The Cleveland Indians didn’t make any roster moves, didn’t report any serious injuries, and didn’t lose a major free agent at the Winter Meetings in Nashville this past week. However, they did lose some ground in the AL Central when the Detroit Tigers traded for the best right-handed hitter on the market, Miguel Cabrera. This was a guy the Tribe needed, but they came up empty. Despite the Indians getting to the seventh game of the ALCS last season, it will be the Tigers that will be favored to win the division crown in 2008.
Although I think GM Mark Shapiro does a terrific job putting together a ballclub, the one weakness I think he has is overvaluing some of the prospects he has collected. It appears Shapiro did not want to part with the same type of prospects the Tigers traded away. Maybe negotiations with the Indians and Marlins never progressed to the point where names were discussed, but Detroit gave up two of their top farmhands in Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller.
Maybe those two will become perennial all-stars, but then again, they might wind up being just average players. In return, Detroit gets a current all-star, one of the best young hitters in the game. And he’s just 24 years old. I can understand the hesitancy in dealing prospects for players in their 30’s that are on the decline, but Cabrera is hardly that. In fact, Cabrera is younger than Ben Francisco, one of the Indians’ better prospects.
That isn’t even mentioning the Motor City Kitties also received former 20 game winner, Dontrelle Willis, in the deal. Willis has not been effective over the past two years since winning 20 in 2005; he had an ERA over 5.00 last year in the National League. However, he can be an effective 4th or 5th starter in Detroit, or could also be a trade piece in another deal with a National League team. He will only be 26 years old next season, although there is a lot of mileage on his arm.
There were a few rumors involving the Tribe, the most notable involving Pittsburgh and outfielder Jason Bay. As we have written before, Bay does not get me turning cartwheels. I was intrigued by Toronto outfielder Alex Rios being on the market. Rios is just 26 years old, hit 24 dingers last season, and struck out slightly over 100 times in more than 600 at bats. His batting average has hovered around the .300 mark the past two seasons. I would definitely be more interested in Rios than I would be in Bay.
Another hot name at the meetings according to Baseball Prospectus.com was Andy Marte. If the Tribe is thinking of moving Jhonny Peralta to 3B soon, they should trade the former Brave prospect before they are backing into a corner at the end of spring training. Personally, I would like to see Marte given the job and seeing what he can do. Casey Blake is always there if the youngster doesn’t come through.
Shapiro is correct in saying he doesn’t want to make a move out of emotion. He does need to do something to keep the Indians on top of the division. Getting Masahide Kobayashi to help the bullpen is a start, but he has to improve the offense. Time will tell if parting with some of the surplus in the farm system will bring another bat to the Tribe.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 
in this day and age of large market versus small market economics without a salary cap and/or
revenue sharing, it’s one thing for the indians "braintrust" not to want to pay the free agent big
bucks, it’s quite another for them not to want to trade their prospects for legitimate major league
all-star caliber players. it is my understanding that the tribe first kicked the tires with florida in
regards to cabrera, but once the marlins opened their mouths and said two words "atom miller",
i’m sure the discussions probably ended right there. and yet the tigers didn’t have any problems
giving the marlins their top 2 prospects and 4 more on top of that for not only cabrera, but former
20-game winner d-train dontrelle willis as well. that is the big difference between the indians and
other teams. they over-value their own prospects when it comes to trading them for other teams’
more viable players (see jaret wright versus pedro martinez), but under-value them at cut-down day versus their own journeyman players (see brandon phillips versus ramon vazquez). now that the tigers have made a statement about their intentions for 2008, the indians need to just bite the bullet and make the on-again, off-again trade for jason bay. again, it is my understanding that the initial offering was simply cliff lee and kelly shoppach for bay. at first blush, this seems like it’s a pretty decent deal for both parties as the pirates would get a potential #2 or 3 lefty starter to go along with an up-and-coming defensive catcher with some pop in his bat while the indians would finaly get the power-hitting left fielder that has seemingly eluded them for the entire mark shapiro era. but once the pirates new gm, former indians front office staffer neal huntington, got around the other gm’s in nashville, he started to hear other teams scuttlebutt about it not being enough and so he got greedy and came back with a counter offer which included franklin guiterrez from
the tribe and ronny paulino from the pirates. obviously, the tribe turned this deal down and as
such, the deal was dead. well, this situation along with the aftermath of the rule 5 draft, got me to
thinking about why the tribe couldn’t have just offered them brian barton and matt whitney in lieu of f-goot before they eventually lost them both for nothing??? surely the pirates would have gone for that. while rumor has it that whitney probably won’t stick with the nationals and will probably find his way back to the indians eventually, barton is another story. for all intents and purposes, he is pretty much major league ready right now and could conceivably stay on the cardinals roster all year and will probably actually get an opportunity for significant playing time. so what does the tribe get in exchange??? $50,000. whoopee!!! while the cardinals get a speedy outfielder who can hit for both average and power. gee, isn’t that the kind of player we’ve been lacking in left field in the entire shapiro era in the first place??? anyway, these are actually two different stories, but not really. the real story is that the indians are once again being very short-sighted when it comes to winning a championship.
Sometimes, you have to take the gamble. I can’t believe Shapiro thinks we are going to get the same production out of guys like Blake. They have to improve the offense if they are going to repeat as division champs.