Jason Kipnis is... Well, it’s actually kind of hard to nail down what Jason Kipnis is anymore. For much of the last five or six years Kip has been considered the heart and soul of the Indians as they’ve risen to prominence, the brash smiling dervish at the heart of the diamond and at the center of everything good that happened with the Indians. He was the yang to Michael Brantley’s quiet, calm yin, the other half of a buddy flick starring and Lonnie Chisenhall that never happened.
In 2018 though, Kip’s role as “heart and soul” has been subsumed, whether by Francisco Lindor’s brilliance on the field and at the box office, Jose Ramirez’s meteoric rise, or maybe even sooner or later Trevor Bauer brashness in the rotation.