When the Cleveland Indians called second baseman Cord Phelps up from the minors two weeks ago, the team looked a lot better—not because Phelps was a favorite for Rookie of the Year, but because he would be replacing Orlando Cabrera in the Tribe’s lineup.
Great as Cabrera has been for clubhouse chemistry off the field, he hasn’t been playing very well on it. Through 63 games, he’s hitting .248 with a .270 OBP (fourth-worst in the AL) and a .596 OPS (sixth-worst). His sabermetric numbers are just as bad—his .267 wOBA and 65 wRC+ are both among the bottom five in the league.
In addition to his combination of no power and poor plate discipline—his 2.5% walk rate is the worst in all of baseball—the converted shortstop hasn’t adjusted well to playing second base, as evidenced by his -13.8 UZR/150. Even his reputation for being clutch rings hollow when one looks at his -0.51 WPA.
At -0.6 WAR, he’s been below replacement value and has been the ninth-least valuable position player in all of baseball. He’s on pace to cost the Indians more than a win and a half over 162 games.
And yet, Sunday’s game, in which Phelps got the start and ended up coming through with a walk-off home run in the 11th inning to give the Indians a 5-2 victory, was the exception to the norm—Cabrera seems well entrenched as Cleveland’s starting second baseman.
Of the 11 games the Indians have played since Phelps got called up, Cabrera has appeared in seven, including six starts. More than half the time Manny Acta has filled out the lineup card knowing Phelps was available, he has instead opted for Cabrera.
Sitting Phelps won’t mean the difference between winning and losing most games, and it’s not like he’s putting Cabrera ahead of someone like Dustin Pedroia. But by having the inferior option as his default, Acta isn’t putting his best team on the field every night, and there’s no reason for him not to maximize the chances of his team winning.
When Phelps was called up, I used his Minor League Equivalency numbers to determine that, over a full season, Phelps would produce about 5.2 WAR more than Cabrera. That’s an extra win every 31 games, and each time Phelps takes Cabrera’s place in the lineup card the Indians’ odds of winning rise by three percent (that might not sound like much, but there’s a big difference between .500 and .530).
Even if those projections—.265/.346/.421 with -5.0 UZR/150—were somewhat optimistic (they seemed reasonable to me), it’s hard to argue that Phelps isn’t something of an improvement. Cut his advantage over Cabrera by half, to 2.6 WAR/162 games (at which point Phelps is only a one-win player) and that’s still a big difference.
For Acta’s part, Phelps hadn’t exactly turned heads in his performance to date—he was hitting .063/.211/.063 before Sunday’s game, and even now his .143/.250/.333 slashline is worse than Cabrera’s—but that’s in an incredibly small sample size. This was only his seventh game, and that’s as a part-timer playing second fiddle to Cabrera. He’d need more and more consistent playing time before we can make any real conclusions.
It was clear when Phelps came up that Cabrera would still get his share of at-bats at second base, but right now it appears Acta still sees him as No. 1 on the depth chart. Hopefully Phelps’ clutch late-game heroics will earn him the starting job he deserves.
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