A Lazy Sunday with Team-Building Exercises

Almost there…
Almost there…
Though the last couple of weeks have certainly represented a lull on the baseball scene (though that “lull” has been largely much the entire off-season for Tribe fans), the glorious news that pitchers and catchers are reporting tomorrow is upon us. While that only means that we’ll see guys playing catch and running/sweating for a couple of weeks, it certainly represents a step in the right direction as Spring Training games are soon to follow, with the triumphant inevitability of Opening Day looming.

But before getting to Opening Day, there are many questions to be answered out in the Arizona sun and while I’m loathe to simply go through the “Here’s What to Watch For in Goodyear” piece that’s been written by too many people too many times (and assume that any of us are out in Arizona), I thought that it would be a decent opportunity to instead focus on what has been a very odd off-season throughout MLB. Certainly that doesn’t mean that I’m going to break down every transaction or how the balance of power has moved around in the respective leagues (you don’t come here for that minutiae), but instead how this off-season may have represented a departure from off-seasons of the past for many teams around MLB, as teams have started to approach team-building the off-season – and specifically in FA – a little differently than they used to.

To that end, let’s start this Lazy One focusing on “all the news that’s fit to link” off with a piece from Joe Sheehan that appeared in last week’s print edition (sorry, I’m a little behind here) of SI in which he examines why Edwin Jackson eventually ended up in Washington on only a one-year deal:
Jackson, who was the second-best starting pitcher on the free-agent market, found himself short on suitors after starting the off-season hoping for the kind of five-year deal that A.J. Burnett and John Lackey signed in recent years.

We’re seeing the evolution of the game. While experience is still valued, it’s not something teams are willing to pay for, not when they can likely get the same production with more upside from younger talent. One of the first lessons of the sabermetric era was that talent is not distributed normally, and that the further down into the pool you go, the easier it is to find replacements. So rather than spend $4 million for a DH whose best days are behind him, teams will give playing time to someone making closer to the minimum.

Seeing the names “Burnett” and “Lackey” may explain why teams aren’t that interested in long-term deals to most FA pitchers, but it’s an interesting concept (although it looks like the 2011 FA market had about as many players receiving $50M or more in guaranteed money as the last few years) as Sheehan posits that there are always frontline players that will get their largesse every off-season and that the “best way to spend cash is on stars” in terms of FA dollars. He goes further to say that those stars are the “only ones” who figure to get paid handsomely from year to year and I’m not sure that anyone will ever call Josh Willingham or Mike Cuddyer a “star” (although maybe that’s the point in that Sheehan is saying that the “best way to spend cash is on stars” is an indictment of the deals that Willingham and Cuddyer netted), it is interesting to think about in the context of this year’s market, particularly among pitchers.

Consider that Edwin Jackson signed a one-year deal in DC and Roy Oswalt is still out there looking for a landing spot. Now it is true that Oswalt has essentially told the Indians (and perhaps other teams) that he wouldn’t have an interest in coming to Cleveland, but remember that the Indians acted fast to add Derek Lowe to the staff, essentially eliminating the idea that they’d supplement the rotation via FA…at least prior to the whole Carmona/Hernandez fiasco. But the Indians weren’t alone in not waiting for the market to shake out as the Royals went out and added Jonathan Sanchez via trade and gave Bruce Chen a 2-year deal. On those additions, Royals’ GM Dayton Moore had an interesting comment recently, saying “I guess if we had known all along that Edwin Jackson or Oswalt were going to take one-year deals…maybe we would have done things a little differently or thought things through a little differently. But I don’t think so. I think we would have come to the same conclusion. Sanchez really made sense for us at one year for $5.6 million. We needed to get Bruce Chen back. We feel he’s going to continue to give us consistency.”

If Moore’s actually saying that they would still prefer Sanchez and Chen (salaries considered) to Jackson or even Oswalt after thinking about it more…well, then he’s not being completely candid. That said, remember that Prince Fielder went unsigned until the end of January, a surprising delay – particularly considering the interest in and subsequent contract for Al Pujols. But outside of the few “elite” FA, the market for the services of second-tier FA was found to be lacking as roster constructions seems to have taken a turn around the league.

In Cleveland we’ve seen that for a while and this season, that means that the Indians seem to be more willing to look at the Aaron Cunninghams and Kevin Sloweys of the world (both largely inexpensive and under club control for the foreseeable future) to see if they can find something resembling a long-term answer instead of a short-term fix. But since Johnny Damon and Vlad Guerrero remain unsigned, it’s become apparent that known “names” may mean something to a fan base, but it’s becoming apparent that they mean little to Front Offices…and it’s not just the Front Office that calls the corner of Carnegie and Ontario home. What has crystallized this off-season is the idea that a few teams pluck off the best FA, with the rest of the teams all trying to augment their current roster while attempting to minimize risk…while making their best efforts at building a winning ballclub for today and for tomorrow.

That’s overly simplistic…I know, but roster construction is evolving around MLB and that became even more jarring with the Oakland A’s signing Cuban OF Yoenis Cespedes. It was a “surprising” move for some (as the A’s generally aren’t serious players on the FA market), but as Yahoo’s Jeff Passan pointed out so adroitly, “this makes so much sense we should’ve seen it coming. When the mega-free agent is out of a team’s reach, it has to play the margins, to hunt for impact players elsewhere.” While the cognoscenti focused on Cespedes ending up anywhere else but Oakland, Passan brings up an interesting point. Since Cespedes was allegedly in the Indians’ crosshairs at one point (and it’s being reported now that the Indians are “in on” another Cuban, Jorge Soler – along with the Phillies and Yankees…which doesn’t make me feel good about the Tribe’s chances to sign him), it’s worth fleshing out the reason that Passan gives in terms of why the A’s (or the Indians) would have an interest in an unknown commodity like Cespedes:
It’s a shame the teams that can least afford to take risks have to take the biggest, though it’s not like a salary cap is the great equalizer in the other professional sports. There are still haves and have-nots in football, basketball and hockey, and always will be. When baseball’s new collective-bargaining agreement essentially robbed teams of the ability to spend big money in the draft and internationally, it stole one more way for the low-revenue teams to even the playing field.
--snip--
Signing him didn’t make as much sense for the Yankees or the Rangers or any other big-payroll team. They have money. They need not use their opportunities on something so chancy. The A’s did because they had to. Because in this marketplace, with their situation, giving $36 million to a kid who hasn’t taken a single major-league at-bat is about the only way the A’s can carve that path to contention.

That final line is a bit of an overstatement in terms of Cespedes’ impact, but it does speak to the underlying issue for teams like Oakland (and Cleveland) and the dichotomy of risk vs. reward that frames every decision that they make. Teams like Cleveland (or Oakland) are never going to make that “big splash” and Kerry Wood may have been the most water that the Indians were going to/ever will displace on the FA.

Perhaps it could be argued that the Indians should have been the ones taking the risk on Cespedes, given their talent on hand (and I could easily make that argument) just as the 3-year deal with a player like Josh Willingham seemed to represent a plausible risk for the Indians this off-season, given their short-term needs and their long-term shortcomings. But for now the question for teams like the A’s – or more acutely (in this space) the Indians – is how small-to-mid-market teams acquire talent to compete even periodically and, more importantly given the talent that is about to congregate in Goodyear, retain that talent in the current market and structure.

To that end, and bringing this to the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, it’s worth looking again at how the Indians find impact players as the they’re starting to see some fruit borne of the draft (Kipnis, Chisenhall, Pestano and eventually Lindor…hopefully) and have mined other organizations’ talent through trades (Santana, Masterson, Cabrera, Choo, C. Perez…this could go on for a while) to create this group of similarly aged-similarly controlled players that figure to head Northeast from Arizona. For teams like the Indians, FA isn’t the way that they’re going to fill out their roster anymore as the impact players are out of reach (although, again, the argument could be made that this was the year to extend that reach) and the Indians have assembled a group of non-roster invitees (notably Garland, Wheeler, Spilborghs, and Ray) in the hopes that they hit on one or a couple of those players the way that they did last year with Hannahan and Duncan.

Regardless of how the bottom of the roster gets fleshed out in Goodyear, what bears watching is whether the Indians make any moves to “retain” that talent on hand as the idea that a long-term deal for Asdrubal Cabrera is sure to have some e-ink spilled on it. On that topic, I’m not sure I buy the idea that Hoynes put forth last week about Asdrubal, in terms of players entering their 5th year of service time basically entering their “walk year” He wrote that Asdrubal is “entering his fifth big-league season, which has become the new walk year for many good players. Some general managers feel that if they don’t get a quality player signed to a multiyear deal before their fifth season, they have two choices -- trade the player or watch him walk away through free agency.” While I don’t doubt that “some” GM’s feel that way, it’s impossible not to notice that Howie Kendrick just signed a multi-year extension entering his 6th year of service time and JJ Hardy inked a 3-year deal last July that extended him past the FA that he would have entered after last season.

Perhaps those are unique situations, but that’s just looking at two middle infielders who have signed deals that would seem to go against this idea of the 5th big league season being “the new walk year for many good players” that “some” GM’s subscribe to. Regardless of the semantics of the 5th year/6th year of service time and Asdrubal’s FA (which, it needs to be pointed out again, is after the 2013 season…so TWO full seasons from now), that’s not to say that the Indians and Cabrera are ABSOLUTELY going to reach an agreement as it’s possible that Cabrera’s agent is demanding a 5 or 6 year deal at outrageous numbers, with the idea that Cabrera is something that he’s not essentially setting the tone in the negotiations that Asdrubal is preparing for FA in two years.

Short of any hard numbers or solid reportage, all of this is conjecture though it is worth noting that Cabrera’s agent (Alan Nero) is the same agent that signed Victor Martinez’s extension with the Indians way back when as well as the agent who worked with the Tribe to bring Paul Byrd onto The Reservation. There is a relationship between the two entities…of course, Nero was also Choo’s agent prior to Choo signing up with Scotty Boras and the Indians were never able to lock up Choo when Nero was his agent, so maybe the Nero/Indians connection in terms of extensions isn’t as strong as the Boras/Ilitch connection to line the pockets of Boras and his clients.

The reason that the Asdrubal situation is so compelling is that it really presents the first test for the Indians (that doesn’t involve Boras) in attempting to keep the current group of talent on the field together for longer than the two years that most peg as their current “window” of contention. As wild as it sounds, these “windows” are getting tighter and tighter for small-to-mid-market teams and it’s something that B-Pro’s Kevin Goldstein wrote about in terms of the Royals’ off-season and all of their young talent on hand:
The biggest problem for the Royals just might be a matter of lining up windows. As a small-market club, players will be leaving via free agency, and to perfectly match up final club-controlled years with prospects reaching their potential is a daunting task. “Run through this for a second and just step back and think about it,” said one team official. “I love their position players, but they’re going to get expensive quickly. Alex Gordon leaves in two years, Joakim Soria will be gone, and then they lose a guy who could be a workhorse in Hochever in three years and all of a sudden it’s uh-oh time. They have some timelines that aren’t matching up right now, and that’s what I’d be concerned about.”

This is not designed to rain on anyone’s parade, and the Royals’ best bet, between players still developing and players not yet leaving for greener pastures, is the 2014 season. It’s easy and fun to root for the Davids of the world as they battle baseball’s Goliaths. But teams like the Rays are still the exception, not the rule. While there are plenty of futures to dream on, very few of them actually come true. Still, it’s a good time to be excited in Kansas City; just be realistic.

Really…Goldstein wrote that the “Royals’ best bet, between players still developing and players not yet leaving for greener pastures, is the 2014 season”. Read that again and replace “Royals” with “Indians” and “Gordon”, “Soria”, and “Hochever” with “Cabrera”, “Choo”, and “Masterson” and you start to see how these “timelines” are so vital to the presumed contention for small-to-mid-market clubs. Perhaps those last couple of lines are the best argument that the Indians should have been more active this off-season, attempting to remove as many questions as possible on their roster. But most possible “solutions” came with questions attached as well (is Willingham worth the $, should the Indians have dangled more pitching for offense) and the Indians have cast their lot with this current group.

As we’ve found since 2004, seasons will surprise and disappoint as World Series trophies (or even divisional titles) that fall from the sky in January like the winter snowflakes often disappear under the heat of the summer sun. The Indians, as presently constructed as an eclectic mix of homegrown talent and “found” diamonds are capable of competing for the AL Central if certain “surprises” occur but can slip too far back in the standings in a hurry if “disappointments” are what awaits them. That may be clichéd, but it’s realistic…and not just for the Indians as Spring Training arrives.

Thankfully, after an odd (and often quiet) off-season, cowhide is about to hit leather under the Arizona sun and the 2012 Indians’ season awaits. Whether the Indians find themselves leaping through a window or watch it slowly creep down as the season progresses will reveal itself over the course of months, not days, and projections and opinions will give way to realities and results.

This time of year, that’s always a welcome change…

The "Experts" on the Indians System

With February every year comes snow, hope for spring, and prospect rankings. While I’m still working on my Indians top-50, most of the national writers began rolling out their rankings over the past couple of weeks. I don’t always agree with the Keith Law’s, Kevin Goldstein’s and Jonathan Mayo’s of the world, but it would be pretty silly to not at least read and try to get the most information possible out of all of their hard work. So let’s take a look at what some of these guys think about the Indians system, and how it stacks up against other minor league systems around the game.

Overall, the Indians minor league system isn’t an impressive collection of talent right now. Keith Law ranks the system 29th overall (out of 30 teams) in all of baseball. Jonathan Mayo, responding to me on twitter asking him about his rankings, quipped that the system was so thin that I nearly made the top 20. Kevin Goldstein hasn't ranked the systems yet, but he indicated that his Indians top 20 was the, “… youngest, riskiest, most volatile Top 11 I've ever done.” Baseball America, always masters of the obvious, points out that, “The Indians best prospects are years away from contributing…outfielder Luigi Rodriguez and shortstop Tony Wolters have played just 34 games in full season leagues.” It’s pretty much what you’d expect from an organization whose two best hitting prospects graduated to the bigs, and three of their top pitching prospects were traded away in the deal for Ubaldo Jiminez. I’m not going to get too much into my overall thoughts on the system here because I’m saving that for my intro to the top-50 countdown, but I agree that the system is thin right now, and likely one of the bottom 5 in baseball at this time.

One thing that absolutely everyone agrees on (myself included) is that Francisco Lindor is the top prospect in the Indians system. Last year’s 1st round pick impressed talent evaluators around baseball before the draft as a high school shortstop, and then again in limited action for Mahoning Valley after he signed. Baseball Prospectus in particular loves Lindor, with Kevin Goldstein commenting that he could end up as an all-star shortstop. He describes his tools by saying that the switch-hitting Lindor has ”…outstanding bat speed. He shocked officials by pounding balls out of Safeco Field, and projects to have as much as average power down the road (15-18 home runs annually). He's a 55-60 runner who should steal a good number of bases, and all of that is wrapped in a package of advanced shortstop skills including impressive range, hands and arm strength, and off-the-charts makeup.” In his top 101 prospects list, Goldstein ranked Lindor as the #17 prospect in all of baseball.

BP’s Jason Parks is even higher on Lindor. After watching the young shortstop play in fall instructs, Parks was left drooling, literaly:

“Rarely will a 17-year-old (now 18) shortstop showcase the type of skills to make you feel confident in their future major-league success. After watching Lindor in the Fall Instructional League, I have very little doubt that he will develop into a very good major leaguer, one that can play a premium defensive position while providing above-average offensive production… I’m slobbering all over Lindor without apology. I put a note in his locker after class. I hope he checks the box marked ‘yes.’”

Keith Law ranks Lindor as the #35 prospect in baseball, saying that “Lindor has four tools for certain, with power the only real question. He has very soft hands and easy actions at shortstop, with range in both directions, a plus arm, and quick feet that should also result in strong stolen base totals.” He goes on to comment on Lindor’s solid makeup, and indicates that Lindor is a strong candidate to jump into the top 20 overall next offseason. MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo ranks him 32nd overall, commenting that he could be a future all-star who contributes with both the glove and the bat. Folks, Francisco Lindor really has a chance to be special, and it’s not just talent evaluators within the organization who think so.

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that Lindor is the only Indians prospect to rank in the top-100 prospect lists. Pitcher Austin Adams makes Keith’ Laws “just missed” list, but that’s it. As we’ve already discussed, the system right now is young and volatile. Because of that, there isn’t much of a consensus around the industry as to just who the Indians top-10 prospects are right now. BP, BA and Mayo all have Lindor and Howard as 1/2, while Law has Howard 3rd and Austin Adams 2nd. Adams meanwhile, is 4th on BP’s list and 8th on both Mayo and BA’s. Catcher Chun Chen ranges from 6th (Law) to 19th (BP). C.C. Lee is 4th on BA’s list, but 18th on BP’s. Catcher Alex Monsalve comes in at #9 on Mayo’s list, but is nowhere on anyone else’s top 20. Personal opinion has a lot to do with rankings regardless of the organization, but this year’s Indians system has as wide of a range of opinions and rankings as I’ve ever seen. There are just so many young, raw and talented players in the system who have never played above Mahoning Valley that it makes for an extremely difficult system to rank. It will also make it a fun minor league season to follow (for me at least), because there are so many players that I’ve never even seen play who are considered top prospects in the organization. The system has ream boom-or-bust potential right now, and I’m going to enjoy seeing which way these kids end up going. It’s a sure thing that not all of them will pan out, but regardless I think it will be a fun ride to watch them develop.

With all of this comes a cautionary tale about prospects, one that most people reading this site will be intimately familiar with. This player was drafted in 2007, and here’s what Keith Law had to say about him in his 2008 prospect write-up, while ranking him as the #37 overall prospect in baseball:
“He had more raw power than anyone in the 2007 draft…has light-tower pull power, getting good extension through the ball, but he can get too pull-conscious and roll over on soft stuff away. He projects as a classic "three true outcomes" player -- drawing walks, hitting homers and striking out”

Kevin Goldstein was just as complimentary, ranking him #31 overall:
He has true impact potential offensively, with some scouts believing that he had the best power and the best pitch recognition in last June's draft. He has the patience to wait for a pitch to hit, the bat speed to let balls carry deep into the zone, the strength to power them out to all fields, and the hand/eye coordination to hit for average as well. He has the potential to be a classic No. 3 or No. 4 hitter for a first-division team.

Most Indians fans can probably guess who they were talking about, especially bearing in mind that I called this player a “cautionary tale.” The player of course is none other than our very own Matt LaPorta. My intent in digging up those old evaluations isn’t to show you that I think Goldstein and Law are idiots who can’t recognize a AAAA player when they see one, it is simply to reflect that prospect evaluation is far from an exact science. When I put "experts" in quotes, it's not because I don't believe that Law and Golstein are the best in their field; I absolutely do and I read everything they both write. It's just to reflect that even the experts call 'em wrong sometimes. I’m not even going to get into players like Adam Miller, elite talents who fell off the grid due to injuries. I’m talking about complete misses in terms of talent evaluation. Former AL MVP Dustin Pedroia appeared nowhere on these top-100’s during his time in the minors. Matt LaPorta was considered a top-40 prospect in all of baseball. So keep every prospect list you read this offseason (especially mine when it comes out) in perspective, because no one can really tell the future. Don’t get bogged down in whether LeVon Washington is ranked 5th or 15th. Take the information for what it is; an educated guess by people who love following baseball. Then get out to a few minor league games this year and make an assessment for yourself. I promise it is much more fun that way.

Extension of Contention

With so little to discuss in these slow days that connect the Super Bowl to the gloriousness of the days when pitchers and catchers report (as well as March Madness), perhaps now would be a good time to revisit a topic that’s already had some e-ink spilled on it here and in other places – the possibility of extending Asdrubal Cabrera and the overarching theme of players under contract for the Tribe going forward. This is all prompted by the reports that Asdrubal stayed in Cleveland after being named the Cleveland Athlete of the Year (or something like that) to talk to the Indians about a long-term extension as he and the organization quibble over Cabrera’s 2012 salary in his second arbitration year.

Since there is much confusion among the masses over how arbitration works and every announcement of a 1-year deal for arbitration-eligible players is met with an odd amalgamation of “huzzahs” and “why only one year” questions that show a fundamental ignorance of the process, I’ll point your eyes to how arbitration works, as put forth by B-Pro a few years back. Admittedly, it’s pretty involved stuff…so to set the stage with a Cliff’s Notes version and applying it to the current situation, here’s a synopsis of how salaries are determined for arbitration-eligible players, as summed up by Jordan Bastian in a recent Inbox:
Much of the process is based on the player’s career track record, his salary in previous seasons and comparisons to other players in similar situations. In a case like Cabrera’s -- where his 2011 production jumped considerably over his past showings -- there is a bigger pool of players to compare against in order to come up with a proposed salary for the next year. Teams, as well as the player’s representatives, will take into account things like age, Major League service time and stats in order to find other comparisons around the game. Naturally, a player’s camp will approach a team with a higher salary figure than the salary offer from that club.

At this point, we don’t know who Asdrubal or the Indians are using for comparative players as the basis for the proposed salaries as the players being used could be Alexei Ramirez, JJ Hardy, Stephen Drew, Troy Tulowitzki, Howie Kendrick (just signed a 4-year, $33.5M deal…though he was entering his final year of FA), or others. What we do know is that Asdrubal has asked for $5.2M, with the Indians’ offer coming in at $3.75M. That seems like a pretty big chasm, but it really isn’t if you figure that the team and the player could meet in the middle around $4.5M or $4.75M and not really have a “winner” or “loser” if they were to come to an agreement without an arbiter. Way back when, MLBTR predicted that Asdrubal would get $4.8M in arbitration this off-season, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see it end up there.

But if the Indians and Asdrubal do meet somewhere in the middle or even if they head head off to an arbitration hearing (something the Indians haven’t done since – and I know you’ve heard these two names associated with the Tribe and arbitration – The Guv’nor and Flounder), that doesn’t mean that the long-term deal that is allegedly being thrown around would be off the table as Indians’ history has shown that these extensions are often done during Spring Training.

In terms of the long-term extension, it’s something that was broached here back in September, last month by MLBTR (although their math is a little fuzzy in terms of suggesting a lower 2012 salary in a long-term extension than what they themselves predict he’d get in arbitration), and last week by Castrovince as well as FanGraphs, which uses Stephen Drew’s extension as the basis for a possible Asdrubal extension.

If you want the nuts and bolts of a couple of those projections (not put forth by me) from the pieces that put hard numbers to it, they’d look something like this:
MLBTR – 4 years, $26.5M
2012 – $4.25M
2013 – $6.5M
2014 - $8
2015 - $8M

Castro – 4 years, $26.25M or 5 years, $33.75M
2012 - $4.5M
2013 - $6.75M
2014 - $7.5M
2015 - $7.5M
2016 - $7.5M

Realizing that guessing at salary numbers is about as entertaining as following the Twitter feed for the last arbitration-eligible Indian to sign, I’m putting these down because I think that these guesses are low in terms of what would compel Asdrubal to give up a year or multiple years of FA, which is one of the main reasons to explore a long-term deal from the team’s perspective. By that I mean that Fangraphs has an Asdrubal extension somewhere in the 3-year, $22.5M range with a $4.7M salary in 2012, but points out that Asdrubal’s already asked for $5.2 in arbitration for this years. Maybe I’m being naïve here, but I would think that it would take more upfront money in 2012 to bring Asdrubal around to the idea that he should put off the FA that’s scheduled to come to him after the 2013 season. Ultimately, I would think that the Indians would have to give Asdrubal a 2012 salary above and beyond his desired arbitration number of 2012 to entice him to lock in numbers for 2013 AND give up a year (or years) of FA past the 2013 season.

The numbers that I came up with way back when looked like this:
2012 - $5.5M
2013 - $8.5M
2014 - $10M
2015 - $12M club option ($1M buyout)
2016 - $13M club option ($2M buyout)
While that admittedly looks high in hindsight in those option years (and really starting in that 2014 season…as I’d probably amend that today by dropping each annual salary in 2012 and after by $1M or more), it needs to be remembered that Asdrubal (and his agent) are looking at him hitting FA after the 2013 season and the question becomes whether he would be able to net a contract large enough at that point to put off the guaranteed money that the Indians could offer in the short term. To me, if the Indians bumped his 2012 salary OVER what he’s asking in arbitration and allow that salary to escalate accordingly, it might compel Cabrera to the negotiating table and, more specifically, to be amenable to signing away FA years. Maybe 4 years and $31M gets it done to keep him under control through the 2015 season ($5.5M, $7.5M, $9M, $9M) as Alexei Ramirez’s 4-year, $32.5M deal that was signed this time last year is an interesting starting point as the two are similar hitters.

Regardless of the numbers, there is little question that the Asdrubal situation will start to provide a sneak peek as to what the Indians are going to do with some of these young players that are approaching or are already ensconced in arbitration.By that I mean that much has been made recently of the Indians having no long-term contracts on the books past next season (although Ubaldo’s club option for $5.75M in 2013 is likely to be picked up), with the idea that the Westbrook and Hafner extensions have scared the Indians away from long-term deals or even that the Indians are somehow clearing their decks for nearly-unprecedented payroll flexibility. For whatever reason, there’s this belief out there that the Indians aren’t going to buy out arbitration years and attempt to keep players under club control into a couple of their FA years because they’re risk-averse (and Castro adroitly points out what risks would be assumed by the Indians by giving Asdrubal a long-term deal) and might be more willing to go year-to-year with these players in light of injuries and regressions to players that signed long-term deals, even those similar to the ones signed long ago by Sizemore, Peralta, and Carmona/Hernandez.

What should be noted however is that the Indians are in a unique stage in their developmental curve right now as they don’t have players that are about to hit FA at the end of THIS year, as Hafner and Westbrook were when they signed their extensions, but instead they have players that are either playing out the final years of their long-term contracts (Hafner), are working off of one year deals (Sizemore), are just now hitting arbitration or are entering their second year of arbitration like Cabrera, Masterson, Choo, C. Perez or players that are just breaking into MLB and aren’t even all that close to being arbitration-eligible, like Santana and Kipnis.

Regardless, since so much attention has been paid to how the Indians don’t have set financial commitments past this year (other than to arbitration-eligible and pre-arbitration-eligible players), it got me wondering why that was. Essentially, I think that it’s a function of the Indians not really having players over the last couple of years that would have been approached about long-term deals that bought out FA years (other than Choo) as they did in the early-to-mid-2000s. To that end - who, besides Choo, is a player on the Indians that wasn’t already working on a long-term deal that should have been locked up prior to the 2010 or 2011 season?

By that I mean that this is the first off-season that it has made much sense for the Indians to even approach Asdrubal about a long-term extension as serious questions persisted about his health and conditioning (and still may) and prior to this year, a player like Masterson was still largely an unknown quantity. According to all reports, the Indians DID approach Choo and Boras about long-term deals and were summarily rebuffed. After Choo’s 2011 season, the Indians might be happy about that, but a long-term extension is probably something that they’d still probably explore with Choo…even if they might be a little less generous in their offer, both in terms of years and dollars.

Way back when, the Indians signed CC, Victor, Peralta, Grady, CP Lee, and Fausto to deals that bought out arbitration years and FA years…which current player that’s entered arbitration with the team (other than the aforementioned Choo) in the past few years merited being approached?

Those players of the mid-2000s had accomplished much more (CC, Victor) or exhibited preternatural promise (Grady, Fausto) that we haven’t seen on a consistent basis from this group of players. Prior to the 2011 season, there was never any thought that locking up Asdrubal (coming off of an injury-riddled 2010) or Masterson (reliever or starter?) the way that Peralta and CC once were. Now, with the idea that the Indians and Asdrubal may be talking long-term deal (and this deal should include FA years…unlike the deal that Elvis Andrus just signed with the Rangers that simply put set numbers on Andrus’ arbitration years), it would seem to represent the first player (and remember, I’m excluding Choo here because of the presence of Boras) whose stay in Cleveland would be extended past that “magical” time at the end of 2013, when all of the good players disappear and the window for contention slams shut at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.

Even if Asdrubal leaves Cleveland (and he may have already) without a long-term extension in hand, want to know why it’s not necessarily an indication that nothing will get done?

Here are the last two deals that bought up arbitration years as well as FA years:
Grady’s buy-out, lock-up deal – signed March of 2006
Fausto’s buy-out, lock-up deal – signed February of 2008

Going back further for some context on when these deals are usually announced by the Indians, there are these buy-out, lock-up deals:
CC – signed April of 2005
Victor – signed April of 2005
Peralta – signed February of 2006

All of those deals were signed in February, March, or April and while CP Lee’s extension was signed in August of 2006, that seems to be the exception to the rule of how the Indians handle their long-term deals. In all of those cases, the players that were arbitration eligible agreed to one-year deals, with the agreed-upon extensions taking the place of the one-year deals that the arbitration process resulted in. All of this is meant to point out that even if Asdrubal and the Indians come to a one-year deal in the coming days or weeks, it certainly doesn’t mean that a long-term deal couldn’t still be in the offing. So if the Indians want to lock up Cabrera and Masterson (and they should for both), those deals could come about in Spring Training or over the course of the next few months, even though Masterson has already agreed to a one-year deal and Cabrera could be holding a one-year deal (at a number determined either via agreement or arbitration), they could be inked to deals that keep them in Cleveland past 2013 (Asdrubal) or 2014 (Masterson).

Perhaps next off-season, the Indians approach Santana and Kipnis and/or Chisenhall the year after that. But even if they sign players like that trio to long-term deals, the manner in which those contracts are constructed don’t add a TON of money to the short-term payroll and really just provide the player with some security in terms of guaranteed money while the team’s assumed risk in guaranteeing the money is rewarded by extending the career of the player in Cleveland.

Just as an example (and mentioning this name always pulls at my heartstrings), Victor’s deal in April of 2005 was for 5 years and $15.5M with a $1M signing bonus with the years and salaries that it covered looking like this:
2005: $500K
2006: $800K
2007: $3M
2008: $4.25M
2009: $5.7M
2010: $7M club option ($0.25M buyout)

Want the Indians to do something similar with Santana after the 2013 season that would keep him here through the 2018 season?
Sure, no problem…but don’t mistake these long-term deals for tying up much more in terms of annual salary than what the player would earn in arbitration as the give-and-take of buying up arbitration years and FA years is that the player takes the guarantee of the money and the team gets set dollars for their payroll going forward.

The reason that the possibility of a Cabrera (or Masterson) extension becomes compelling is that the 2011 season represented the first time that Cabrera and Masterson emerged as players that could merit consideration for extensions in an effort to keep them in Cleveland longer than they are currently slated to be. Perhaps the 2012 season will reveal more players that fit that bill as well as the Indian stand at the precipice of perhaps having multiple players emerge as “core” players. Remember that it was the Spring Training prior to the 2005 season that El Capitan and The aCCe were locked up with extensions for Peralta, Grady, and Lee coming year later. Obviously players like Cabrera or Masterson may be in a different service time schedule in comparison to those players at those times, but with so many young players attempting to establish themselves in MLB and with the Indians history of locking up young players, it’s hard not to see how some extensions maybe forthcoming.

Perhaps Asdrubal is that 1st player identified among the current crop that is worthy of (and willing to sign) a long-term deal that buys out FA years and extends his time in Cleveland. Whether or not Cabrera is that first domino to fall, the Indians have plenty on the table in the 2012 season and beyond with the idea that the current group of players has now arrived and figures to mature as a group in the coming years.
How many years is what remains to be seen…

First Priority - Indians Ink Kotchman

With Prince Fielder and Carlos Pena off the market (THE DOLANZ R CHEE…wait, the Indians offered more for Pena than the Rays did?), the Indians added a piece to the 1B picture from the FA pile as Casey Kotchman has signed a 1-year deal with the Tribe for $3M. Though it was thought (probably mostly in Kotchman’s camp) that Kotchman would be in line for a multi-year offer or at least a deal for more than $5M or so after his 2011 season – which represented his best season (by far) to date – the Indians find themselves fortunate to be able to add Kotchman at a reasonable price and on a short-term deal. While some will see this as the “solution” to the 1B issue that the Indians have attempted to address all off-season, it represents something different – a more attractive option.

By that I mean that the addition of Kotchman doesn’t mean that the Indians have found a perfect fit for their needs, in that Kotchman is LH (though I think this is overblown…even if his struggles against LHP are very real) and not RH, probably benefited from some serious luck in 2011, and is probably not even an everyday player for the Tribe in 2012. That said, Kotchman is NOT Matt LaPorta and the Indians have unquestionably upgraded the 2012 roster with Kotchman’s tremendous glove (important with the GB pitchers and two players that are pretty much rookies in the infield) and his ability to hit RHP, all without committing too much in terms of years or dollars.

Don’t take that to mean that Kotchman is a “bad” addition as just yesterday, most of the Friends of the Feather were attempting to rationalize Russ Canzler (and here are more words than have ever or will ever be written about him) as the 2012 1B, but there’s a reason that Kotchman was still available on the FA market and why the Indians were able to get him for “just” $3M. Much of that is something that I addressed a few weeks back when I wrote this:
Casey Kotchman has a .610 OPS vs. LHP since the beginning of his 2009 season and while his .709 OPS vs. LHP last year was the highest of his career, there is a very real concern with Kotchman that his 2011 offensive numbers will represent the outlier as his 2011 production took SUCH a big jump (Kotchman had a LaPortian .717 career OPS coming into the 2011 season with only 49 career HR in 645 games going into last year) perhaps paced by a supernatural BABIP in 2011 that the very real possibility that Kotchman may not be that much of an upgrade over LaPorta throws up enough red flags to fill the sky.

Granted, most of that focuses on Kotchman's offense and not his strong defense, and let’s ignore (for now) that B-Pro’s John Perrotto sent a tweet out a couple of days ago that the “Indians buying Russ Canzler from (the) Rays has a good chance of working better for Tribe than signing Casey Kotchman…Canzler has more upside”. Rather, let me expand on what I only touched on in the piece from a few weeks ago on Kotchman that “his 2011 offensive numbers will represent the outlier” because it was “paced by a supernatural BABIP”.

To expand on that, let’s jump off from a piece that appeared in FanGraphs last August that Kotchman’s 2011 was a result of “luck” and not a new approach or even…yes, his improved vision. If we’re looking at the peripherals for Kotchman’s 2010 season with the Mariners and his 2011 campaign in Tampa, the raw numbers are pretty much the same:
Strikeout rate (K/PA)
2010 - 12.5%
2011 - 11.7%

Walk rate (BB/PA)
2010 - 7.6%
2011 - 8.5%

Ground ball rate (GB/batted balls)
2010 - 55.4%
2011 - 55.8%

Line drive rate (LD/batted balls)
2010 - 17.5%
2011 - 18.3%

Home Run rate (HR/fly balls)
2010 - 9.2%
2011 - 8.8%

Isolated Patience (OBP – AVG)
2010 - .063
2011 - .072

Isolated Slugging (SLG-AVG)
2010 - .119
2011 - .116

Essentially the same guy, right?
Sure, he walked a little bit more and struck out less, but he had less power in 2011 than he did in 2010 and if Kotchman’s vision was THAT much better in 2011, shouldn’t some of that bear out over the course of 500 plate appearances?

Maybe that’s just me being snarky, as is the suggestion that the batted balls could have been the ones with improved vision, because there was one major difference between Kotchman’s last two seasons…
BABIP
2010 - .229
2011 - .355

What did that difference in BABIP (largely a by-product of simple luck) mean to Kotchman’s lines for the two years?
2010 – .217 BA / .280 OBP / .336 SLG / .616 OPS / .270 wOBA
2011 - .306 BA / .378 OBP / .422 SLG / .800 OPS / .351 wOBA

Starting to see why Casey Kotchman was still a man without a contract as most of his peripherals remained the same as they were in a 2010 season, after which he settled for a minor-league deal in Tampa?
Again, that’s not to say that Kotchman does not add some much-needed depth at 1B or that finding a glove-first 1B isn’t a great idea, particularly with a GB-heavy staff and some youngsters around the infield…but let’s just put it out there that Bill James projects Matt LaPorta to have better offensive numbers in 2012 than Kotchman. Granted, some of that is based on Kotchman’s well-documented struggles against LHP (.245 BA / .305 OBP / .305 OBP / .610 OPS in his last 367 AB vs. LHP), which likely means that the Indians are going to incorporate some sort of convoluted platoon for Kotchman and Santana at 1B, with Marson catching against LHP.

That’s an arrangement that’s been alluded to for some time now, but the addition of Kotchman seems to confirm that the Indians will be shuttling The Axe Man up and down the 1B line depending on the pitcher. If you look at it in that manner, with Kotchman being a slick-fielding 1B who will play against RHP (.760 OPS vs. RHP in the last 3 years, .838 OPS vs. RHP in 2011) and serve as a late-inning defensive replacement, the addition makes a ton of sense. The other options on the roster for that role (prior to the Kotchman addition) consisted of an odd amalgamation of Hannahan (defense) or giving Duncan or LaPorta long looks at 1B. Looking at it that way, $3M to add Kotchman upgrades the Indians, simply by removing those options from the front-burner.

In that sense, Kotchman coming to Cleveland is something that isn’t going to generate a lot of vitriol…but it also shouldn’t generate any kind of true excitement as Kotchman represents an upgrade over the internal options and not much more than that. It’s a solid addition that improves the 2012 Tribe, if only incrementally. The Indians needed to add a 1B that improved the team and they did. It may not be a division-altering move or an addition that tilts the division in their favor, but those moves are costing about $214M these days.

Epicenter: Detroit

After Al Pujols spread his Cardinal wings and flew West for summers for the next decade, conventional wisdom seemed to dictate that Prince Fielder, the other FA 1B prize this off-season, would find no shortage of suitors as the Marlins and the Cardinals (among others) were connected to Pujols at one time or another. With Fielder four years younger (at least) than Pujols, it seemed that he would find a home in short order, even if his deal wouldn’t match that of Pujols in terms of years or dollars. However, as days turned into weeks and weeks threatened to turn into months, the Marlins found other uses for their dollars and the Cubs passed on acquiring the Prince. The Rangers hemmed and hawed and the Blue Jays always remained on the periphery as most anticipated Fielder ending up in our nation’s capital, if for no other reason than the fact that Scott Boras (Fielder’s agent) had recently made a number of deals with the Nationals and that Boras would somehow convince the Nats that nine or ten years for Fielder would not burden the franchise the way that the contract of another Boras agent – Jayson Werth – seems destined to.

In Cleveland, the pursuit of Fielder was compelling from the standpoint of the idea that the Indians certainly looked to be interested in adding a 1B, but the market for 1B had stagnated with Prince still on the market. Obviously this is all background information to the events that took place over the last two weeks as news broke from Motown that Victor Martinez had been lost for the season as the window seemed to be opening a bit for the Indians, even if the idea that the Tigers might swoop in and ink a Carlos Pena on a 1-year deal to make up for the loss of Victor started to marinate. While some floated the idea out there that Fielder could perhaps be a short-term fix for the Tigers, that idea was put to rest by Detroit’s GM Dave Dombrowski, who said that Fielder was “not a good fit” for the Tigers.

Of course, we all know what happened next as Prince landed in Detroit (the result of an ongoing relationship between Boras and an organization…just not the Nationals) in a seismic move (must…avoid…weight…joke) that sent shockwaves through the AL Central, with the effect certainly being felt in Cleveland.

Though we’ll certainly get to the effect that the deal has for the Indians, in terms of the 9-year, $214M deal that sent Fielder back to the city where his estranged father made himself famous (although the “best” Tigers’ team that Cecil played for won 85 games, despite the elder Fielder’s slugging prowess in Detroit), the move has been nearly universally panned from a long-term perspective by the cognoscenti around the game from Cliff Corcoran’s piece at SI that the Tigers were “unwise” to ink Prince to Craig Calcaterra’s “All Kinds of Crazy” article that asks many of the pertinent questions when it comes to this deal. Now, it is worth mentioning that most of the harrumphs about this deal from a national perspective focus on the length of the deal, the…um, shape of Prince’s body and the Tigers’ logjam when Victor returns in 2013. Corcoran’s piece goes in-depth into all of this as he concludes that, “all of which makes a nine-year investment in Prince Fielder problematic at any dollar amount”.

Truthfully, I don’t think anyone’s debating that this is going to be an odd amalgamation of players whose best position will all probably eventually be DH in Prince, Miggy, and Vic once Vic returns in 2013. But since the focus of the Indians’ near-term future came into sharper focus with the Ubaldo deal, let’s keep this about 2012 when…um, this isn’t all that problematic for the Motor City Kitties as Fielder and Miggy will sit in the middle of their lineup with Prince making up for the loss of Victor and then some (at least offensively) for the 2012 season. While those not writing the checks to Fielder can talk all day about how the Tigers will rue this deal (eventually) and how Detroit was the destination that perhaps made the least sense (particularly on a long term deal like this), let’s not overlook the fact that Fielder is an elite player and, concerns about his body type considered, he’s missed a TOTAL of 12 games since the beginning of the 2006 season.

What can’t be dismissed in the deal (other than the length) is the effect that it will have on the Tigers’ defensive alignment, particularly with the news that Miggy will be the full-time 3B which should present some “interesting” moments, especially if you consider that the Tigers are committed to Jhonny’s Peraltian stylings at SS, now adding Prince’s lack of range at 1B to and infield for a team that has 3 starting pitchers (Porcello, Penny, Fister) in the top 14 among AL starters in terms of GB rates. While some will attempt to categorize exactly how bad the Tigers’ defense could be with defensive metrics that I don’t trust, please don’t take this to mean that the presumed defensive struggles of the 2012 are going to push them to the AL Central cellar as the reality is that they’re going to hit their way out of many of the problems (and you can include Delmon Young’s continued butchery in LF in there) that their defense may present. That said, it’s not something that can be overlooked in the whole situation as Indians’ fans are far too familiar with how defensive deficiencies at a particular position can frustrate fans and change the tenor and outcome of any number of games.

Of course, they could come to their senses, move one of Fielder or Miggy to DH and limit those defensive concerns in 2012, but that doesn’t change the fact that it remains to be seen how they manage Prince, Miggy, and Victor (particularly with Avila in the fold) in a lineup for 2013 and beyond. But let’s not gaze too far into the future as the Indians stand at the precipice of the 2012 season and the question becomes what the Fielder signing for Detroit means for the Tribe…this year.

Well, there has already been the requisite wailing and gnashing of teeth as most cle.commers have handed the Tigers the 2012 AL Central crown and while I don’t think that the wailing and gnashing is necessarily an irrational response – particularly that when Victor was lost for the 2012 season, the window seemed to creep open a little more – it is certainly premature to throw up one’s hands and concede the division based on this signing. Of course, the Fielder signing for Detroit as a wildly aggressive reaction to a hole in their lineup stands out in stark contrast to the Indians, who have been “targeting” a 1B or OF all off-season, with Aaron Cunningham and a batch of NRI’s (though I do like the signings of Spilborghs and Wheeler) to show for what they’ve added from outside the organization, offensively-speaking. To this point, the Indians stood pat as perhaps they were waiting for Prince to sign to shake out the 1B market, assuming that he was heading to Arlington or the nation’s capital, with some other 1B becoming available as a result or waiting for a Pena, Kotchman, or Lee to come to them after Fielder find a home.

Of course, the events leading up to the Fielder signing are about the worst-case scenario (particularly as Fielder was added to the team that was already assumed to be the AL Central front-runner) for the Tribe and one can’t help but see the unfortunate timing of the Carmona/Hernandez Heredia situation in terms of money that could actually be available to spend. By that I mean that with FC/RHH on the restricted list and with no guarantee that he’s even going to make it back to the US this season (and how long it will take him to get back into game shape should not be discounted in terms of a timeframe), the Indians could ostensibly have about $7M that they had set aside for FC/RHH that could be spent elsewhere. In a cruel turn of events, Carlos Pena signed a one-year deal for $7.25M with the Rays JUST before the FC/RHH situation happened. Now, maybe Pena wasn’t coming to Cleveland regardless of what the Indians offered (and certainly Prince was never coming here), but the Indians are now not only back to square one in terms of still looking to add a 1B, but now they’re forced to do it without Pena on the market and with their chief rival unquestionably improving their 2012 chances by guaranteeing $214M to Fielder.

Now, in the talk of how this affects the Indians, let’s not discount how big of a risk the Tigers are taking here on Fielder as the dollars associated in this deal are HUGE, as passed along by Maury Brown in the middle of a piece at B-Pro:
To place the Fielder deal in perspective, the nine-year, $214 million contract ranks him behind only A-Rod (twice, 2001-10 at $252 million and 2008-17 at $275 million) and Pujols (10-year,$240 million base salary) in terms of total dollars. For first baseman, Fielder crushes the eight-year, $180 million deal that Mark Teixeira reached in 2009. The average annual value (AAV) on Fielder’s deal ($23.8 million) ranks him behind only the two Rodriguez deals, Cliff Lee’s $24 million AAV (as part of his five-year, $120 million deal that runs 2011-15), and Ryan Howard’s $25 million AAV as part of his five-year, $125 million contract that runs 2012-16.

Having Victor Martinez go down with what is likely a season-ending ACL tear surely played into the deal, as well. According to Jayson Stark, the Tigers will see a significant amount of Martinez’s salary covered by insurance. “Significant” could be as much or little as 50 percent.

For a guy that was unsigned in January, without the “usual suspects” at the negotiating table, Prince did just fine for himself thanks to the largesse of Mr. Ilitch because…you know, “Mike knows his investments. His businesses are successful”.
Or so said Prince’s agent two years ago, talking sweet about his Sugar Daddy, in a piece I’ll link again in case you didn’t read it the first time…

Certainly, Ilitch’s role in this signing cannot be discounted as his “ability” to lose money or at least the stomach for it is something that is unique in MLB (much less sports) as he’s certainly looking to find his way to a WS trophy before he…well, before he dies. Let’s not forget that the Tigers lost $29M in 2010 alone and since Ilitch is worth about $2B (that’s a “B”) on the strength of selling crappy “pizza” at his Little Caesars’ stores and selling the American dream one slot machine pull at a time at the Motor City casino, his desire to bring the WS trophy to Motown is a major factor here. As Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes points out “Ilitch has only two playoff appearances and no World Series titles to show for his 20 years as the owner of the Tigers” and while Badenhausen also notes that the “Tigers don’t have the revenues to support this kind of payroll and still make money”, Ilitch has signed off (and maybe even forced Dombrowski’s hand) on this Fielder signing.

The obvious comparison that most Indians’ fans will go to next (now that ownership has been mentioned) is to continue to blame the Dolans for this signing (and Tom Moore had a great piece on this very topic) and for the Indians’ “insistence” in fiscal responsibility. Without even getting into that (because I’ve weighed in on it enough over the years), let’s not forget that even though Badenhausen writes that the “Tigers don’t have the revenues to support this kind of payroll and still make money”, the Tigers have outdrawn the Indians by 3,690,801 paying customers over the last four seasons (DET – 10,873,112, CLE – 7,182,311 since 2008) and while some of that can certainly be traced to the…um, unhappiness in Cleveland as the Indians tore everything down from July of 2008 to the end of 2009, that is not a small amount…and even with those revenues, the Tigers have lost (and figure to continue to lose) money.

Obviously, most baseball fans don’t care about owners that are millionaires or billionaires losing money for their entertainment, but perhaps more important than the Tigers averaging about 900K more than the Indians at the turnstiles over the last four years is the fact that Detroit has 4.3M people in their Metro market (12th largest in the US) while Cleveland has 2.07M people in their Metro market (28th largest…and there are still about 2.4M people in the CSA around Detroit as there are in the CSA around Cleveland) so we’re not really talking apples to apples here as much as people would like to assume that Detroit and Cleveland are similar in terms of recent economic trouble. While many would like to lump Detroit and Cleveland in the same “small-to-mid-market” pile (and remember how TV money and the number of TV sets in a media market is going to continue to change this game), it really isn’t a legitimate comparison, particularly when the Tigers are now operating under the deal that they signed with Fox Sports that pays them $40M a year. That may not be Angels/Rangers TV money, but that certainly plays a role here..

Regardless of what the personal finances of these owners are and how the market size affects payrolls and revenues, let’s go back to the question that becomes relevant in this space, specifically “what do the Indians do now?”
Is Casey Kotchman, warts and all, in the offing on a 1-year deal?

Or if an trade is the manner in which the Indians make an addition (and there’s still no guarantee that they even will) and even a trade where additional payroll is added, is the money that is/was owed “Carmona” possibly in play here as it doesn’t look like he’s coming stateside anytime soon?

Do they get more aggressive in terms of a trade as serial poster MTF suggested in making a move for a similarly impactful bat like Kevin Youkilis (under control for 2012 for $12M with a $13M option for 2013), even if it costs them a player like Asdrubal Cabrera to net that impact bat?

Unfortunately (as usual), there are more questions than answers at this point and while some are quick to equate the Fielder signing to another AL Central crown in Motown, we all know that games aren’t played on paper (or in January) and that the WS trophy bestowed upon the Red Sox this time last year never actually made it’s way to Yawkey Way. It would be foolish to assume that the Tigers will just run away with the division the way that the 1995 Tribe team did, as I can’t remember a more top-heavy team (pun intended) in recent memory and the last time the Indians had a couple of “stars” on the team heading into the season was 2008, when CC was supposed to front the rotation and Sizemore, Hafner, and Vic were supposed to make the offensive engine purr. Lest you forget, CC posted a 7.88 ERA in the month of April that year and Vic and Hafner played a combined 18 games together with Ben Francisco batting 3rd for the team in early June, a spot in the lineup that he would actually occupy for a solid two months.

That said, the sledding for the 2012 AL Central crown just got more treacherous for the Indians and while things happen in a baseball season that change the course of a team or teams, the Tigers certainly made the needle on the Richter scale move with the Fielder signing. Unfortunately for Tribe fans, “things” also happen in the off-season that alter the direction of a franchise and between the two top teams in the AL Central heading into the season, Detroit’s move has caused cracks and fissures in the idea that the Indians will be able to keep pace with the Tigers, much less overtake them.

The Tangled Web

Last Thursday began the way that most days have begun in my house in the past few months, with my now-2-year-old waking up around 6 AM and proceeding to wake up the rest of the house, eventually prodding his parents into beginning their preparations for work and for the day. With the kids fed and bundled, they were taken over to the babysitter’s house so my wife and I could begin our work days, which we concluded in the early afternoon as we had plans to go to Milwaukee for a long weekend with the in-laws. After returning from work, we loaded up the car, picked up the kids and proceeded west on I-80/I-90 with the kids entertained in the back by Cars 2, then The Music Man and with their parents in the front, talking about kindergarten options for the oldest next year while their iTunes account provided the background noise.

Just so you don’t think that I’ve completely lost it, it was during this trip that the whole Carmona/Hernandez Heredia thing broke, so imagine my surprise after driving for 7 hours with 3 kids in a car on a random January night…but I’ll get to this #55 thing if you allow me this early digression.

Anywho, upon arrival to Milwaukee, we enjoyed a weekend with the grandparents in the way that we always do during Wisconsin winter weekends - with trips to libraries and museums, a day of sledding, enjoying meals with extended families, and with the evenings usually ending with a group of us sitting around the fireplace or at the card table with some drinks. Yesterday, we made our way back home in the warm cocoon of the Family Truckster as rain and snow fell in Illinois and Indiana, eventually arriving to our house on the North Coast, attempting to get back into everyday life after some time away as well as sliding back into our professions that allow us to live in the manner that we have become accustomed to, even if we are probably not thankful enough for the life that we have grown into.

This is not meant to bore you with the minutiae of a largely uneventful weekend away for a couple of 30-somethings and their three kids in the Midwest, but rather to serve as a sort of introduction to point out that even about 4 days after this news broke that the Fausto Carmona that we’ve watched for the better part of 6 years is a man not named Fausto Carmona, I have no idea what to think about this false identity story as I simply lack the context (or even the capability to assume context) to understand the decision that was made by a 20-year-old Roberto Hernandez Heredia some eleven years ago in the Dominican Republic.

Fortunate enough to be born where I have been born, when I have been born, with the ability to create the life that I now find myself living, to even attempt to walk a mile in the shoes of that 20-year-old in the Dominican Republic is simply something that I cannot begin to imagine. If these words are meeting your eyes via a PC or a laptop or a Smartphone or a tablet, it’s possible that the decision that was made by a tall, skinny, RH pitcher may not something that you’re able to properly evaluate either as the world that Hernandez Heredia occupied prior to that decision is one that most of us have probably only seen on TV, in pictures, or perhaps during a brief taxi ride from an airport to an all-inclusive resort during a honeymoon. Obviously, the impetus for that decision – to escape his situation in the Dominican Republic through the betterment of his life as the money of MLB could allow – is just the jumping off point for this, but it’s one that I don’t think has received enough attention as the disparities between the lives of most of us and what was staring Hernandez Heredia in the face as a 20-year-old unable to get the attention of MLB scouts is something that cannot be underestimated.

Perhaps I shouldn’t speak for anyone else, but to attempt to understand the enormity of this situation is to begin with the idea that eleven years ago, a 20-year-old Dominican named Roberto Hernandez Heredia decided to assume the identity of a man three years his junior named Fausto Carmona, earning the rapt attention of scouts - under the impression that Hernandez Heredia was now 17 years old, not 20 years old, which would have caused scouts to likely ignore him because of that 3-year difference – eventually making his way into the Cleveland Indians’ organization, beginning a meteoric rise through the Minor Leagues, ending up in Cleveland as a fireballing RH pitcher at the tender age of 22...or so we thought.

Did Roberto Hernandez Heredia break the law by assuming the identity of a man named Fausto Carmona?
Absolutely...and there’s no question that there are some prominent ethical issues that fill this story in terms of assuming another man’s identity, paying that man “hush money” to keep quiet about the falsehood, and continuing to live that lie on a stage as big as MLB, signing contracts and seeing jerseys sold with another man’s name and your number in Team Shops across Ohio.

However, what compelled Hernandez Heredia to make those decisions should not and cannot be glossed over in the telling of this story as his “shedding” of three calendar years in one fell swoop certainly put a foot in his MLB door and, while that foot didn’t technically belong to him, he was the one that kicked it down by virtue of his talent as the opportunity has been there for countless young players, with Hernandez Heredia using the opportunity that was presented to him (even if under false pretenses) was used to catapult him into what is now a 6-year MLB career with nearly 935 MLB innings under his belt. Certainly, his “age” afforded his opportunities along the way that they wouldn’t normally have (his rookie season wouldn’t have provided the optimism it did if people knew he was 25 years old and not the 22 that he was reported to be), but ultimately #55 thrived in MLB (albeit intermittently) and whether he was Fausto Carmona or Roberto Hernandez Heredia, he is still the player that finished 4th in the Cy Young voting and authored one of the best games that I’ve ever seen against the Yankees in the ALDS as midges could not affect his gaze that has been so out of focus ever since.

If Roberto Hernandez Heredia had not lied about his age, would the opportunities he “enjoyed” have been put in front of him?
Maybe though probably not, and while some can pontificate from their towers built on 140 characters or less that the Indians should void his contract and cut ties with him based on his duplicity, don’t think that the ability to have those opportunities didn’t play a major role in the decision to assume a new identity AND to pay hush money to keep that information concealed for eleven years now. Ultimately, the person who was pitching all these years for the Indians is the one that earned the salary that has been meted out to him even if the initial opportunity and the idea that he was as old as he said he was played a role in how long his leash has been as well as the long-term contract that he signed.

Certainly it’s unlikely that the Indians would have approached him about that long-term deal that they did when they did if his true age was known, but let’s be real about this as he’s been paid just over $elevenM over the last two years (4.47 ERA, 399 IP) and has cashed paychecks totaling $15,157,000 in his career. That’s certainly not a paltry sum, but let’s remember that Derek Lowe (4.52 ERA, 380 2/3 IP in the last 2 years) will be paid $15,000,000 this year alone by the Indians and the Braves. For a 20-year-old Dominican, the opportunity to earn that generational-altering wealth would be a dream come true…one that Roberto Hernandez Heredia realized, just not without deception and with a whole tangled web of lies that eventually ensnared him.

There are many emotions from a fan’s perspective (as well as that of just a human perspective) in this – sadness, confusion, anger, doubt, and more – but it certainly calls into question how most of us can even relate to the decision that was made by #55 those many years ago. Playing a major role for me in formulating a rational reaction to this has been the fact that for the last couple of years, I’ve made a concerted effort to divorce myself from getting too attached to these players – call it attempting to root for the name on the front of the jersey and not the back – but there are a few players that have tested this effort. Most of those “personal” connections have ended in disappointment in recent years, from watching the bodies of Sizemore and Hafner wilt when prolonged success seemed imminent for both or enduring the sight of Victor weeping at his locker, I’ve rooted for these guys and wanted them to succeed not just because they wore the laundry that I rooted for but because they represented something that I did not grow up with as a child of the mid-to-late-1980’s – legitimately elite MLB talent that figured to be in Cleveland for a while. Similarly to the soft spot that I have in my heart for those players, Fausto always held a special place for me…maybe it was because of that midge game or because he famously pounded on Sheffield’s head, but there was a part of me that hitched my dream wagon to his star and always hoped (probably against logic) that Fausto v.2007 was someday going to magically return after his star began to fade.

Today, that idea that he’ll ever return to a level of effectiveness for the Indians looks even more foolish than it did when he was sent to the deep Minors to be re-built or when he would deconstruct before our very eyes – a combination of prolific amounts of sweat and jangly nerves – every so often in the past few years. For all of those seasons that we would assert that the year would depend on whether “which Fausto” would show up, the idea that a “Good Fausto” and “Bad Fausto” existed and were constantly at war with each other seems almost too prophetic. Here he was, living this lie, trying to keep it all together while attempting to keep the lid down on a Pandora’s Box that must have ready to burst after that 2007 season, after that ALDS game, after his big contract, and (most recently) after the Indians picked up that $7M option for the 2012 season.

For years, we would read about Fausto going to the Dominican Republic in the off-season to “work on his farm” and keep a low-profile, but now we know what #55 was really trying to do – to wake up one more day living in his castle built on sand instead of seeing it crumble around him.

Now, it has collapsed for him and there are very serious questions about what the future holds for Carmona/Hernandez Heredia in terms of securing a visa to even re-gain entry into the US and as the Indians have already moved towards ostensibly replacing him with Kevin Slowey in what is only the most recent move that the Indians have made that was directly affected by the man who was thought to be Fausto. By that I mean, it’s hard not to see how that one decision in the Dominican Republic in 2000 has affected the decisions made by the Indians since Carmona’s breakout 2007 season, from assuming that they could rely on Carmona after that 2007 season (“sure CC, we don’t need you all that much anymore…we have a 23-year-old Fausto to front the rotation”), or the hopes that he could right himself year after year as the Indians didn’t pursue more pitching because of the idea that a 25-year-old or 26-year-old or 27-year-old player could right his ship.

Whether #55 will ever be donned again at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario by Carmona/Hernandez Heredia remains to be seen as the Indians’ acquisition of Slowey (and…um, they can stop the whole “we thought of getting him before this Fausto” notion unless they started talking to the Rockies when they found out about it, which could have been as long as 3 weeks ago, which is when Hernandez Heredia was outed in the DR, with the Indians probably having somebody on the island who would know that) certainly could lead one to the assumption that the Indians aren’t counting on Hernandez Heredia to be toeing the rubber for them this year, as the Tribe would ostensibly attempt to survive with some combination of Slowey, Barnes, Gomez, McAllister, Huff, and others to hold down the #5 spot in the rotation.

Among those names, the newly-acquired Slowey is certainly the most interesting (and the fact that he has an option and could perhaps be under the Tribe’s control for 3 more seasons if he spends about 2 months in the Minors this year) as he’s always been a pitch-to-contact hitter who had fallen out of favor in Minnesota. He’s not going to walk hitters and he’s not going to strike too many hitters out, but he’ll operate in that Josh Tomlin world where we watch a lot of fly balls go into the air with bated breath but will do so efficiently. Giving up a young player like Zach Putnam is difficult to see in terms of the idea that Putnam looked like a player on the precipice of getting a serious shot at contributing to the MLB bullpen for the next couple of years, but if the Indians can squeeze some back-end-of-the-rotation innings out of Slowey, it’s certainly worth a young, unproven reliever for a team that’s teeming with relievers up and down the farm and is short on legitimate MLB starting options to start 2012…thanks in part to this fiasco with #55.

According to the team, the Indians have apparently been interested in Slowey for a while (he has a career ERA+ of 90 in 532 2/3 IP) and it’s possible that Slowey needed a change of pace from the “Minnesota Way” and will take this newfound opportunity and run with it by asserting himself into the back-end-of-the-rotation. It’s not like the other “competitors” for that 5th spot have picked it up and run away with it and some combination of Slowey and a guy like Scott Barnes intrigues me far more at this point than to see another combined 80 IP from Jeanmar and Huff for the 3rd straight season. Of course, it should be mentioned that despite the early season success of Josh Tomlin, there is a very real possibility that Tomlin struggles in 2012 the way that he did down the stretch in 20eleven, meaning that one of Tomlin’s options could be used in the upcoming season, making the addition of Slowey all that more important in terms of throwing another arm on the pile to fill out the rotation. Regardless of how those arms at the back-end-of-the-rotation sort themselves out, the idea that those players (or someone like Slowey) would get extended looks this season has bubbled to the surface as the Indians attempt to pick themselves up off of the floor after this whole Carmona/Hernandez Heredia episode.

Perhaps that’s why analyzing these guys for a rotation spot feels so odd, as (despite the faults of #55…and there have been many) Carmona/Hernandez Heredia has been an assumed starter for this team since he broke out in 2007. Obviously, his opportunity to break out came about because of false pretenses and falsehoods and he now finds himself attempting to put the cork back in the bottle as the ocean of lies that he’s perpetuated over the last eleven years consumes his life.

Despite this, the inescapable feeling that I have in all of this is sadness – sadness at what that 20-year-old must have been feeling those many years ago as he attempted to “bargain” his way out of poverty (and the fact that his new name was “Fausto” is surreal), sadness at watching a man caught up in the success that he earned through duplicitous desperation, and sadness at knowing that a player that we’ve rooted for as he rode the roller coaster of the last few years has possibly reached the end of his MLB ride.

Ultimately, there is an inherent sadness in the reality that the baseball player that we have known as Fausto Carmona is no more and Roberto Hernandez Heredia will never be the man that he once dreamed of becoming as the lies of one man have caught up with him in a swirling mess, thrown him off course in a way that those midges were never able to, and now threatens to engulf him.

1st and (Still) Foremost

The new year is upon us and since things have been quiet on the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, there hasn’t been too much to ruminate on pertaining to the Indians as they are only so many times that one can read (or write) about the 1B situation, breathlessly follow 140 character proclamations that “the #indians are in on…”, or dissect the current roster much more. However, seeing as how there seems to be some movement on how the Indians are approaching their 1B…um, “situation”, I figured it would be as good a time as any to weigh in on what’s been happening (or what could be in the works) with YOUR Cleveland Indians.

While nearly all of the focus for the Indians since the Sizemore deal has centered on adding a bat (preferably RH…preferably one that can play 1B or LF or both), here we are in mid-January and the situation has remained almost completely unchanged since the end of the 2011 season. Yes, Aaron Cunningham has entered the fray (though saying that his presence “changes” the situation is a bit of a stretch) and the Indians have been “in” on Josh Willingham and Carlos Beltran, but with about 6 weeks until pitchers and catchers report, the Indians are looking at a 1B and LF situation that pretty much resembles the one on the North Coast a few months ago. Though the contracts meted out to Jason Kubel and Coco Crisp (both got 2 years and $7M or more annually) make the Josh Willingham deal with the Twins that much more palatable and adding another OF because of the injury concerns regarding Grady still seems like a prudent idea(and count me as still intrigued by Marlon Byrd, particularly now that the Cubs have added David DeJesus and Reed Johnson and are obviously building for another day), the obvious hole that has existed since Matt LaPorta proved to be Matt MaTola and continues to exist is at 1B, where the alignment of internal options that may factor into 1B is getting some new attention.

Of course, this new “attention” is merely a resurrected line of thinking out there regarding the Indians’ 1B situation (as it’s an idea that AC posted on his blog a few months ago), but it does come via Pluto’s Sunday notes, which means that it does come from the Indians. It started last weekend as Pluto passed along (and remember, his Sunday notes come from what the Tribe is telling him) that “the Indians would like to do something about a first baseman. They appear committed to Carlos Santana against lefties, with Lou Marson catching. When a right-hander is on the mound, Santana will catch. No commitment has been made to Matt LaPorta.”

And with that (and as Matt LaPorta started perusing Columbus apartments on Craiglist), the seed of an idea that Santana could be shuffling up and down the 1B line in 2012 and that a full-time 1B may not be coming was re-planted as Marson catching against LHP meant that the Indians would essentially be looking for a 1B to face RHP, when Santana would be catching. Starting off, this makes loads of sense from the Marson vs. LHP perspective as Marson has a .763 career OPS vs. LHP and a .529 career OPS vs. RHP. In fact, Marson’s .793 OPS vs. LHP in 2011 ranked him 3rd on the Tribe against LHP among players with more than 90 AB against LHP (Santana and Hannahan were higher), so if Marson’s production at the plate against LHP goes along with his defensive prowess to justify his inclusion in the lineup against LHP…I’m all for it.

However, as noted above, the player that posted the highest OPS vs. LHP on the Indians last year was one Carlos Santana, so The Axe Man obviously is a big part of the equation vs. LHP, begging the question whether Marson being behind the dish vs. LHP pushes Santana down to 1B line against LHP or perhaps if a better utilization of roster management exists. By that I meant that everyone seems to be content to simply move Santana down to 1B on a part-time basis, but what about moving him into the DH spot vs. LHP since Hafner had a .638 OPS vs. LHP in 2011 (2nd lowest among Indians with more than 100 AB in 2011 vs. LHP) to essentially maximize both Marson AND Hafner’s effectiveness in 2012?

Truthfully, that’s the way I would handle the Marson/Santana “platoon”, by using this alignment for that duo and Hafner, dependent upon the starting pitcher:
Vs. LHP
C – Marson
DH – Santana

Vs. RHP
C – Santana
DH– Hafner

Is it ideal to have a $13M a year platoon player in Hafner?
Of course not, but as disparate as Marson’s splits have been the last couple of years, check these…
Hafner Splits 2011
.886 OPS vs. RHP
.638 OPS vs. LHP

Hafner Splits 2010
.863 OPS vs. RHP
.706 OPS vs. LHP

Hafner Splits 2009
.866 OPS vs. RHP
.696 OPS vs. LHP

If you’re saying that those numbers aren’t THAT bad against LHP, consider that Hafner has 22 XBH in his last 309 PA against LHP and has 5 HR against LHP in his last 219 PA…seriously. That’s not to say that Hafner would become a largely “part-time” player as it is worth mentioning that the average number of AB per team in MLB vs. LHP was 1,470 while the average number of AB per team in MLB vs. RHP was 4,053. So if each team has about 5,500 AB to give out per season, only about ¼ of those AB come against LHP, so Hafner would be more of a ¾-type player which, given the chance that there are only so many swings in Hafner’s shoulder every year, sounds just about right.

While the idea might exist that pushing Santana down to 1B for those 25% of the games against LHP makes more sense, with somebody like Duncan playing the RH DH role, consider that Hafner had the 25th lowest OPS vs. LHP in the AL last year among players with more than 100 PA vs. LHP in 2011. On the Indians, only Mike Brantley was worse on that list, with the 3rd worst Indian on that list being…wait for it…Shelley Duncan, whose .638 OPS vs. LHP ranked him 33rd from the bottom.

And here’s where things get kind of odd in planning out these alignments as one would think that the RH Duncan would have more success vs. LHP to the point that you could suggest a Duncan/Hafner timeshare at DH but strangely enough, the RH Duncan actually hit RHP better than LHP in 2011:
Duncan vs. RHP – 2011
.273 BA / .331 OBP / .587 SLG / .981 OPS in 133 PA

Duncan vs. LHP – 2011
.245 BA / .316 OBP / .363 SLG / .679 OPS in 114 PA

Now if you’re ready for the REALLY weird part in this whole Shelley Duncan split thing, look at what Shelley Duncan’s splits looked like prior to the 2011 season:
Duncan vs. RHP – Prior to 2011
.198 BA / .275 OBP / .357 SLG / .632 OPS in 229 PA

Duncan vs. LHP – Prior to 2011
.261 BA / .337 OBP / .476 SLG / .813 OPS in 187 PA
Certainly, these are all still pretty small sample sizes, but Duncan historically struggled against RHP prior to the 2011 season, when he inexplicably thrived against them, with the opposite being true against LHP prior to and during last season. However, it brings some question to the idea that Duncan represents a suitable “partner” with Hafner at DH, simply by virtue of him being RH. Maybe Duncan reverts back to his pre-2011 performance vs. RHP or maybe his 2011 struggles against RHP are the beginning of a trend, but simply asserting that Hafner can be spelled against RHP is a stance that would be hard to legitimately support.

Truthfully, all this lefty-righty stuff makes my head hurt (and Pluto suggested – in a roundabout sort of way – that Sizemore, Hafner, and Brantley would all sit from time to time against LHP…not that those thoughts aren’t justified, particularly with Brantley, meaning that there’s going to be a lot of lineup fluctuation based on the opposing pitcher), but the idea is essentially put these guys into situations in which they can be most productive and maximize the talent that is on hand.

If you’re fleshing out the C/DH platoon idea, you’d have Santana playing C about 120 games and filling the DH role for 40 games with Marson playing 40 games at C and Hafner getting about 120 sporadic starts at DH to keep him fresh as the season goes along since he played in only 94 games last year, after his 118-game 2010 campaign. To me, that looks like a pretty good solution that doesn’t put Santana at 1B every so often (when his defense is lacking there) and keeps him fresh throughout the season, while resting Hafner to the point that he can (hopefully) remain healthy and effective for an entire season, and utilizing Marson correctly – as a sort of super-backup catcher, who plays against LHP – which again, keeps the Indians’ best offensive player (Santana) rested and hopefully healthy for the season.

Obviously, this situation does nothing about 1B, but if there are concerns about Santana’s ability to play 1B (and there are, particularly with a groundball staff) and the idea is to keep Santana as fresh as due to the wear and tear or the duties of catching because of his offensive potential, perhaps using him in a convoluted platoon for C and DH makes more sense for the Indians to maximize production from Santana for the whole season, but also to put Marson and Hafner in situations that they are most ideally suited for at this point in their careers.

As stated above, this arrangement would still do nothing to fill the still-gaping hole at 1B and would actually deepen the crevasse as the idea that Santana would be an option at 1B would be lessened and the Indians would be left to cobble together some odd amalgamation of Shelley Duncan, Matt MaTola, and (gulp) Mike Brantley at 1B. Of course, here is where the obvious declaration comes that the Indians STILL need to find an everyday 1B comes across again.

To that end, does it strike anyone else as odd with pitchers and catchers reporting about five weeks from now (Tribe P&C report on February 20th) that Prince Fielder, Carlos Pena, Casey Kotchman, and Derrek Lee all remain unsigned?

Maybe the flurry of activity is waiting on Prince’s deal (and that looks like it will be in the nation’s capital, perhaps making Adam LaRoche or Chris Marrero an option…but that’s another story), but after Pujols had more than a few suitors, the 1B market has certainly hit a dry patch. With the Cubs acquiring Anthony Rizzo and the Padres netting Yonder Alonso (neither of whom interested me all that much as a 2011 solution, largely because of the bitter LaPortian taste in my mouth regarding top 1B prospects and the idea that Rizzo and Alonso are still just that…prospects), some teams looking for 1B this off-season have moved to get their “1B of the Future”. But that means the options who represent the “1B of the Present” (Fielder, Pena, Kotchman, and Lee) are still basically out there, just with fewer suitors that had a hole that needed to be filled at 1B.

What does that mean for the Indians?
Well, it means that they might be able to essentially wait this out and sign whatever player (not named Prince) is still left standing in this game of Musical Chairs once the music stops or they could target one of Pena, Kotchman, or Lee as soon as Fielder signs to act quickly and add the 1B that is so obviously lacking on this roster, something brought into clearer focus with all of this talk about platooning inferior options (Duncan, Brantley, Donald, etc.) at 1B.

If you’re talking about the trio of Pena, Kotchman, or Lee being feasible additions to the team (and remember that the Beltran “offer” showed that they’re willing to hand out some dollars to the “right” FA this off-season…and none of those guys figures to command a long-term deal at this point), the trio represents an upgrade over what the Indians would be able to have at 1B as it stands now, but that doesn’t mean that each doesn’t come with serious concerns and obvious warts. If you’re looking strictly at 2011 offensive stats, Pena posted the highest OPS (.819) and wOBA (.354), with Kotchman coming in 2nd in both categories (.800 OPS, .351 wOBA), and Lee’s 2011 numbers (.771 OPS, .335 wOBA) being the “worst” among the three, even if they look Pujolsian compared to the Duncan/LaPorta/Donald/Brantley idea. Beyond that, all three have solid defensive reputations, finishing in the Top 12 (Kotchman – 8th, Pena – 9th, Lee – 12th) in John Dewan’s 2011 Fielding Bible voting, something that can certainly not be said for Santana, much less that 4-headed monster that is reportedly being considered to split time there.

So, if we’re talking about offensive prowess, Pena’s 2011 numbers look the best…but that doesn’t mean that Pena does not come with legitimate concerns offensively, with the main concern being voiced by a scout in John Perrotto’s piece at B-Pro called “Best Players Still on the Board”:
Scout’s view: “He can still help someone, but you better have a good right-handed hitter to platoon with him. He’s completely helpless against left-handers now, so you can’t play him 155-160 games anymore. At this stage of his career, he’s a complementary player rather than a major cog in a lineup, and I’d pay him accordingly.”

“Completely helpless against left-handers now”…oof, we already have a couple of those. Unfortunately, what the scout sees bears out in the numbers as Pena posted a .594 OPS vs. LHP in the NL last year, which comes on the heels of a .675 OPS vs. LHP campaign in 2010 for the Rays. In the last 3 years, Pena has a .704 OPS vs. LHP, a number that has trended down since the 2009 campaign. As a quick aside, Hafner’s OPS vs. LHP over that same timeframe (the last 3 years) is .680, so Hafner has actually been less effective than Pena vs. LHP since the beginning of the 2009 season…and since there would only be one Carlos Santana to go around, you’d still be looking for a RH platoon partner for Pena (or Hafner) if a guy like Pena is signed, warts and all.

If you think that Pena’s performance against LHP is underwhelming, realize that Casey Kotchman has a .610 OPS vs. LHP since the beginning of his 2009 season and while his .709 OPS vs. LHP last year was the highest of his career, there is a very real concern with Kotchman that his 2011 offensive numbers will represent the outlier as his 2011 production took SUCH a big jump (Kotchman had a LaPortian .717 career OPS coming into the 2011 season with only 49 career HR in 645 games going into last year) perhaps paced by a supernatural BABIP in 2011 that the very real possibility that Kotchman may not be that much of an upgrade over LaPorta throws up enough red flags to fill the sky.

Thus, if Pena is “completely helpless against left-handers now” and Kotchman could come screeching back to Earth after a solid (though not great) 2011 season in Tampa, would Derrek Lee represent the best option, given that he doesn’t have the HUGE platoon split that Pena and Kotchman do and with his production still relatively steady, if waning?

Maybe that’s damning with faint praise, but Lee is the only one without a DRASTIC platoon split, either in the near or distant past, so he may be more of the “everyday” 1B the Indians so desperately need even if Bastian reports that “Lee’s camp did not return the interest that the Indians showed” early in the FA process. Perhaps that changes as the season draws closer (after all, Lee ended up in Baltimore last year, so minds can be changed) and Lee finds himself on the outside looking in, with the Indians maybe coming into the fray with a one-year deal for Lee that would guarantee him everyday PA at 1B…something he may not be able to find anywhere else.

So what can be made of this 1B situation?
Well, maybe the Indians are looking at a Pena or a Kotchman to play that LH role at 1B (with Santana playing the RH part of the “platoon”) and while that’s far from an ideal situation (as I’d prefer Santana spelling Hafner at DH against LHP), it would still represent a decided upgrade from what’s staring at the Indians as the roster currently stands.

Maybe something happens on the Prince Fielder front that makes another 1B available via trade (though my Gaby Sanchez jersey looks to be gathering mothballs) and maybe the Indians still have a trick up their collective sleeve, but with the 1B market as stagnant as it is right now, with as many players still looking for contracts with fewer opportunities around MLB, and with the Indians reportedly still aggressive in their pursuit of a 1B, I’d be surprised if the Indians actually went to Goodyear with the idea that they’d be able to form a quality 1B out of some twisted amalgamation of Santana, Duncan, LaPorta, and (gulp) Brantley.

Then again, maybe “surprised” isn’t the right word.
Perhaps “disappointed” would be a better fit…