This is the reason I didn't waste my time writing a long career retrospective on Grady Sizemore when the Indians declined his option last month. Grady has resigned with the Indians for 2012 for a rumored base salary of $5 million with incentives bringing it back up to the $9 million a year salary that the Tribe just rejected. The incentives are based on total plate appearances and winning the 'Comeback Player of the Year'. This way the Indians keep their All-Star center fielder, but won't be completely devastated if he gets injured and misses a lot of time in 2012. This will also solidify the Indians outfield which, while deep, just doesn't have a whole lot of All-Star level talent. As it stands Shin-Soo Choo will remain in right field with Sizemore probably moving to left and Michael Brantley staying in center. There will be a wide selection of reserve outfielders available including Shelley Duncan (who will almost certainly make the team as a back-up outfield/firstbaseman and pinch hitter), Trevor Crowe and Ezequiel Carrera. 

Hopefully his discounted price will allow Manny Acta to give him a slightly diminished role as well. The Indians now have better lead-off hitters in either Brantley or Jason Kipnis so Sizemore can be moved down into the lineup so he is hitting closer to sixth than first. As already mentioned, Grady should be taken out of the high stress position of centerfield and moved to left. In addition to that, he should probably not start every game as he has done in the past. In order to save his knees and keep him around all season, it would probably be a good move to allow him to split time with either Crowe or Carrera. Overall this signing is a great move and I'm looking forward to seeing Grady back in the outfield in an Indians uniform.

Grady's Back

Major League Baseball owners and players agreed on a new labor deal today that should do a lot to decrease the difference between large and small market teams. Here are some of the basic changes:

• Random HGH blood testing during the off season and Spring Training. A positive test earns a player a 50 game suspension, the same as a positive steroid test. Players will be able to challenge the results of this test and it will not take place during the season as of now.
• The agreement includes the Astros move to the American League West and the addition of an extra Wild Card to each league.
• Luxury Tax will stay at it's current level of $178 million and not increase until 2014.
• Revenue sharing will be based on team income so large markets will pay more into it and get less out, while small market teams will have to pay very little in.
• A competitive balance lottery will add more draft picks for small market teams.
• Overspending on draft picks will be highly penalized. A threshold will be set for each draft pick and if the team that drafts that player goes over the threshold they will have to pay luxury tax and risk losing the next seasons first round draft pick. This rule could be renamed the Scott Boras rule as it should keep good players from falling in the draft as small market teams with high picks will no longer be afraid of not being able to sign them.
• A luxery tax will also be added to signing international players.

There are also a few more additions that will be beneficial for players, but not necessarily for small market teams.

• In 2014 the minimum salary will be set at $500,000 and there will be cost of living increases each of the next two seasons.
• The amount of players eligible for super 2 arbitration status will raise from the top 17% to the top 22%.
• In order for a team to receive a draft pick for losing a free agent, the original team must make an offer to the player of at least the average of the top 125 Major League salaries. The old system is being thrown out entirely.

Overall this new agreement bodes pretty well for the Cleveland Indians. Going down the list one by one; the new drug testing shouldn't hurt the Tribe at all. Throughout the history of steroids in baseball, the Indians have only had two players with issues (Rafael Betancourt and Paul Byrd) and are generally thought of to be a clean organization.

I wrote an article last week on how the Astros move will help the Tribe.

Keeping the luxury tax at the same level won't hurt the Indians, but it won't really help either. Only two teams (the Yankees and Phillies) are currently obliged to pay more than $178 million in 2012. A few other teams will probably near or pass that level, but it will do nothing to keep teams close to the Indians probable payroll of about $60 million.

The change in revenue sharing should be the biggest help out of all the changes being made. The Indians are one of the smallest market teams currently in baseball so they should get a considerable boost from revenue sharing. Also, because the Tigers are among the top spenders in the league, this change could mean that the Tigers will actually have to give money to the Indians. Hopefully any money earned by the Tribe in this fashion will be used to increase payroll and not be wasted or left to disappear mysteriously.

The changes in the draft and signing foreign players should help keep players within the Indians range a little better, but they haven't had a whole lot of problems in this area to this point. Most of the foreign players who get paid huge salaries are older players from other leagues (mostly Cuba or Japan) and only one of these players (Ichiro Suzuki) has actually been worth the money he was paid. The Indians have done a great job picking up young players like Victor Martinez, Jhonny Peralta and Fausto Carmona through scouting and training at academies, not by paying exorbitant salaries. The changes in the draft may allow the Indians to get more great first round Boras picks like Jeremie Guthrie. For those who don't remember, Guthrie fell much further than expected because of his unsignability. The Indians paid Guthrie $4.5 million for his 4 years of minor league service before releasing him. If this rule was in place back in 2002 when Guthrie was drafted, a team with a better draft pick would have had to deal with him.

The only other change that really affects the Indians is the new rule on free agent draft picks. The Indians have made out in the past with this rule, at least getting something for losing players like Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez and Albert Belle. In recent years players of this caliber have been traded away to get a little more for them than the draft pick. Now, players like Grady Sizemore, who may have been worth a draft pick in the past, will not be worth one, since the Indians wouldn't be willing to offer him a salary higher than $12 million a year. 

There were 8 players who participated on both the 1948 and 1954 Cleveland Indians World Series teams. Three of those players are among the six Indians to ever have their number retired. Of those players, Bob Lemon was possibly the most impressive in the post season. In 1948 when Indians ace, Bob Feller, uncharacteristically struggled (0-2, 5.03 ERA), Lemon came through with half of the four wins the Indians needed to win the series. He not only won both his starts, but pitched a total of 16.1 innings and only allowed 3 runs. This was just his third season as a pitcher in the pros as he did not pitch during his first two seasons with the Tribe.

Lemon wasn't bad during the regular season either, amassing more than 20 wins 7 times during his career. During his 15 seasons he was able to acrue some incredible numbers as well and is currently ranked among the top five Indians pitchers all time in wins, losses, games played, starts, complete games, shutouts, innings pitched, hits, runs, home runs allowed as well as strikeouts. His ERA of 3.23 is very respectable, especially considering that he played his entire career in an Indians uniform, including his final two seasons when he went 6-12 in just 32 games.

The fact that Bob Lemon isn't usually brought up in the conversation about the greatest Indians pitcher of all time is a testament to the fantastic pitching over the history of the Cleveland Indians. Like Lemon, there were a number of other great pitchers who played their entire careers with the Tribe including Feller, Addie Joss and Mel Harder. To honor him, Lemon's number 21 has been retired and he has been enshrined in the Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame (class of 1960). He was elected to the MLB Hall of Fame in 1976 for his long career as an Indian. Bob Lemon died in 2000.

The deadline for the December 8th rule 5 draft was last night and the Indians made a couple moves in preparation. Danny Salazar, Juan Diaz and Scott Barnes were added to the 40 man roster and Luis Valbuena designated for assignment. Some high risk players that have been left off the protected list are Jared Goedert, Beau Mills, Trevor Crowe and obviously Valbuena. None of these players are really  integral to the future of the Cleveland Indians, but I would have liked to see them protect Mills, who is an option at first base as early as next season. The majority of the players currently on the 40 man played for the Indians at some point in time last season and most spent some time in a starting role due to the many moves and injuries. This means there are a lot of protected players who don't have defined roles with the team and could very well be released before next season starts. In order to keep a player drafted during the rule 5 draft, the new team has to keep the player on the 25 man roster for the entire season or offer to sell him back to his original team. Because of this, most players below AAA are safe. In recent seasons the Indians haven't had any steals or really gotten burned by this draft, so it will be interesting to see if something happens this year in the rule 5 draft. 

Houston Astros manager Brad Mills says Carlos Lee will be the Astros’ starting first baseman in 2012, and that could open up a deal involving Brett Wallace to the Tribe. The Indians have been discouraged by Carlos Pena's high asking price and are not convinced that Matt LaPorta is going to hit well. Wallace has been in four different organizations since being drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2008. After being treated like a hot potato by the Cardinals, Athletics, Phillies, and Blue Jays, Wallace finally found a home in Houston last season. He reached the majors  and took over the first base seat for the departed Lance Berkman at the 2010 trade deadline. Through the first month of 2011, Wallace had a .383/.448/.543 triple-slash line that would have made Bill James proud. Wallace clearly was not this good — his line is heavily supported by a .466 BABIP — but that doesn’t mean we needed to ignore it. It just means he was extra lucky. Wallace’s bad debut season in 2010, in which he posted a .272 wOBA and was exactly replacement level, left many, including myself, doubting Wallace’s ability to be a major league hitter, much less to have a bat play at first base. Wallace had shown that he could spray line drives across the field — particularly in the minor leagues, where he routinely posted BABIPs above .340. Concerns lingered about the rest of his game, however. Was there power? Plate discipline? Neither showed up, and he even had uncharacteristic struggles making contact, which is why he couldn’t even salvage an above-replacement year despite a .326 BABIP.

Last year, the .446 BABIP through the first month was the rocket fuel behind Wallace’s line, but a space shuttle needs more than just fuel to get off the ground. His peripherals came together in  April — his ISO, BB%, and K% are all better than the league average as well, which portends well for when the rocket fuel runs out and his BABIP returned to normal level after May.

PECOTA had originally projected  Wallace’s rest of 2011 would rise all the way to a .335 wOBA, which although not terribly special, is much better than the .321 projected back in that March. Part of it is the fact that the peripherals have returned to a legitimate MLB level, the rest is that Wallace actually does have some of the traits that a high-BABIP player tends to have — a ton of line drives, and, more importantly, a consistent history of high BABIPs going all the way back to 2006 with the Cardinals Single-A team.

Unfortunately, Wallace did not finish the season as PECOTA had originaly projected. He slumped to a .234/.305/.320 the rest of the way.

He is a first baseman, and even though his peripherals are above average, none of them are significantly better than most major leaguers. As such, Wallace’s bat doesn’t provide much value unless he turns out to be a J.T. Snow or Doug Mientkiewicz with the glove. He can still be a league average player with his skills — something that none of the projection systems and many of the scouts weren’t expecting after 2010. Wallace’s fast start last season does give some amount of hope — the hope for a productive player — but hopes of a future star and cleanup hitter (a new Lance Berkman, say) are misguided. But at least it’s better than nothing.

After much speculation the Houston Astros have been picked by Bud Selig and Major League Baseball as the National League team to move to the AL in 2013. This is being done in an effort to decrease the amount of in division games and align the divisions more evenly. With the move from the NL Central to the AL West, there will be exactly 5 teams in every division. A byproduct of this move is that each league will have an odd number of teams, necessitating interleague play throughout the entire season. Selig is also instituting a second Wild Card team in each league, increasing the number of playoffs teams from 8 to 10. Houston was the easiest team to move, although not the best. Because the point was to increase the AL West by a team and decrease the NL Central, it was easiest to directly move a single team from one division to the other. The Astros were also for sale and the move was entered as a stipulation into the purchase. 

It seems a better move would have been to be patient, rather than rushing through the process, and move the Diamondbacks or Rockies to the AL West and the Astros to the NL West. This way no team loses their long history in their respective league and the Rangers would be able to maintain their cross league rivalry with the Astros. Every other city or state that has only two teams has one in each league (except Pennsylvania). This move will ruin that perfect dichotomy. 

As far as the Indians go, we will have to see how the move plays out. It seems there is a benefit in a weak team like the Astros moving to the AL, where the Indians will play them more often. However, the Indians will probably play less games against the poor teams in the Central Division and will not be able to avoid National League powerhouses like the Phillies and Brewers.

Another thing to keep a lookout for is the designated hitter rule. With teams playing across league barriers all season long, American League pitchers will be constantly be forced to hit and National League teams will need to carry an extra bench player able to play as a DH. In the past the American League has dominated interleague play, winning more games every single season since 2004 and holding a .522 winning percent overall. This is most likely due to the fact that AL DH's are far superior to the pinch hitters used by the National League while playing in AL stadiums. If NL teams have to pay for an extra player just to compete during the upcoming extended interleague play, they may change their ideas on whether or not they want a DH.

The Indians are in a pretty good position as far as this goes, since they have the perfect pinch hitter in Shelley Duncan. The Indians also have a pitcher who can hit in Josh Tomlin, who went 2-2 during 2011 with a run scored and an RBI. Ubaldo Jimenez and Derek Lowe each have a lot of experience hitting as well as they just came over from the National League.

Overall the Indians look to be pretty well set up for the new changes to come. The extra Wild Card team can only help as the Tribe is ready to compete now. A second Wild Card could possibly allow a non-AL East team to finally win a Wild Card. Rather than looking at this in a negative manner as most people seem to be doing, let's keep an optimistic view on things and see how this all works out. You can't fight Bud Selig, so for now we should just sit back and watch how this whole thing works out.

Lou Boudreau was the greatest offensive shortstop in Indians history. He played during the most glorified time in Indians history, during the careers of Bob Feller, Larry Doby, Bob Lemon and Jim Hegan and was such a great baseball mind, he was not only the starting shortstop but the manager as well. During his 9 years as manager, Boudreau won more games than any other manager in Indians history. He also was the manager of the last Indians championship in 1948 and won the MVP for that season as well. His MVP was just the second won by a member of the Indians after George Burns won in 1926.

During his 13 year career, Lou Boudreau accrued as impressive a stat line as any player in Indians history. He currently stands in the top 5 in career games played, at bats, doubles and walks and in the top ten in runs hits and total bases. While he never had any amazing single seasons, Lou was very consistent as he hit higher than .283 every year from 1942-1949, during which time he batted .306. Three times (1941, 1944 and 1947) Boudreau hit 45 doubles in a season and each time he lead the AL. He also lead the AL in batting average in 1944 with a .327.

Lou Boudreau was one of only three Indians MVP's ever and one of only 6 Tribesmen to get his number retired. He was inducted into the Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame in 1954, just four years after retiring. He was then inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1970. He died in 2001.

Widely considered to be the best pitcher in Indians history, Bob Feller is definitely the most accomplished. Feller is the only Cleveland Indian to be honored with a statue outside of Progressive Field and has been enshrined in both the Indians and the Major League Baseball Halls of Fame.  Rapid Robert is especially important to Indians history due to a combination of circumstances. First, he never played for any other professional baseball team. He didn't even play for a minor league team as he made his debut on the Tribe as a 17 year old in 1936. Feller was also part of the last Indians World Series winning team and played in two during his career. He cemented his place in Indians history by remaining with the team, helping young pitchers and entertaining fans until his death in 2010. 

During the middle of Feller's career, World War II broke out and rather than waiting to be drafted, Feller enlisted in the U.S. Navy right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Because of this, Feller missed a large part of the prime of his career including all of 1942-1944 and most of 1945. While on an aircraft carrier he was clocked throwing a ball at 98.6 MPH, one of the fastest pitchers of his time. Before this he raced a full speed motorcycle with a pitch and won with a pitch that was estimated at 104 MPH.

Feller was the best pitcher of his time, and although the Cy Young Award had yet to be invented, this can be seen by his statistics through those years. Feller lead the American League in wins from 1939 throgh 1941, 1946 through 1947 and in 1951, ERA in 1941, innings pitched in 1939 through 1941 and 1946 through 1947, WHIP in 1940 and 1947 and strike outs in every full year he pitched between 1938 and 1948. He made the All-Star team every full season from 1938 to 1950 with the exception of 1949, getting the start in 1941 and 1946. His rankings in the MVP voting also show this dominance as he received votes for MVP in every full season from 1939 to 1948 and in 1951.

The best rotation Feller was a part of was between 1950-1951 lead by Hall of Famers Early Wynn and Bob Lemon and brought up in the end by Mike Garcia. Over these two seasons these four pitchers accounted for 147 wins, averaging more than 18 a season for every pitcher in the entire rotation. This group started forming when Lemon became a full time starter in 1948 when both Feller and Lemon were huge parts of that World Series championship along with fellow 20 game winner Gene Bearden. Garcia and Wynn both came to the Tribe in 1949 and finished creating what has to be considered the greatest Indians starting rotation in team history. 

Bob Feller holds the Indians career records in many stats, including three of the ones considered most important (wins, innings pitched and strike outs). His 1946 campaign was probably the best season by an Indians pitcher ever. In that year, only his second after his return from the Navy, he set the current Indians records for innings pitched and strike outs. His 2.18 ERA that season was the lowest of his career and he won more than 20 games for the 5th time in his career. Only Mel Harder has played more seasons in a Cleveland Indians uniform and he didn't take three years off for World War II. Bob Feller, the greatest Indian.

By exercising their club option on Fausto Carmona and trading for Derek Lowe, the Indians have assembled a rotation that is already accepting nicknames about being the best ground-ball rotation in the American League. Last season, Lowe, Justin Masterson, and Carmona ranked third, eighth, and ninth, respectively, in groundball percentage among pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched, according to baseball prospectus. With all of those groundballs headed their way, one is to wonder how the Indians are fixed for infield defense. After July 22, when Jason Kipnis joined the infield and gave it the shape it would take for the rest of the season, the Indians were the fourth-best team in the AL at converting grounders into outs, yielding 211 hits on 860 balls in play (a .245 average). Over the course of the season, both the Indians and the Braves allowed a .242 batting average on groundballs, so Lowe can’t expect a huge boost in defensive support from the switch. Most of the Indians’ infield is young and entrenched, so that’s likely as good as things are going to get. In Lowe, the Indians have acquired a pitcher who in one sense seems primed to bounce back from a subpar season but in another, perhaps equally important sense, seems like a poor bet to improve. On the one hand, Lowe posted a 3.67 FIP, a quarter of a run better than the 3.92 he managed while recording anERA over a run lower than last season’s 5.05 in 2010, and his walk and strikeout rates have remained fairly stable over the past few seasons. It would take only a small step from there to look at Lowe’s high BABIP and sizeable ERA-FIP differential and forecast a return to form. 

There is another hand, though, and what it holds for Lowe isn’t quite as encouraging. He will turn 39 next June and according to Brooks Baseball his fastball has lost roughly 3.5 miles per hour since 2007, the start of the PITCHf/x era. He’ll also be moving from the NL to the AL, which won't help cushion him from the effects of age. What will be even more interesting is to see who catches for Lowe. With is hard sinker and new-found slider, the Indians will need a catcher that is able to stop those balls in the dirt. The Indians will have to decide whether Lou Marson or Carlos Santana will get the bulk of the catching duties when Lowe starts.

That said, Lowe is still durable, having made at least 32 starts for 10 straight seasons while avoiding the DL entirely, and the Braves will be paying two-thirds of his salary. He’s not likely to be any better than a back-of-the-rotation arm, and the downside is even worse, but for the first time in a few years, the Indians have the makings of a rotation free of the likes of Mitch Talbot and Jeanmar Gomez. With Fausto still on the team, fans can only hope that he can fix his mechanical problems with new pitching coach Scott Radinski. When Carmona was at his best, in 2007, nearly 65 percent of his balls in play were hit on the ground. Over the last three seasons, that percentage has settled in around 56 percent, a significant decline given Carmona's inability to miss bats. Striking out just over five batters per nine simply doesn't cut it without pinpoint control, and Carmona's relationship with the strike zone has ranged from superficial to outright estranged. Unless Lowe proves to be as adept at reminding other pitchers how to throw their sinkers as he is at throwing his own, it's hard to envision Carmona justifying the Indians' expense. His return will leave them with at least two starters whose groundball rate has seen better days, though at least Ubaldo Jimenez is still affordable.

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.