If anything good has come out of Lonnie Chisenhall the last two years, it's the discovery that he's not bad at playing right field. That's a combination of saying he is literally not terrible, and the nodding one's head while looking at something good and going "not bad". Alright to pretty good is the closest I can get without tripping over words to describe his defense. The Indians can do worse, and they have very recently this decade.
It may be damning with faint praise, but Chisenhall is the closest thing the Indians have to a defensive specialist in the outfield.
I say this in part because his bat continues to be kind of bad. He's had two seasons where he's produced at an above average level, 2012 with a 105 wRC+ and 2014 with a 117 wRC+. The latter was a total mirage though — a hot streak in the first half of the season, and actually just compressed into about three weeks in June, buoyed his otherwise unspectacular stats. Between him and his expected platoon-mate Abraham Almonte, the Indians right field should be expected to be the least productive position offensively on the team. That's why the glove is so important.
That's the good news with Chisenhall. While he wasn't as amazing in 2016 as he was in 2015, when he earned 1.6 WAR just from his glove alone, he still made plays that needed making. That, combined with a cannon arm that's a holdover from his days at third, make for a decent glove. Since we've seen them for everyone else, here's a graph of all the catches Chisenhall made in right field in 2016, from easy to hard.
If you look back to the other guys I profiled, he’s probably the best at making harder catches. But the thing about Chisenhall isn’t the catches he makes, it’s the ones he can’t even get to. Here’s a graph of his range out in right.
Basically, he’s fantastic at coming in on the ball and toward the right field line, but not so good at all at going back on the ball. That gaffe in Wrigley back in October was out of character for him, perhaps a comfort level problem because nobody wants to run into a brick wall. If it’s a warning track shot hit with any real horizontal trajectory, he’s going to have a bad time. That leads to bases for the other team. He can mitigate that some through athleticism and that aforementioned great arm, but we have no real way of tracking how many bases a guy didn’t allow because of his throwing arm. It sure is great to see him uncork one though.
Chisenhall should be expected to maintain his fielding ability, and perhaps even get better at it as he gets more comfortable. Perhaps, as with Naquin, he will gain some knowledge from the salty veteran wiles of Grady Sizemore. The bat likely isn’t going to get any better though, he just can’t lay off pitches when he should. Pitchers just don’t throw him many strikes. Seriously, look at this zone chart of pitches by zone quadrant.
This tells a story. A story of how to attack Lonnie. They’ll keep doing it because he’s going to keep swinging, as evidenced by his swing rate at those pitches:
Obviously he’s going to swing at pitches in the zone, but down and away is delicious candy to him. You’d think since he doesn’t see a lot of lefties he’d be able to handle it a bit better, but he still has a glaring hole. At 27 going on 28, you wonder if that’s ever going to be fixed.
He’s a platoon player that I wanted to be so much more. I once watched him hit two home runs in a game while with Akron, and was convinced he was the answer. To what question, I don’t know. But it turns out the slap-hitting converted second baseman on that team is now the star. He’s still the best known commodity outside of Brantley in the outfield, whatever that makes you feel. If he could just hit lefties, even a little bit, that would be huge for the team because he is still a good right fielder. That defense will be key for the Indians as they move forward. Nobody expects much from his bat, and maybe that will be good for Lonnie. He doesn’t need to be great, or even a major contributor like he was drafted to be anymore. He just needs to be the best he can be, whatever that ends up being.
Silly, saccharine and foolish to say, but he’s still an important cog in that insane outfield machine they’ve built.