Cesar Hernandez and the Potential for the Indians to Seek Upside Among the Second Base Market

Second base is a major problem for the Indians.

Just one team is currently projected to finish with a lower WAR total from that position in 2020 -- the rebuilding Tigers -- and Cleveland's outlook is shaping up to be as dire as those waiting until the last minute to finish their holiday shopping.

Given the Tribe's in-house options — Christian Arroyo, Andrew Velazquez and Yu Chang — second remains their biggest need, an area where the biggest chunk of savings created from the Corey Kluber trade might need to be applied.

To that point, reports of the Indians’ interest in Cesar Hernandez were welcome, at least in terms of it being a rare rumor that didn’t involve dealing away a star.

But while most free-agent whispers tied to the Tribe over the past two years have been of the [ahem] less impactful variety, Hernandez actually provides some of the most upside of any of the possibilities currently flooding the open market.

But just how likely is it that Hernandez can recapture the type of performance he posted from 2016-2017, a stretch that featured a combined 7.1 WAR and positioned him as one of the most dynamic second baseman in baseball?

Or, is it more likely that Hernandez’s ability is now closer to his 2019 contributions, where he posted a respectable but unspectacular .279/.333/.408 line, ending with a 1.7 WAR and a non-tender by the Phillies at the start of the offseason?

Regardless, either version presents an upgrade over Jason Kipnis’ production in 2019. Hernandez’s lowest WAR total since 2015 still bested Kipnis (1.1 fWAR) this past year, and the switch-hitter’s 2020 projection of 1.8 over at FanGraphs currently tops the list of free agent second baseman.

Yes, this is starting to feel like every romantic comedy you've ever seen. You know they make sense for each other. Why won't they just get together already?

That’s not to say other names wouldn’t make sense.

Asdrubal Cabrera, Brian Dozier, Jonathan Schoop and Brock Holt could all represent some version of an answer. However, of that group, only Schoop (28) is younger than Hernandez (29), challenging to present the only worthwhile argument for upside similar to the former Philadelphia middle-infielder.

But it's also fair to ponder: What happened to Hernandez in 2019?

Why did his OBP fall nearly 20 points below his career mark (.352)? Why was his run-creation (92 wRC+) eight percent below average, his lowest since 2015?

We could start with Hernandez's drop in walk rate (6.7 percent), a 6.7 percent decline from his career high of 13.4 in 2018. As Tony Wolfe at FanGraphs pointed out earlier this winter, that was the largest drop-off of any hitter from 2018-2019.

The way-too-simplistic approach to fixing that is to … you know … just be more patient. But things are rarely that simple, nor do we have any indication as to why his walk rate dropped over three percent from his career mark, but it was certainly the biggest reason for drifting away from the offensive league average in 2019.

What we can see, though, is that he just started swinging at more pitches. That can be beneficial when more of those swings come on pitches within the strike zone. After all, Hernandez hit .300 with a .461 slugging on pitches within the zone in 2019 compared to .216/.243 outside the zone.

But it’s not nearly as helpful, necessarily, when swings are up all across the board.

That includes Hernandez’s chase rate in 2019, which climbed nearly 10 percent higher than his 2018 season and nearly five percent more than his career rate. Chasing, of course, can result in a strikeout, but getting behind in the count as opposed to ahead can also set up for a worse outcome later.

Additionally, nearly 20 percent more of his at-bats ended in contact on pitches out of the zone compared to the past four years. Due to some batted-ball luck, it didn't drastically impact his batting average in 2019, but it certainly took away from his potential to draw a few more walks or hunt better pitches to slug for extra bases.

Now, that may not explain all of Hernandez's drift from league average last year -- we're still talking about some small sample size -- but it's a portion of the puzzle.

The good news: That seems fixable.

You can see some of that at play last year. His swing rate peaked near the halfway point of the season, but as the year progressed, his aggressiveness dropped, and his rolling wOBA began to hover back around the league average mark.

Still, it will take more of a return to normalcy for Hernandez to get back in line with his career marks. But that doesn’t seem as difficult or near as alarming as if he had a sudden, drastic drop in average exit velocity or hard-hit ability. That hasn't happened, nor has that ever been a huge part of his game.

On top of that Hernandez is a switch-hitter. When broken down by each side of the plate, the second baseman still remained an above average bat against righties (102 wRC+) last year. It was the lefties that gave his right side issues, leading to a 67 wRC+ and .641 OPS against southpaws in 2019.

Given that, it's really not too difficult to see a path back to above-average offense. With the right coaching and influence, it may even even be a realistic bet, and his overall floor doesn't appear to be anything less than about league average.

Of course, the uncertainty over his ability to return to his career walk rates and normal aggressiveness patterns make his 2020 performance far from a known. But the fact that he’s not that far removed from some really productive seasons and still resides on the more pleasant side of 30 paints a favorable picture for his ability to contribute a couple of wins, at the very least, to the team that signs him.

The fact that Hernandez’s worst season since 2015 is still a 10 percent offensive increase from what the Indians received in 2019, paired with the above-average base-running Hernandez provides, would make him a good fit with Cleveland.

His past ceiling might even leave room for more.