Checking Back In

The latest dishes cooking on the Hot Stove:

• Casey Blake, Super Utility Mountain Man (SUMM), has reached agreement with the Indians on a $6.15 million contract before arbitration. Management keeps repeating that Blake will be the starter at third, while Ande Marte, out of options, will likely moulder on the bench, getting spot starts and likely not getting anything going. Blake's a good guy to have around because of his versatility, but I remain unchanged in the opinion that the Tribe needs to either play Marte or trade him. Free Andy Marte!
• The Indians apparently no longer have Johan Santana to treat as their personal rented mule. While last year's domination of Santana was enjoyable, I suspect it was also a statistical anomaly, and I'm glad to find that the Twins dealt him to the National League and not to the FEDBU, or the FEDBU-lite. Although it would have been nice to watch either of those teams empty their farm system for Santana, I'm fully aware that this has a big impact on the Indians for 2008. Santana might win 25 games while pitching in AAAA for the Mets. It was also extremely smart of the Twins to extend Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer before announcing the Santana trade, if only to placate their fans that they're not completely blowing up the team. How long till the Twins sell high on Joe Nathan?
• The Santana extension has still not happened for the Mets, so CC's price remains unfixed. However, it appears that both CC and Mark Shapiro are saying the right things and keeping negotiations out of the media - in other words, everyone's acting like a grown up so far. Gotta love that about this organization.
• Jorge Julio has been extended an NRI (non-roster invitation) to attend spring training with the Indians. If they can get him to throw quality strikes, and has a great spring, it's a good move - he has closing experience,and he still throws heat.
• Since my last post, the Tribe has also extended Senor Slow. Another fine move to lock up the best of the people you have by Tribe leadership.
• Indians lose Brian Barton (no surprise) and Matt Whitney (big surprise) to Rule 5. I have to believe that Whitney will be back, given the glut at first base of the Nationals. Barton - it would have been nice to have been able to keep Barton, but I find no fault with the guys they did protect instead. It's nice to have so much talent at the upper end of the sytem that you can't protect it all.

I went to the Indians Press Caravan in Columbus last week. It was a zoo. There must have been several hundred people milling about the ballroom at the Columbus Easton Hilton. Some notes from that event:

• It was amusing to see women lined up two deep with cameras to take Grady Sizemore's picture while he talked with the sports talkers from WBNS-AM.
• Tom Hamilton does not believe the Tigers have the pitching to win the AL Central. Neither do I.
• Eric Wedge believes we should just relax in the 9th inning when Joe Knows Closing is on the mound, because it is out of our hands and in the hands of the baseball gods.
• The line for Grady Sizemore's autograph was significantly longer than the line for Scott Lewis' or Jensen Lewis'.
• Eric Wedge radiates confidence and again repeated what we've been hearing from Mark Shapiro about other teams wanting major leaguers on the current roster in trades, rather than prospects, and Wedge was extremely reluctant to give up on anyone on this team.
• According to Wedge, Barfield is almost certain to start the season at Buffalo, specifically to work on his hitting. It seems that The Beaded One is the second baseman next year, period, unless Josh Barfield works some kind of miracle and Cabrera fails to hit.
• When asked about left field, Wedge expressed significant confidence in the Dellucci-Michaels platoon.

In other news:

• Troy Glaus for Scott Rolen? It's hard to believe that the reputations of both of these players have diminished to the point that this deal provokes a yawn on my part.
• Nick Swisher to the Sox - Shapiro is taking a lot of heat on the fan boards for not going hard after Swisher, but it seems to me like Swisher was not available until the White Sox made the A's an offer they couldn't refuse. The White Sox continue to baffle me - they should be blowing this team up and rebuilding, yet they're selling low on their best prospects. It's okay with me if they want to continue to be a 70-win team, but I imagine all 12 Sox fans are puzzlecd by the way their front office is handling this team. Yeah, they're making moves, but it seems like they're making moves just to make moves.
• If the Erik Bedard deal with the O's falls through because Peter Angelos is clueless, then the Tribe should explore trading Sabathia to the M's for a similar package if it seems that CC and management have an unbridgeable negotiating gulf. Adam Jones would look fantastic in left field. Could you imagine an outfield of Adam Jones, Grady Sizemore and Frank the Tank?
• Now that Santana is off the board, it will be interesting to see how the pitching market shapes up for the remaning free agents (Lohse, Livan Hernandez, etc.). Cliff Lee, anyone?
• I have suggested on at least one other forum that, now that the A's are blowing things up, the Indians should make a push for Eric Chavez and Huston Street, with a package built around Marte, and some excess pitching. The A's would have the luxury of playing Marte every day, and the Indians could use a more reliable (albeit injury prone) closer. Blake could back up Chavez when (not if) he gets hurt. Sure, it would be expensive, but it could also help put the Tribe over the top. Chavez is a vacuum cleaner at third, and we have more than our fair share of groundball pitchers.
• The Super Bowl - Yawn.
• Yanks sign Ensberg - do the Yanks really need any more expensive reclamation projects? I guess that's why they're the FEDBU - they can afford to throw bucnhes of guys like Ensberg against the wall in the hopes that one of them will stick, unlike the Indians, who have to be right on every time.
• I'd love to believe Roger Clemens. I just can't. He can trot out as many statistics as he wants, but now he's more than a headhunting punk - he's a headhunting punk on PEDs.
• Mike Hampton is healthy? Heard that before. If you believe that, you'll buy this watch.

Holiday Hot Stove Review

Some more thoughts about how the off-season is going down:

• A reminder to panicking Indians fans: teams make the deals they make for a variety of reasons. Just because you feel the offer that another team accepted for a player you think the Indians could have used is inferior to what the Indians could have offered does not mean that Shapiro did not make a competitive offer. Maybe the key factor in trading Dan Haren to the Diamondbacks was not necessarily that the Indians' offer was inferior, but that they wanted to trade Haren to the National League so as not to improve the Indians. Maybe the Indians were not willing to overpay to the same extent that Arizona did.
• We tend to overvalue our own team's prospects.
• Which contract would you rather have on your books - Jake Westbrook at $11M per for the next 5 years or Carlos Silva at $12M per for the next 4 years? The M's pitching was so weak that they pretty well had no choice but to pony up the money.
• Josh Hamilton would have looked good in left field for the Indians, and I don't question the Reds for getting pitching for him - but, you just have to wonder why, with the Rangers needing pitching so badly, that they were willing to give up on Volquez, who has been touted as one of their best prospects for several years now. I suspect that the Reds will be underwhelmed by his performance, and they will find that they sold very low on Hamilton.
• The Indians don't have to make many moves to stay competitive. It would be nice to get a power-hitting corner outfielder and move Michaels/Dellucci - but it's not necessary. They could start the season with the platoon in left field, Gutierrez in right and be fine.
• I'm on the Andy Marte bandwagon. Unless there is an overwhelming offer for him in the offseason, give him the starting job out of spring training and let's see what he can do. He may not put up much average at first, but his potential to be the right handed slugger that the Indians need given his minor league track record is undeniable. He has nothing to prove at Buffalo, and he's out of options. Casey Blake becomes the uber-utility guy.
• The Tigers will win a lot of 10-8 games next season unless they do something else to shore up their pitching. If the Tigers have a lot of their old guys miss time due to injury, they will come to regret the wholesale dismantling of their farm system that they've been undergoing for the last couple years in order to win now.
• Cliff Lee is looking more and more like a very attractive consolation prize should the Tribe wish to deal him. His contract is affordable, he's had major league success. He may just need a change of scenery. I believe that we see teams go after Cliff Lee with a little more fervor once the ultimate Santana derby winner is known.
• The problem with trading Lee, Marte, Choo, Sowers, Adam Miller or Dellucci right now is that their value has never been lower and the Tribe would never be able to get anything approaching full value. The other problem is that these are the only guys that many Indians fans would like to see gone, which rather limits the ability of Shapiro to get an appropriate return. We don't want these guys, but we overvalue our ability to get an appropriate return for them.
• Why not take a flier on Mark Prior? The Indians can sell the chance to pitch in the playoffs for a competitive team, as well as one of the best medical staffs in the game to guide his rehab. However, they can't move the team to the west coast for him, which appears to be where he wants to pitch.
• I like the Jamey Carroll signing. It strikes me as the kind of move that really is the signal to another move we don't see coming - maybe trading Peralta and moving AC to shortstop and slotting Carroll at second base while Barfield gets his act together in Buffalo and Casey Blake plays uber-utility guy, spelling guys at second, third and the outfield.
• I like that Andy Marte is getting reps in winter ball at first base - if they do move him, it makes him more versatile.
• I think the Mets will likely end up winning the Johan Santana derby, primarily because the Twins will want to send him to the National League so they don't end up facing him in the playoffs. The Twins are still under the belief that their team just needs some tweaking to remain competitive, and adding some bats like Delmon Young and Mike Lamb will certainly help. But adding Adam Everett will not help them with their main problem - they can't score runs.
• I don't see how the Indians can seriously upgrade at any position on the field this year without giving up one of the following: Asdrubal Cabrera, Franklin Gutierrez, Adam Miller or Aaron Laffey. Those are the trading chips with some value. You have to give value to get value.
• It would have been nice to see the Indians get Alexei Ramirez, but you just know that the White Sox overpaid. They always do.

The Hot Stove So Far

The offseason so far:

• Indians sign Japanese reliever Masahide Kobayashi. The price was right ($6 million for 2 years with a club option for a third). If it works, great. If it doesn't, we haven't lost much money.
• Indians pick up options for Byrd, Fultz, Borowski. Again, the price was right.
• Eric Wedge - manager of the year. Well-deserved
• Grady Sizemore wins Gold Glove. Good thing they don't parse the outfield awards by position. He's good, but Torii Hunter wins a centerfield GG.
• Mark Shapiro, Executive of the Year. Also well-deserved.
• Juan Lara injured in car accident. Extremely sad. How fast must that motorcycle have been going. Best wishes for recovery, Juan.
• Indians protect Adam Miller, Reid Santos, Wyatt Torregas, Scott Lewis and Tony Sipp from Rule 5 draft by placing them on 40-man roster. No surprises here.
• White Sox overpay reliever Scott Linebrink and trade Jon Garland for Orlando Cabrera. Seriously, how does Kenny Williams keep his job? These are awful moves. However, as long as the White Sox are under the delusion that they don't have to blow the team up and rebuild, they're likely to post 7o win seasons, and that's fine with me.
• Detroit Tigers send good young pitching to Atlanta for Edgar Renteria. Sure, this allows them to move Carlos Guillen to first base where he won't be hurting the team (or himself, for that matter) defensively, they're going to miss that good young pitching sooner than they think. Kenny Rogers might not be back and Zumaya is already out. I'm not saying the Tigers are old, but the new team motto is "Hey, you, get off our lawn!"
• A-Rod resigns with Yankees. Yawn.
• Lowell resigns with Red Sox. Yawn
• Francisco Cordero signs with Reds. Great, now they're poised to make a run at fourth in the NL Central. Who pitches the 6th, 7th and 8th?
• Kerry Wood resigns with Cubs. Yawn.
• Brewers sign Jason Kendall after trading Jonny Estrada for Guillermo Mota. Estrada must really have been awful for a team to be excited about putting Kendall behind the plate. He's a shadow of his former self. Good think he's back playing in AAAA ball.
• Phillies acquire Brad Lidge and Eric Bruntlett for Michael Bourne and a couple prospects. I'm hard pressed to see how this makes Houston any better. I think they could have got more for Lidge if they'd held out a little longer.

In other sports:

• Holy cow, the Browns are 7-4, and if their season ended today they'd make the playoffs. Someone check Hades for snow. I have to admit that I'm really surprised. The offensive line has gelled, Derek Anderson made the Great Leap Forward, and Jamal Lewis still has something left in the tank.
• In what alternate universe does Anderson Verajao make $10 million/year? Now he wants traded. Who would give him the money he seeks. Sorry, Sideshow Bob. At least he gets to sit out the season in Brazil.
• How 'bout them Blue Jackets? They might actually be playoff contenders this year. It's about time. If anyone had doubts that Ken Hitchcock is a miracle worker, this may put them to rest.

Now What?

I've taken a few days to get the season out of my system. I've moved past denial into acceptance, and I'm ready for Hot Stove.

Here are the issues that the Tribe needs to face during the offseason, as I see them, in no particular order:

• Pronk's Mojo - Pronk's Mojo must be found. First priority. It's out there, people - keep looking!
• Who's on Third? - Andy Marte is out of options. It's time to fish or cut bait with Andy Marte. If Andy Marte can be a right handed power bat in the bottom of this order, that would be huge for the Tribe. That also frees Casey Blake to be Super Utility Grizzly(SUG), a role for which he is ideally suited.
• Whither CC? - I suspect that negotiations on an extension for CC have already started. The only way CC is not on this roster at the end of the 2008 season is if the Indians are 20 games out at the All-Star break. I don't see that happening. I think 2007 has only made this team hungrier for 2008 and the Tribe's best shot to win it all is with CC on the mound, despite his poor post-season performances. CC appears to be one who is very capable of learning and growing from his mistakes. Chalk up the 2007 postseason for CC as a learning experience.
• How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Byrdman? - Three weeks ago, picking up Paul Byrd's option was a drop dead no-brainer. At $8 million for a veteran #4 starter, Byrd is cheap in today's baseball economy. Then came the HGH controversy. Without getting into any conspiracy theories about the allegation's timing, it is fortuitous for the Indians that this came out before the Tribe was required to notify Byrd whether they were going to pick up his option, as the team can fully assess the ramifications before saying "yes." I think they pick up his option and slot him at #4. The free agent market for pitching is pretty thin, and Byrd's clubhouse presence cannot be ignored.
• Who's the #5 Starter? - It's going to be a fun battle this spring to see who is the number 5 guy. Aaron Laffey is a left-handed ground ball specialist. Can lefty Cliff Lee get his pitching and attitude together and flash back to 2004 form? Is "Atom" Miller ready? Was Jeremy Sowers a flash in the pan with his Jamie Moyer like junkballing? Do you trade one or any of these guys for offseason help? If Adam Miller is ready, then I think you have to add his power arm to this rotation, with Aaron Laffey as a swing guy out of the pen. Is there a team out there who would be willing to take a chance on Cliff Lee in return for a prospect or two? I think Shapiro has to explore that option in the offseason. I think we've seen the last of Lee in Tribewear.
• Who Closes? - Gotta be Joe Knows Closing. His option is cheap, and unless Shapiro does something radical like bring in Mariano Rivera, we're in for more tightrope walking in the 9th next season. Senor Slow will continue to be the high leverage guy in the late innings.
• Crowded House in the Outfield - No, not the Finn boys from Kiwi land, but the logjam of bodies in the outfield. We know K-Love will be gone. Gutierrez appears to have solved the right field problem, so that pretty much leaves Jason Michaels, David Dellucci, Ben Francisco and Shin Soo Choo fighting it out for playing time in left field. Can the platoon of Michaels and Dellucci perform next year as advertised? Choo is out of options. Neither one has anything left to prove at AAA. Do we see them carry 5 outfielders, with Choo/Gutierrez platooning in right and Dellucci/Michaels platooning in left. If so, then it limits the team as to bench help in the infield. Look for Shapiro to try to move either Francisco or Choo in the offseason, perhaps packaged with a pitcher (Lee or Sowers?), either for prospects or a talented corner outfield bat.
• How Do You Solve a Problem Like Josh Barfield? - The causes for the complete nosedive of Josh Barfield in 2007 are totally mysterious. Sophomore slump? League change? Did he lose some lucky object in his move to Cleveland? Is he under some kind of voodoo curse? At any rate, it looks like he and Cabrera will go into Spring Training fighting it out for the second base job, and it looks every bit like this is Cabrera's job to lose. Barfield probably starts the year at Buffalo to see if he can find anything resembling plate discipline. After this horrendous season, his trade value is at an all-time low, so he's not going anywhere.
• Retire the Chief - It's time. In fact, it's way past time. As someone with a very small percentage of Native ancestry, I understand why it's offensive, and as a fan, it bothers me that people cannot root for my team because they find its symbol offensive. It's one thing to root against a team because you find the players (Albert Belle anyone?) or the city not to your liking. It's another when the mascot mocks and trivializes your ancestry and heritage. We could also change the name while we're at it so we don't have any more idiots showing up at the park in headdresses with their faces painted red. Man, that was embarrassing. Symbols matter. Get a fresh start, Tribe. Put Chief Wahoo in the rear view mirror.
• Trades? - This team really doesn't have to do much in the offseason trade market. A power hitting corner outfielder for left field would be nice. Additional bullpen help is always a good idea if the price is right, as building a bullpen is a crapshoot every year (see Cabrera, Fernando or the 2006 Indians). If the past is any guideline, whatever Shapiro does will probably be something we don't see coming.