The Indians made two moves today to shore up their starting rotation for 2012. First they picked up Fausto Carmona's $7 million option for 2012 (he has another one for 2013) and then they traded left-handed minor leaguer Chris Jones to the Braves for Derek Lowe. Lowe is turning 39, but has been extremely consistant, starting over 32 games each of the last 10 seasons. The 7 years prior to that he was used primarily as a reliever. His durability to really help an Indians rotation that was ripped apart by injuries in 2011. With these two moves the Indians rotation currently stands as such:

Justin Masterson

Ubaldo Jimenez

Josh Tomlin

Fausto Carmona

Derek Lowe

Remaining on the roster, but not included in the top 5 starters are Jeanmar Gomez and David Huff.

Earl Averill was the most prolific Indians hitter of all time. In just 11 seasons Averill accrued enough stats to be in the top 5 all-time among Indians in at bats, runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBI, total bases and walks. He is also in the top 10 in games played, OBP, SLG and OPS. His 140 runs in 1931 are the most in a single season in Indians history and he is in the top 10 for two other seasons as well. In 1936 he was one hit away from the all-time single season record for hits. He should be considered the greatest offensive centerfielder in Indians ever and one of the top five overall batters.

Averill was one of the most unlucky Indians ever as far as the postseason is concerned. He debuted 9 years after the Indians won their first World Series and retired 9 years before their second. Despite the team's .537 winning percentage during the time he played, Averill never made it to the World Series. His time on the Indians coincided with many other All-Time Indians stars, but most of them were either at the end of their careers (like Joe Sewell and Charlie Jamieson) or just starting out (like Bob Feller, Ken Keltner and Lou Boudreau). Earl Averill is the Indians all-time career leader in runs scored, triples, RBI (the only player with more than 1,000), and total bases. His accomplishments have been recognized by the Cleveland Indians by being placed in the Indians Hall of Fame and having his number retired and by Major League Baseball when he was entered into Cooperstown in 1975 by the Veteran's Committee. Averill died in 1983.

Now that the offseason is officially upon us, Burning River Baseball would like to congratulate former Indians Jake Westbrook and Arthur Rhodes on their first World Series rings and quickly move on to the 2012 Indians campaign. For the offseason, we will be adding a new section to the site called "All-Time Indians." These will be career bios of some of the greatest players in Indians history, to give the young fan some perspective and remind the old of some of their favorite players. We will continue to update you with Indians offseason news and analysis along with this new segment.

The first tier will include 2 pitchers, 2 centerfielders and a shortstop and will begin next week. 

Here for good:

Travis Hafner

Big Pronk is almost assured to continue being the longest tenured Cleveland Indian. Hafner is signed through 2012 with an option for 2013. To release him right now would cost the team $15.75 million and they would get nothing in return. There are also few teams that would be willing to trade for an aging slugger at that kind of cost. The Indians shouldn't even want to get rid of him at this point. Hafner was one of the best offensive players on the team in 2011 and barring injuries, could be expected to hit as many as 20 (wow that's a lot) of home runs in 2012.

Ubaldo Jimenez

The new and expensive (talent wise), ace of the Cleveland Indians is signed through 2012 with options for 2013 and 2014. He is only owed $4.2 million next year, so he is relatively cheap as far as money goes. If Jimenez can keep pitching at above a Paul Byrd level the Indians will almost certainly use both options as well.

The Younglings

Trevor Crowe, Matt LaPorta, Lou Marson, Jason Donald, Michael Brantley, Frank Herrmann, Josh Tomlin, Carlos Santana, Vinnie Pestano, Ezequiel Carrera, Lonnie Chisenhall, Jeanmar Gomez, Nick Hagadone, David Huff, Josh Judy, Jason Kipnis, Corey Kluber, Zach McAllister, Cord Phelps, Thomas Neal, Nick Weglarz, Hector Rondon, Kelvin De La Cruz and Zach Putnam are all too young to have rights in baseball and will be treated like the team property they are. All these players will be signed next March as they make the team or get sent to AAA. They could also be released or taken in the rule 5 draft if the Indians decide to take any of them off the 40 man roster. They all could technically be traded as well, but they are extremely cheap (less than $1 million each) and all have potential to be important assets to the Indians roster.

Arbitration

These players will probably be back, but are at least given the right to ask for more money. Shin-Soo Choo, Asdrubal Cabrera, Rafael Perez, Chris Perez, Joe Smith, Shelley Duncan, Jack Hannahan, Justin Masterson, Tony Sipp and Luis Valbuena are all arbitration eligible. These players are all at different stages of their careers and will all be treated differently on an individual level. Look for the Tribe to offer long term deals to both Shin-Soo Choo and Asdrubal Cabrera this offseason as they will look to lock them in for the next 5-7 years. Hannahan and Valbuena are both borderline players who had their replacements brought up to the Majors during 2011 season. If the Indians really believe in Lonnie Chisenhall and Jason Kipnis they will release both Hannahan and Valbuena, using Jason Donald and Cord Phelps as the back ups at second and short.

Say goodbye to:

Chad Durbin

It's about time. If the Indians re-sign this waste of space then it may be time for a new GM. Durbin is thankfully a free agent and if he was an honorable man he would give some of his $800,000 salary for 2011 to the young relief pitchers (Nick Hagadone, Zach Putanm, Josh Judy and Jeanmar Gomez) whose roster spot he used up.

Jim Thome

While he has talked about returning next season, at this point we have to assume that Jim Thome will announce his retirement before 2012. Even if he does come back, it will not likely be with the Indians as they already owe $13 million to Hafner and will not be able to afford to give two roster spots to full time designated hitters. More likely Shelley Duncan will remain on the team as a pinch hitter/back-up DH/third string firstbaseman/last resort outfielder.

Kosuke Fukudome

Fukudome is a free agent as well and could be resigned if the Indians don't trust their outfield depth. With Michael Brantley, Trevor Crowe and Shin-Soo Choo coming off injury ridden seasons, they may feel like they need to sign a free agent outfielder. Fukudome was strong down the stretch and the Indians do have an odd sense of loyalty to some players (Austin Kearns) so it would be possible. It seems completely unnecessary to me and he would have to sign for much less than his previous 4 year $48 million contract so it is very unlikely he will be back in an Indians uniform.

Jerad Head, Mitch Talbot & Travis Buck

These players have already been given their release.

Gone, but he'll be back:

Carlos Carrasco missed the end of the season due to an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. While many pitchers try to come back from this procedure after a year, it is usually closer to a year and a half recovery time. Expect to see Carrasco in the starting rotation again for the 2013 season. He isn't eligible for arbitration until 2014, so the Indians will almost definitely keep him around during his rehab. 

Too soon to tell:

If you've been keeping track, you'd have noticed that I've covered every player on the 40 man roster (plus the 60 day DL) except two. These two players have options for 2012, but they far exceed the players actual worth. 

Grady Sizemore

Grady has a $9 million option for 2012 with a $.5 million buyout. That salary seems a little high for a player who hasn't played in more than 110 games since 2008. If the team had confidence that Grady could come back and contribute the way he has in the past over 162 games, the $9 million would seem cheap, but the liklihood of that happening is extremely low. Hopefully the Indians will pay Grady his half million now and will renegotiate with him to bring him back next year. I would hate to see a great young talent like Sizemore leave the Indians, but $9 million is too much if the Indians are going to sign a new free agent first baseman or starting pitcher. Grady may even be willing to take a drop in salary for an increase in guaranteed years, if the Indians want to take the risk of signing him long term.

Fausto Carmona

The Indians ace from the last few years has sufficiently regressed to the point of possibly being the worst pitcher in the Indians rotation. He has options for 2012-2014, starting with a $7 million option in 2012. The Indians would have to be crazy to pay this. It is a team option with no penalty if they don't activate it. I think most people are getting at least a little tired with Carmona's mental lapses and this wouldn't be a terrible time to just see him leave the team. If he does stay with the Tribe he is in the same situation as Grady where he should have to renegotiate his contract. 

Thanks as always to Cot's Baseball Contracts for up to date salary information for every Major League Baseball team. For more information about the Indians contract situation, check out the contracts section of Burning River Baseball.

The Indians dropped two players from their 40 man roster today, most likely to make room for a couple players who are currently on the 60 day DL. Three of the four Indians on the DL (Shin-Soo Choo, Michael Brantley and Josh Tomlin) will be activated before next season and will count against the 40 man roster. The two players released were Mitch Talbot and Jerad Head. 

Talbot has been a consitant member of the Indians starting rotation for the last two season, starting 40 games over both years. He was less than effective with a final ERA of over 5.00 and a winning percent of .387. Last season (2010) the Indians just needed arms to fill out the rotation and go out on the mound every five days. That has changed with the addition of Ubaldo Jimenez. The rotation now stands as Justin Masterson, Jimenez, Tomlin, Fausto Carmona and one other pitcher (possibly David Huff or Jeanmar Gomez). With so much depth the Indians felt confident enough to give an average player like Talbot his release.

Head made his Major League debut this season, but has been a mainstay in the Indians farm system since 2006. He is in a similar situation to Talbot as he doesn't really stand out when compared to the large amount of talented outfielders in the Indians system. He is actually in a worse position, because the Indians have many more Major League outfielders than can possibly be used on the roster next year. Starters Shin-Soo Choo and Michael Brantley will be back along with reserves Trevor Crowe, Ezequiel Carrera, Shelley Duncan and others that haven't made it to the bigs yet. Grady Sizemore and Kosuke Fukudome could also return depending on how the Indians decide to work their roster. Head ended up playing in 10 games for the Tribe, hitting .125 and knocking in one run during that time.

In somewhat related, but older news, Travis Buck refused a minor league assignment right after the season ended so he is no longer a member of the Cleveland Indians. This is pretty unimportant news given everything written in the last paragraph. 

Here is the official current 40 man roster courtesy of the tribeinsider on twitter.

I make one of these every season to give credit to the best players on the Tribe. This is the second year I've done it in this style and the first year I've used all my own pictures (except the picture of Josh Tomlin which I borrowed from www.cleveland.com). I made it as a background, but for those of you who don't use a widescreen TV as your computer monitor, it probably won't work. It's nowhere near good enough to bother making it in other sizes.

Original picture uploaded from my flickr. To save on your computer, go to the original, view the large size and right click to save.

The Indians made a couple moves today to fill in some vacancies in their coaching staff. Since Tim Belcher (pitching coach 2010-2011) and Tim Tolman (bench coach 2010-2011) have stepped down, Manny Acta needed to find new bench and pitching coaches. The perfect guys for both roles were already with the team in Sandy Alomar and Scott Radinsky. Alomar was up for the managerial job for the White Sox, but luckily for the Indians, that void was filled by Robin Ventura. Alomar was not the greatest first base coach, but he has a great mind for baseball and the closer he can get to Manny Acta's ear the better.

Scott Radinsky has been the Indians bullpen coach for two years now and has been directly in charge of the developement of such young phenoms of as Chris Perez, Tony Sipp, Joe Smith and Vinnie Pestano. Radinsky has done an amazing job in the bullpen and hopefully he will bring that consistancy to the starting rotation. He has his work cut out for him with the wacky delivery of Ubaldo Jimenez and the enigma that is Fausto Carmona. 

To take Alomar's spot as first base coach, the field coordinator for the Indians' minor league system was promoted. Tom Wiedenbauer will not only take over the duties of first base coach, but will also be the Tribe's outfield and baserunning coach. 

The final promotion was Dave Miller taking Radinsky's spot as bullpen coach. Miller had been the minor league pitching coordinator for the Tribe for the last 10 years.

About half way trough the season it was obvious the Indians' Bullpen was going to be something special. At the time I wrote an article called Greatest Bullpen of all Time? The results were inconclusive so I figured I would revisit the topic again now that the season is over, comparing the final results of the 2011 season to every other Indians Bullpen of the past 68 years (as before I will start in 1943, as use of the defined relief pitchers was rare up to that point).

The Indians team relief ERA ended up much higher than it was for the last post (was 2.99, ended at 3.71), but this was partly due to a number of new pitchers and the continued use of Chad Durbin, all of whom were excluded in the original analysis and will remain so. As with last time, only the top 5 relievers for each team were considered. On the 2011 team, these pitchers were Vinnie Pestano, Rafael Perez, Tony Sipp, Joe Smith and Chris Perez.

After staring at numbers for a half hour, I've concluded that the top 10 Indians bullpens of all time were 1954, 1968, 1976, 1992, 1995, 1996, 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2011. This is based on ERA, saves, batting average against, WHIP, K/9 and a cumulative statistic called fantasy number that combines innings pitched, hits, walks, wins, saves, earned runs and strike outs.

1968 and 2007 are the only two pens that allowed more than 3 runs per 9 innings while 1954 and 1968 were the only years with less than 30 saves and 1992 and 2007 were the only years with a BAA of over .220. All the top 10 bullpens were tremendous, but 1968 and 2007 should be removed first, as they just can hold up. On the other hand 1954 lead all teams in ERA and BAA, while 2005 lead in saves and WHIP so these teams should remain in. Of the teams that remain, 1976 is the worst in ERA, WHIP and BAA so they are out. 1995, 2001 and 2011 are the only teams left with an ERA under 2.75, a BAA under .215 and a WHIP under 1.15, so they round out the top 5 while 1992 and 1996 are the last two dropped out.

With 4 of the top 5 bullpens of all time coming in the last 20 years, it may seem that there is some prejudice, but this is actually a result of increased specialization of roles. In the past it would have been unthinkable to use a talented pitcher in only relief roles as starters throw as many as 200 more innings than relievers do in an average season, but in the recent bullpen revolution, much more emphasis has been placed on the late innings of a game.

At this point there are few enough teams left to evaluate that we can look at individual players. The player with the biggest spotlight in any bullpen is the closer and the greatest single season by a closer in Indians history was by Jose Mesa in 1995. His 46 saves are impressive, but not as impressive as his 8 runs allowed all season. For comparison, Chris Perez gave up his 8th run in a game on June 21st. Mesa pitched 64 innings with an ERA of 1.13, a BAA of .203 and a WHIP of 1.03. No other Indians closer has had this kind of dominance. I ranked the rest of the closers of the top 5 bullpens like this; Ray Narleski (1954), Bob Wickman (2001 then 2005) and finally Chris Perez in 2011.

Since there is rarely a defined "set-up" man, I'll compare the second most used pitcher of each team next. The top reliever here has to be Don Mossi from the 1954 pen. Mossi had a 1.94 ERA in 93 innings, not quite up there with Jose Mesa, but better than any number 2. His .167 BAA was far superior to any modern equivalent. A close number 2 is Joe Smith from 2011, who finished the year with a 2.01 ERA in 67 innings pitched. The rest of my rankings for #2 men are Bob Howry (2005), Julian Tavarez (1995) and Ricardo Rincon (2001).

The best of the next most used pitcher on each team was Eric Plunk in 1995. Plunk had an amazing K/9 of 9.98 along with a BAA of .200 and an ERA of 2.67. He was even able to grab up 2 saves that Mesa missed that year. The rest of the rankings are Hal Newhouser (1954), Rafael Perez (2011), David Riske (2005) and Paul Shuey (2001). 

In the 4th spot of the top 5 bullpens, Vinnie Pestano dominates. In his 2011 season, Pestano lead all of the #4 relievers in ERA (2.32), holds (23), BAA (.181), WHIP (1.05) and K/9. His K/9 of 12.19 was the greatest all time of any Indian pitcher who threw more than 25 innings. Following Pestano was Danys Baez (2001), Rafael Betancourt (2005), Dave Hoskins (1954) and Jim Poole (1995).

The last spot in the bullpen that I ranked is mostly filled with left handed specialists and relievers who were effective, but not often used. All 5 pitchers had ERAs lower than 3 except Tony Sipp in 2011. Steve Karsay in 2001 tops this list with an ERA of 1.25 and a WHIP of 0.86. Second, third and fourth belong to Arthur Rhodes (2005), Paul Assemacher (1995) and Tony Sipp. Bob Chakales and his 0.84 in 1954 are being ranked last because he only pitched in 10 innings.

Back to the overall ranking of bullpens, 2001 can be eliminated because they had two pitchers ranked 5th and this is about overall bullpen effectiveness rather than individual stars. With only 4 teams left, the worst two bullpens in ERA left can be removed. These teams were equal to the other two teams in most other stats, but allowed enough more runs to be considered worse. This knocks out 2005 and 2011, the whole reason for writing this exceedingly lengthy article. Now with two teams left, 1954 and 1995, one stat that I haven't mentioned yet seems important. The top 5 pitchers in the 1995 bullpen won 28 games compared to the 18 won in 1954. Tavarez lead the pen with 10, but Jose Mesa's 3 is even more impressive when added to his 46 saves. Even though the 1954 team played more games (154 compared to 144 in 1995) the '95 pen was used much more. Every 1995 reliever pitched in more than 40 games and they accrued almost 40 more innings than the '54 pen even though the earlier bullpen had four pitchers that made at least one start. 

There's no question right now that the 1995 bullpen is the greatest Indians bullpen of all time, but if you ask me tomorrow, I may change my mind. Either way, the fact is that the two greatest bullpens of all time coincide with the two most winning Indians teams of all time (.721 Winning percent in 1954 and .694 in 1995). Both teams also made it to (and lost) the World Series. There is no question that a great bullpen is an essential part of a championship team and this should give Tribe fans some hope as one of the top 5 bullpens of all time will be returning in it's entirety in 2012.

Since the Indians missed the playoffs and no offensive player was within the top 10 in the AL in any stat (except Carlos Santana at 3rd in walks), there probably won't be any MVP votes coming to Cleveland, but that doesn't mean the Indians don't have anything to look forward to in the coming weeks. Most are long shots, but the Indians did make waves this year and may get some post season credit for it.

Justin Masterson

The Indians ace is the team's choice for the Roberto Clemente award and has an extremely long shot at the AL Cy Young Award. There are at least 10 pitchers who were more successful than Masterson this season, most notably Justin Verlander who is a shoe-in for the award, but he does have a shot at the Clemente. The Roberto Clemente award is given away for a combination of on and off the field work. This award isn't always just given to the most talented player, so Masterson does have a chance at beating Verlander for this one. It is decided by popular vote and you can vote for Justin Masterson right here. Jim Thome was the Indians last Roberto Clemente award winner back in 2002.

Carlos Santana

One of the two offensive players to have a half decent season in 2011 was Carlos Santana. While he has no chance at any other award, he may have a case for the silver slugger at catcher. While he only hit .239, he did lead all qualifying catchers in at bats by more than 50, runs by 12, doubles by 2, home runs by 5 and walks by 24. He was second in hits, triples and steals and was within 5 of each stat. Santana actually does have a decent shot at this award since there were only 5 players that qualified for the batting title while playing catcher. The favorite for this is another Tiger, starting catcher Alex Avila. Avila leads the league in every stat the Santana is second, but the biggest advantage he has is his .295 batting average for 2011. While the Silver Slugger does take more in consideration than batting average, it is usually the most important part.

Asdrubal Cabrera

The Indians #1 star of 2011 not only has a shot at a Silver Slugger, but a Gold Glove as well. While there was some early season MVP talk about Asdrubal, that died down as his batting average did. Cabrera was second among AL short stops in home runs, doubles and runs and lead the league in hits and RBI. His batting average of .273 wasn't anywhere near as terrible as Santana's .239, but his competition is tougher as well. Ex-Indian Jhonny Peralta is his main competition for the Silver Slugger, because did almost as well as Cabrera in the counting stats, but didn't have as many at bats. All of Peralta's slash stats are better than Cabrera's. In fact, he lead all AL short stops in batting average and was second in slugging percent.

Cabrera should have a better shot at the Gold Glove as it is an award that is often based on reputation and Cabrera certainly has a good one. Asdrubal made a name for himself around the league this year by being a regular on Baseball Tonight's Web Gems with amazing play after amazing play. He certainly made the best plays on the Indians this year as can be seen in the Burning River Top 10 Plays. His direct fielding stats don't reflect his level of play as he had the 4th most errors in the league at short stop this year with 15. His .976 fielding percent was only good enough for 6th, but most of the voters understand that it was because of his much larger range than most shortstops. A more accurate representation of his play is Zone Rating, where he came in third with a ZR of 6.121. Derek Jeter, Marco Scutaro and Asdrubal were the only short stops with a Zone Rating above 6. Cabrera's main competition may come from Orioles short stop J.J. Hardy who lead the league in fielding percent and lead short stops in home runs, which shouldn't matter, but often does in Gold Glove voting.

Asdrubal is also the Indians representitive for the Hank Aaron award for the leagues best hitter. He has absolutely no shot at winning this award, but did deserve the nomination as the best hitter on the Indians. No Indian has won this award since Manny Ramirez took home the first one given out in 1999.

Rookie of the Year

Not only will an Indian not be winning this award this year, they probably won't next year either. The Tribe has a way of not letting rookies start until so late in the season they have no chance to catch up with the early leaders, but late enough to give them so many at bats they will not be eligible the next season. It happened last year with Carlos Santana and this year with Ezequiel Carrera, Lonnie Chisenhall and Jason Kipnis. Eric Hosmer has a good chance to win this year's award if it goes to a hitter. Vinnie Pestano was the Indians top rookie and has a little better chance, but it would be hard to give this years award to a relief pitcher with starters like Jeremy Hellickson and Michael Pineda available as choices. 

Manny Acta

Manny Acta's name has been thrown around in the discussion for Manager of the Year in the American League. From outside of Cleveland it looks like Acta took a terrible team and almost turned them into winners, but there are a couple reasons he probably shouldn't be considered for this award. First, he over used players that shouldn't have been on the team in the first place (Austin Kearns and Chad Durbin) in an effort to justify them being there. He also fired Jon Nunnally as a scape goat, following which the team performed even worse than they did before. He also possibly coddled his players a little too much, leading to the team breakdown at the end of the season. During the entire season he never let a single pitcher throw an entire 9 inning game. As Ron Washington has learned from Nolan Ryan, you have to get pitchers used to throwing more than they have to. By never throwing a pitcher 9 innings, the pitcher will then feel more tired after pitching 7. The same thing is true for the position players. Almost every injury this year was some sort of muscle issue. The way you work through those injuries is with extra strength and conditioning work. I'm not saying that Acta isn't a good manager. I like him and am glad the Indians resigned him for 2012, but he could not have been the best in the American League this year.

Most Improved Player - Justin Masterson

The most improved player is supposed to be a sappy award given to some returning player coming off an injury or terrible season. There were plenty of candidates for that after 2010 (Fausto Carmona, Grady Sizemore, Travis Hafner, etc), but none of them really improved in 2011. Justin Masterson went from a borderline starter/reliever that many people were willing to give up on to a bonafide ace. Masterson dropped 1.80 runs off his ERA between the two years and doubled his win total. He increased his strike outs and innings pitched while walking less batters even in the greater amount of innings. No player was more important than Masterson in games he started and last season he was just another starter.

"The Super Joe" Rookie of the Year Award - Vinnie Pestano

This was an extremely close race due to the large amount of rookies used by the Tribe this year. The main contenders were Jason Kipnis, Lonnie Chisenhall and Vinnie Pestano. Pestano comes out on top mostly because he spent the entire season with the team. Within the first month of the season Vinnie had moved into a prominent role in the "Bullpen Mafia," in fact the moniker was directly derived from him and Justin Germano. Pestano came in second on the team in holds (23) only one behind veteran lefty Tony Sipp. His 12.18 K/9 was by far the best of all Indians pitchers. His WHIP (1.05) and batting average against (.181) also lead the team. Pestano also was the only pitcher Manny Acta trusted when Chris Perez was unable to go and Vinnie came through, earning the only 2 non Chris Perez saves this year for the Tribe.

"The Steve Olin Memorial Award" for Best Reliever - Joe Smith

Joe Smith allowed 15 earned runs this year in 67 innings pitched for a 2.01 ERA. He only earned 16 holds and didn't earn any saves, but this was more of a lack of opportunity than actual talent. Chris Perez, who recorded 36 saves, was the only pitcher allowed to earn saves, but Smith was actually much more efficient during his time on the mound. His ERA lead all Indians while his WHIP (1.09) was only behind Pestano and Josh Tomlin, while his BAA was also third on the team. He pitched more games than any other reliever (tied at 71 with Rafael Perez) showing Acta's confidence in his right handed reliever. Only Chad Durbin pitched more innings out of the bullpen and his were in long relief and mop-up roles. Smith stranded 20 inherited runners this year, second on the team to Rafael Perez (25), saving the ERA's of other pitchers while still beating them in that stat. Joe Smith was just plain nasty this season. 

"The Big O" for Most Outstanding Defender - Jack Hannahan

This award I decided by mathematical equation based on my 'Player of the Game' system. The basic idea was +1 for any extra batter gotten out by good defense and -1 for any base given away by bad defense. Hannahan came out on top by 2 points. While Hannahan didn't qualify for the Gold Glove, his .983 fielding percentage was the best of all third basemen who made a single error. His 5 errors on the year were 10 less than Asdrubal Cabrera (the second best defender) made. While Cabrera did have more chances and plays a more demanding position, Hannahan was still better. 

Most Outstanding Hitter - Asdrubal Cabrera

Since there were only two starting hitters that played the whole season, the pool for this award was shallow, but Asdrubal really did earn it. Before this season, Cabrera had 18 home runs in more than 300 games played. In 2011 he hit 25 more. The new added power didn't completely destroy his batting average either as he hit .273, better than any Indian starter except Travis Hafner. Cabrera lead the team in hits, runs and RBI, while he remained at least in second in all the other significant hitting stats like doubles, home runs and walks. 

"The Addie" for Best Overall Pitcher - Justin Masterson

Most of the significant reasons for this were included in his earlier award, but there are a few more things that can be stated here. Masterson lead the team in ERA (among qualifiers), starts, wins, innings pitched and strike outs. When Justin Masterson pitched this year, every one expected the Indians to win. During games he pitched the team runs allowed per game were a full run lower than the team average for the year. His win total was harmed by the fact that the team scored less runs for him than for the rest of the staff. The numbers he pulled off at the end of the season were simply amazing considering what the rest of the team gave him in his starts.

"The Rose Award" for Best Overall Player - Asdrubal Cabrera

While Masterson was the best player in the 33 starts he made, the best player in the other 129 was Asdrubal Cabrera. Cabrera was undoubtedly the best offensive player on the team as already stated and was arguably the best defender. Cabrera was also the best base runner as he lead the team in steals (17) and was third in extra bases (40), just two behind the leader Michael Brantley. Most impressively Cabrera avoided the disabled list all season, only once taking two consecutive days off. His first game off during the year was game 89 a few days after he was removed from a game after he sprained his ankle and was almost unable to walk. Later in the season he hurt his knee and elbow at different times, but never missed more than a game for each. Only after the Indians were eliminated did he take any real time off. He was given 8 of the last 19 games off as he looked completely drained from carrying the team on his back all season. The Indians were so confident in his ability and duribility they didn't even carry a true back up short stop until Jason Donald was called up for game 105. Asdrubal deserves more credit than any other player for the Indians sustained playoff run in 2011.

The Burning River Awards are things I just made up and are not official Cleveland Indians team awards.