2011 Indians Top 50 Prospects: #1 Lonnie Chisenhall

Lonnie Chisenhall – Third Baseman
Born: 10/04/1988 – Height: 6’1” – Weight: 200 – Bats: Left – Throws: Right

(Photo: Ken Carr)

History: Chisenhall was selected by the Indians in the 1st round of the 2008 Draft out of Pitt Junior College. He signed quickly after the draft by agreeing to a $1.1 million bonus. He played his freshman season in 2007 for the University of South Carolina (20 games, .313, 1 HR, 13 RBI), but was kicked off the baseball team in March 2007 because of burglary and grand larceny charges. He plead guilty to the charges and received six months probation, and transferred to Pitt Junior College in 2008 where he hit .410 (68-for-166) with 27 doubles, 8 homers and 66 RBI. He won the Home Run Derby before the Carolina League vs. California League All Star Game in 2009, and last year was named to the Futures Game. Last year he finished tied for 3rd in the organization in home runs (17) and was 1st in RBI (84).

Strengths: Chisenhall has a very impressive low maintenance swing with a very patient, polished approach that has adapted very well to the professional game. His swing has scouts all throughout the game drooling as many consider it the best swing they have seen in the minors in years. He shows good bat-to-ball ability with great ability to consistently square up the baseball with the barrel of the bat. He is quiet in the box and short to the ball with a nice smooth swing that he keeps on a nice level plane. He is a line drive gap-to-gap hitter with plus bat speed and above average power to all fields. He shows great natural ability with his hands and some good pull side power.

Chisenhall is a very advanced hitter who is extremely passionate about hitting. He shows good command of the strike zone, rarely gets fooled, and has very good plate coverage. He has a consistent approach day in and day out where his swing never changes, and it is the consistency of his swing that allows him to avoid long cold or hot streaks. He does a great job of making adjustments at the plate touching up opposing pitchers who try to work him inside, and when they start pitching him away he counters by making the proper adjustment of going with what they are giving him and going the other way.

Chisenhall has shown more power to drive the ball out of the ballpark than what was originally anticipated coming out of the draft, likely the byproduct of his excellent bat speed and the way the ball jumps off his bat. He is still young and developing, so there is the potential for more power down the road. He is very intelligent, loves to play, and has unbelievable poise where he doesn’t feel pressure and is a clutch performer. As a runner, he has below average to average speed but has good instincts, runs the bases hard, and makes good decisions. He came into the draft with some makeup concerns because of the larceny charges, but since joining the Indians has been a model player and proved that the issues in college were just a one time mistake. With his outstanding swing, good hitting skills, and good power, many think he will become a perennial .300+ hitter in the big leagues and hit 20-25 home runs a year.

Chisenhall was a shortstop in college, and the Indians had him play there in his pro debut at short-season Single-A Mahoning Valley in 2008 with the idea that after the season they would have him make the transition to third base. They felt because of his size he would ultimately have to move off of shortstop, and with his bat it fit nicely at third because of his potential to be a run producer at the position. He had the skills and tools to make a seamless transition to third base, and has since developed into an above average defender there. He is a very athletic and instinctual third baseman and shows good actions with his hands, above average range, and an above average arm. He has a lot of confidence in his defensive ability and makes all the routine plays and even makes a lot of harder plays look easy. He goes back on balls well and shows above average arm strength on long throws, and coming in on balls he uses his hands well and makes strong, accurate throws even while throwing off balance. He works diligently with coaches before games to get better and is very receptive to instruction and working hard at applying it in pre-game workouts and in the games. One of the secrets to his success is his unique approach to improving his fielding where he uses an extremely small sized glove during batting practice when he fields fungos so that when he uses his regular full sized glove in games fielding is so much easier.

If there was ever an example of showing how a player played before an injury and how they performed once they got healthier, Chisenhall would be that guy. A lead shoulder issue (impingement) cropped up near the beginning of the season, but he and the Indians decided to try and play through the injury. As a result, the shoulder injury ended up really affecting him the first two months of the season where in his first 27 games of the season he hit .261/.325/.315 with just six doubles and zero home runs in 111 at bats. He went on the disabled list on May 12^th and missed two weeks of action before he returned on May 29^th. It was a much different story from there on out as in 90 games to finish the season he hit .284/.359/.493 and in 349 at bats had 16 doubles, 3 triples and 17 home runs. The 17 home runs were impressive as they came over a stretch of just three months of games. He was still not completely 100% recovered from the shoulder issue, but it was a lot better than it was in the early stages of the season where he was unable to drive anything, had limited range of motion, and had considerable pain.  Through it all his defensive play on the field was never affected by the shoulder injury as he remained on top of his game.

Opportunities: There is not a whole lot of work that Chisenhall needs to do with his swing. Most of his development opportunities involve gaining more experience at the plate facing higher level pitching, and he should get that opportunity this season at the Triple-A level. There he will be able to work on some of the nuances to hitting like not trying to do too much in certain situations and getting more comfortable hitting left-handed pitching. His approach needs refining as even though he showed improvement with his strikeout rate last year he still could stand to shave some more strikeouts off his total and draw more walks. His pitch recognition skills also need more work as he tends to sit on the fastball too much and has some trouble with offspeed pitches. He has only been playing third base for two years, so he needs more experience there. He has had some throwing issues over the past two seasons due to an erratic arm because he tends to double pump when he throws. While he has made strides in fixing this issue, his throwing is really the one main area he still needs to shore up defensively.

Outlook: Chisenhall was on top of his game the final three months of last season, and his strong finish wipes away any thoughts of disappointment that had crept in after he struggled through the first two months of the season with no homers and just six extra base hits. He won’t ever wow anyone with eye-popping numbers, but he is extremely consistent year-to-year (.794 OPS in 2008, .797 in 2009, .801 in 2010). His consistency to go along with his above average defense makes him an exciting third base option for the Indians in the very near future. He may not have the flash of an elite third base prospect like an Evan Longoria, but he has the potential to be a steady offensive and defensive performer and have a long big league career, much like former Indians third baseman Travis Fryman. Bottom line, there is little doubt that Chisenhall will be a big league player, just opinions differ on what kind of impact he will make. He should open the 2011 season at Triple-A Columbus, and has a great chance to make his big league debut in Cleveland later in the summer to get him acclimated for the everyday job at third base to start the 2012 season.

Year	Age	Team	Lvl	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2008	19	Mahoning Valley	A-	68	276	38	80	20	3	5	45	24	32	7	.290	.355	.438	.793
2009	20	Kinston	A+	99	388	59	107	26	2	18	79	37	80	2	.276	.346	.492	.838
2009	20	Akron	AA	24	93	13	17	5	1	4	13	7	16	1	.183	.238	.387	.625
2010	21	Akron	AA	117	460	81	128	22	3	17	84	46	77	3	.278	.351	.450	.801
		MiLB Totals		308	1217	191	332	73	9	44	221	114	205	13	.273	.342	.456	.798

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