan Goins	128	428	5	2	0.104	84	1.94	34.1%	29.5%	24.6%
Cameron Maybin	141	555	10	23	0.103	94	2.89	38.1%	28.5%	21.4%
Yunel Escobar	139	591	9	2	0.101	120	2.35	37.6%	27.8%	27.8%
Xander Bogaerts	156	654	7	10	0.101	109	2.05	33.8%	32.1%	27.2%
Cesar Hernandez	127	452	1	19	0.077	91	2.48	32.1%	30.9%	23.8%
Jose Iglesias	120	454	2	11	0.070	97	2.41	34.6%	29.0%	16.1%
Michael Bourn	141	482	0	17	0.045	68	1.69	33.4%	27.1%	21.3%

Look at that. Lindor had the best power outcomes of his batted ball mix comp group. He had 50% more power than the group average even though he matched the group exactly in pull% (35%), oppo% (29%), and hard% (25%), and only hit a few more fly balls than the group average (1.8 GB/FB vs 2.0). That’s not a great sign.

Given the way that Francisco Lindor pushes the ball on the ground, without having a plus hard-hit rate, we can expect his power to regress next year. Given his minor league work and batted ball distances, we could expect the same. In this case, the numbers line up with the scouting. Don’t get too excited about Lindor’s early power output.