So who's left, anyway?  Well, let's see what Jayson Stark is saying ...

With CC Sabathia and Blake now dealt away, the one player the Indians are now most actively marketing is Paul Byrd.

Okay ... duh.  Of course they're most actively marketing Byrd — he's the only guy left in his walk year, i.e., the only guy whose remaining contract is utterly pointless on a noncontender's roster.  But Ryan already talked about Byrd — don't you have any other info for us, Jayson?

Clubs that have spoken with them say they're willing to listen to talks on anybody on the roster and are "open to anything."

Mm, really?  Open to anything?  Why am I skeptical of this?

THE CATCHERS:  Some interesting things have happened with catchers.  Victor Martinez went down last month, perhaps showing some signs of his impending thirtyness, or his aggressive use over the past few seasons, or both, or (in fairness) neither.  Kelly Shoppach stepped in and immediately started showing what we here and the front office have been saying for two years:  This guy is a big-league starting catcher, more than reasonably robust at the plate and outstanding behind it.  At the same time, we have the Yankees' starting catcher going down for the season, and the Red Sox starting catcher just plain sucking — and both teams are in the heat of a three-team fight for the AL East, and both teams are laden with exactly the knid of ready-for-the-majors, high-ceiling players we need.

Could one of these teams use a well-healed super-backup — or, dare we even ask, a new superstar starter?  If the Indians were really open for anything, could we even be looking at a Johanesque bidding war, you know, before that bidding war dried up into nothing?  It's a startling thought, mostly because it's not clear why it isn't happening.  Oh, sure, Victor has yet to come back from the DL, so in that sense it's not an issue.  But you have to wonder, just how far could Shapiro's PR-immune decision-making go?  Would he seriously have entertained the notion of Victor Martinez, among the very coriest of his core players, willfully shipped off to wear pinstripes?

If not Victor, why not Kelly?  Under contract for three more seasons, about to hit arbitration.  Oh, sure, the Indians may finally be on the verge of giving Shoppach a substantial share of starts behind the plate — recognizing perhaps belatedly that if Garko's upside is only 100 points of OPS higher, that's not a good reason to put him in the lineup over Shoppach (with Victor playing 1B).  We don't know how ready the club is to go in that direction, but if they're not, wouldn't it be kind of dumb not to sell high on Shoppach?

THE RELIEVERS:  It's a little strange to me that this topic has generated any significant debate, because there's one big, giant, obvious reason why we're not trading any of our relievers:  They suck.

Tempting as it is to leave it at that, I'll delve further.  Relievers are funny.  They're scarce, and yet nobody really wants to pay all that much for one except for Wayne Krivsky, and his ass got fired.  So when you've got one who's pretty good, or might be pretty good, and who isn't in a walk year, it's tough to part with him, because they're scarce, and because you wouldn't get all that much anyway.  And we already dumped all the ones who would have been free agents.

Rafael Perez and Jensen Lewis, they're special, or they seem like they could be special, or anyway they used to be special, or they sure used to look like they were special, and who the hell knows, anyway?  Is someone knocking down our door with some big offer for these guys?  No?  Well, then, we're not going to just give them away, are we?  And is there a king's ransom, or even a minor duke's ransom, waiting out there for Mastny or Mujica or Slocum?  Somehow I doubt it.

So that leaves Betancourt and Kobayashi.  Why anyone thinks we could get more than a bag of balls for Betancourt, I have no idea.  Kobayashi, maybe, but this is actually beside the point.  The last couple of seasons, Shapiro has tried to stockpile bullpen depth, and he's still at it, sneaking a young, live arm into each of this month's two major deals.  That's one kind of reliever he likes to stockpile.

The other type of bullpen acquisition he likes is a veteran with a history of  past late-inning success, perhaps with some recent difficulties driving down his market price, and yet someone for whom there's some reason to believe might just bounce back and be effective.  Who fits this exact profile, going into the 2009 season?  Betancourt and Kobayashi, that's who.  And what kind of contract does Shapiro like to sign with a reliever of this profile?  A reasonably small one-year deal with a club option for a second year.  And what's the contractual status of Betancourt and Kobayashi going into the 2009 season?  Each one has a reasonably small one-year guarantee for 2009 with a club option for 2010.

So you see, if Shapiro dealt either one of these guys, he'd just have to go out and find another guy just like him.  I personally am not at all eager to see the club sell low on Betancourt, nor do I think we have any depth to deal from in the bullpen in general.

SO WHAT, THEN:  Well ... not much.  We will get Byrd through revocable waivers and make a deal next month — though after his sterling start last night, maybe some team will decide to move aggressively on him and not risk a blocked waiver situation.  It shouldn't take much.  But as for "open to anything," I somehow doubt it, because the consistent thread across this whole series is that it's hard to imagine getting equal value out of anyone other than our walk-year free agents.  Consider:

• We traded three months of C.C. Sabathia for six years of a blue-chip hitting prospect, plus two or three other good prospects.  How could we get equal value for Cliff Lee, who has almost five times as many starts left under his current contract as Sabathia?  Can we get 24 years of a blue-chip prospect, plus 10 to 12 other good prospects?  Of course not.
• We traded two months of Casey Blake for six-years of another terrific prospect — a guy who instantly becomes not only our top catcher prospect, but arguably also our best 3B prospect and our best skill-position prospect overall — plus another guy with possible value.  Blake is a solid contributor, not a star, and if he's worth all that, what is a guy like Peralta worth, under contract through 2011?
  
• And in the extreme example, Grady Sizemore, who would today be projected as high as $100 million in on-field value (per the "MORP" valuation system) through the end of his current contract in 2012, added to his marginal contract value of around $75 million.  Even if we compelled a team to take Hafner and his contract along with Sizemore and his, how in the world is any team supposed to come up with another $140 million in real value to send back to us, while sending only prospects?

It's tempting to blame the lack of more significant, team-shaping moves on a lack of vision and creativity on the part of our front office — if they're so damned smart, this line of thinking goes, then why can't they pull off those cool, out-of-the-box, seismic-shift trades like Billy Beane does?  That topic bears more exploration, but truthfully it belongs in the offseason, not at the trade deadline.  In-season, by far the best trade value lies in moving walk-year guys to contending teams for top-tier minor leaguers — you're trading a guy out of a low-leverage situation into a high-leverage situation, not unlike trading an out-of-position CF to another team where he actually can play CF.

Just as a relief ace is most valuable when pitching in the most high-leverage innings, the best players are most valuable in the most high-leverage games, i.e., in a tight pennant race.  On the flip side, games beyond the current season are just as high-leverage for the Indians as they are for the current season's contenders, so for players who aren't in their walk years, there's a much smaller value difference to be leveraged.  It is hard to overestimate the value of an established major leaguer who is still well within his peak years and under a team-friendly contract — a description that fits almost all of the Indians' most desirable remaining players.  That type of player doesn't get traded a whole lot, because it's hard to trade guys like that except for other guys like that — and you're not going to get one of those players when your trading partner is in a pennant race.

So this ultimately becomes a topic for the offseason — how much reshaping does this team need to do for 2009, and does this front office have the creativity to do it?  Having assembled a club chock full of "the right guys," Shapiro has rarely shown the emotional detachment to move one of those guys when he didn't have to, with the notable exception of Coco Crisp.  And by "when he didn't have to," I mean when the player wasn't in his walk year.  Moving a guy in his walk year doesn't take fortitude, it just takes not being an idiot.  (Yes, I know — cue the long list of idiots, led by the Orioles.)

So we don't really know how capable Shapiro is of moving one of his guys — a guy like Martinez, Peralta or Lee — and it seems unlikely that he seriously considered moving Casey Blake last offseason, or Sabathia for that matter.  After all, it's one thing to be "listening to everyone" and "open to anything" — which may be merely an Intellectually Correct posture — but it's quite another thing to actually move significant players when it isn't the obvious call.

Again, that question is more for the offseason.  For the moment, we don't get to trade everyone, as satisfying a thought as that might be.  We only get to trade Paul Byrd.

The series:  Visited Texas (win, loss, win, loss) and Detroit (win, loss, loss, win), hosted Minnesota (win, loss, win) and San Diego (win, loss, win).

But first, an editorial note:  This piece and the two that will follow pick up the threads of the Week In Review series that ran here for the first nine weeks of the season.  Since the last installment on June 2, the season has changed dramatically.  I never lost interest in keeping up with Week In Review, but I had to put it on hold because of other significant demands on my time.  I love this format, but it is frankly a bit time-consuming to put these together  Going back to do piecemeal recaps at this point may seem like an odd idea, but it's something I've decided to do for all the same reasons I started doing the Week In Review — to give the season a little more clarity and structure, to put it into chapters.

At any given moment, we tend to be viewing the season mostly in two timeframes — the first being the last 48 hours, today's game and maybe yesterday's, and the whole season cumulatively from the beginning.  The most accessible stats we look at reinforce this point of view — all the main stat pages are showing season-to-date, and we check out the box score to see what happened.  In doing so, we miss a lot of the ebb and flow of the season for the team, and especially for individual players.  We patch together vague narratives later on, much of it from inaccurate memories — "Peralta was blocked by Cora," "Francisco was amazing last year" — only occasionally making note of anything in a context larger than a day or two, and missing many in-season developments entirely.

I starting writing these Reviews to see better the season that was developing for each individual player, and I'm as interested as ever in doing that.   The first nine installments focused not so much on an exact week as on two series, or six to eight days.  This installment and the next will each focus on a two-week, four-series period.  The one after that will cover three series, ending at the All-Star break, today.  I believe I will go with the three-series format for the second half of the season; in general, the format has seemed still a little too micro to really see trends well.  We'll see how it develops — and I apologize in advance if the dissection is depressing.

The big story:  The Indians' injury problems went from bad to worse, led by the startling news on June 2 that Jake Westbrook would be returning to the DL just days after making a solid return to the rotation.   By June 7, the news got much worse — Westbrook would undergo Tommy John surgery, missing not only the rest of the 2008 season but as much as half of the 2009 season as well.  Westbrook had signed a three-year contract extension in March 2007, at $33 million the largest contract ever awarded by the Indians at the time.  He ran into injury problems almost immediately but returned last July with a huge flourish, finishing with the fifth-most innings pitched and seventh-lowest ERA in the league in the second half.  Coming into 2008, we were regaled with reports of a new pitch and improved velocity, and scouts wondered aloud if the sinkerballer might take his game to a higher level at age 30.  Westbrook did pitch well in April, but his injury dashed completely all those raised expectations, and the Indians have now lost his services for solidly half of that new contract's three years.

In other news:  Asdrubal Cabrera mercifully and belatedly was demoted to Triple-A, where he probably should have started the season, and where he almost certainly would have started the season had he not gone an improbable tear after being promoted into the heat of the 2007 pennant race.  His demotion created an opportunity for Josh Barfield — our erstwhile and bored/untalented second baseman, who certainly had not been forcing the club's hand with his Triple-A performance (.255/.297/.382, 4.7% walk rate).  Barfield responded by going 0-for-6 — he put the ball in play all six times, so you could argue he was just unlucky — before breaking his finger, giving him a very well-paid trip to the big-league DL.

That same day, Victor Martinez was also put on the DL — also mercifully and also belatedly, in that he'd been hitting terribly for nearly six weeks and (let's all say it together) hadn't hit a home run all season.  Three role players emerged and not only filled the shoes of the injured players, but far exceeded the production we'd been getting from those players before they went on the DL.  Shoppach, Carroll and the newly healthy Shin-Soo Choo — essentially taking over playing time from Martinez, Cabrera/Barfield and Hafner — each posted an OPS of 1000 or better over these 14 games.  Reliever Rick Bauer, catcher Yamid Haad and infielder Jorge Velandia, previously known to Indians fans as guys they'd never heard of, joined the big-league roster to play dominoes with Marte.

We drafted some guys with really interesting names — Chisenhall and Cord,  "Jeremie Tice" and "David Roberts" — and though our first three picks were age 19, 17 and 20 on draft day, some people still screamed that the Indians were being "too safe" or "wrong" or "not adhering to Baseball America rankings" — or something or other.  Experts, experts everywhere, whatever are we to make of all of this expertise?

Back in the majors, in general, the pitching slumped and was uncharacteristically carried by the offense in these series.  So while the pitchers posted a 5.68 ERA, including a few critical late-inning blowups by the bullpen, the hitters amazingly posted the feel-good, Garko-in-a-good-year line of .294/.364/.468.  That 1,088-run pace allowed the team to tread water over a period in which the rest of the AL Central was essentially doing the same — Minnesota and KC dropped a few games but held their places in the standings, while the other three clubs each won eight.  The AL Central was still very winnable, and if you squinted enough, you could still see a bruised-but-not-beaten Indians club actually winning it.

(Who fed it and Who ate it are after the jump.)

Continue reading this post »

via www.fangraphs.com

So there are some good things happening with this team?

Cliff Lee ended the first half with an effective, but not dominating performance. He allowed at least one base runner in each of his six innings, but pitched around each difficulty. On a team with a whole bunch of disappointments (whether it be performance or injury related), Lee has been one of the few positive surprises. After last night's action, he now trails PRC leader Roy Halladay by one run created, and Lee's thrown about 22 less innings than Halladay. Cliff's transformed from an extreme fly-ball pitcher to a more conventional hurler over one offseason. And isn't a fluke, either.

Jhonny Peralta is now slugging .473, by far the highest of any AL shortstop. He's  eighth  in the AL in extra-base hits, which is a commentary on how down offense is in 2008, but also reminds you that Peralta, for all his pitch recognition and range issues, is still a valuable player.

And now that most of Eric Wedge's Circle of Trust is either gone or unusable, we're getting to see some new relievers get regular usage. Craig Breslow never got a chance, but finally Edward Mujica has. After giving up 5 runs on June 14th, Mujica hasn't given up an earned run, this despite a two-week hiatus after the poor outing. Wedge's bullpen method only works when he has reliable and proven relievers available; now that the bullpen has to be rebuilt from scratch, Wedge is going to be forced to take some chances on and be patient with unknown quantities, whether they be young guys like Mujica or retreads like Juan Rincon.

via www.fangraphs.com

On the day yet another key player was placed on the DL, what remained of the Indians pounded out 18 hits, blew out the Twins, and in the process kept themselves within reasonable distance of the division leading White Sox.

Aaron Laffey didn't have to do much since the game was essentially over by the 3rd inning, but he pitched well in spite of the large lead. In a year with a lot of bad surprises, the guy who Cliff Lee beat out in Spring Training is now ensconced in the rotation, and not because of the injuries. If both Fausto Carmona and Jake Westbrook were still healthy, Mark Shapiro would be working the phones now trying to get a bat for Paul Byrd.

Livan Hernandez, who the Indians last saw in the 1997 World Series, had no velocity and no control, and was pounded into submission quickly. Four singles and a Choo home run in the third inning gave the Indians five runs and a 6-0 lead. Hernandez stuck around for the forth, ostensibly to eat another inning or two. It didn't work, as Grady Sizemore lead off the inning with a home run, and the next two batters singled.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Twins-Indians game without someone getting thrown at. Edward Mujica hit Alexi Casilla to start the eighth, which was probably intentional, though no words were exchanged after the beaning. In the bottom of the inning, Dennys Reyes hit Andy Marte with his first offering - that was definitely  intentional. Everyone stayed put, though Eric Wedge and Ron Gardenhire held a long-distance shouting match from the top steps of their respective dugouts.

What was said?

"I'm not going to comment on that," Wedge said.

Said Gardenhire: "I told him, 'See you in Minnesota.'"

Hey, if things go south, at least we have this to look forward to.

The series:  Visited the White Sox (loss, loss, loss) and hosted the Rangers (loss, win, loss).

The big story:  We sucked.  After climbing to the top of the division in the middle of last week, the Indians went 1-8.  The pitching snapped back to reality, while the hitters produced the same 19 runs this week that they had over the previous six games, only more poorly distributed.  In response, Wedge fumed, while Francisco and Aubrey added to the idea of slump by contagion, hitting far better in Cleveland than they ever have in Buffalo, seemingly immune to the rest of the team's two-month struggle.

The Indians are the worst-hitting team in the league this season, and they have also been, by far, the worst-hitting team in the majors in the month of May, more than a full run below the major-league average, and nearly a half-run per game worse than the worst team in the National League — again, that's the league where the pitchers are batting maybe three times a game.  The offense has occasionally broken out for a big game, but that has only obscured how bad the offense really has been — the average is 3.4  runs per game, but the median is a solid 3.0.  Week-long power outages have been the most notable feature of the 2008 season:

• April 3-9, 20 runs in seven games, 2.9 average, 2-5 record
• April 24-29, 16 runs in six games, 2.7 average, 3-3 record
• May 1-8, 16 runs in six games, 2.7 average, 3-3 record
• May 12-25, 41 runs in 14 games, 2.9 average, 5-9 record

We actually have a better than expected record in those games, of course, because our starting pitching has been so outstanding over most of those weeks.  Incredibly, our Pythagorean record is actually 27-23 despite the awful hitting, but a half-dozen ninth-inning blowups have us at 23-27 instead.

The biggest tragedy here is the missed opportunities within the division, which directly impact our ability to make the playoffs and cannot be recouped.  The Indians have been 32 runs better than the Tigers but have only a two-game edge to show for it rather than six or seven — should both teams have any kind of bounce back after this point, those games will make a difference.

Worse yet, the Indians surrendered three straight games to the White Sox, who may well turn out to be the only other team who can over 85 wins in a deeply disappointing division.  Head-to-head records and BIP luck were the entire difference between these two clubs in 2005, when they ended the season with 99 and 93 wins respectively, and so far, history is repeating.

In other news:  Fausto Carmona went to the Disabled List with a hip injury and is expected to miss a full month — yet nobody panicked, as Jake Westbrook was completing a successful run of rehab starts in Akron even as Carmona's season was getting ruptured.  Westbrook was already scheduled to return on the exact day of Carmona's next would-be start, and even if he weren't, the Indians have other fine options waiting in Buffalo.

The Indians shuffled up the bullpen part of the roster pretty good, returning Joe Borowski to his old closer job late in the week and demoting Jensen Lewis, in the hopes that he can regain his old velocity in Buffalo.  The team put rarely used lefty Craig Breslow on waivers while claiming Oneli Perez, a talented but struggling young reliever, from the White Sox and sending him to Buffalo.  Scott Elarton and Ed Mujica were promoted from Buffalo to fill out the staff.

Post of the week:  AngG gets her Rick James on (or is it her Wayne Brady?) as part of a hilarious sequence of rants.  Other nominess: jhon (summing up Wedge disgust nicely),  mjschaefer (replying to zempf),  gte619n (replying to supermarioelia), drerikbrady (tremendous attention to detail), jakesinger777 (expanding on Cisco's Buckner moment).

Who fed it:  C.C. Sabathia and Ben Francisco led a very slim list of candidates for this week, both of them continuing strong runs.  Sabathia gave up three runs, all on solo-shots, over 14 innings, striking out 13 with three walks.  He has a 1.63 ERA (and RA) over his past seven starts, averaging 8 strikeouts and 1.6 walks in 7.2 innings.  Francisco pounded out five doubles and a home run while batting .320, and in playing every inning of the team's last 11 games, he's put up a stunning line of .395/.422/.721 — contributing more than 25% of the total bases and less than 8% of the outs.  Rafael Betancourt bounced back from three horrendous weeks (16.20 ERA) with three scoreless innings, all in the 8th, although he did allow an inherited run.  Absolute Best:  Francisco.  Relative Best:  Francisco.

Who fed it breakdown:  Relief pitchers are hard to evaluate based on box scores, considering the incredibly blunt instruments used to assign earned runs.  Masa Kobayashi gave up an earned run, an unearned run and an inherited run this week but actually pitched pretty well.   In the first game, he relieved Laffey with no outs and a man on first, facing the top of the Chicago lineup.  He got a strikeout and a deep flyout, with a very speedy pinch-runner advancing to second base.   He then allowed a single on the ground through the gaping Blake/Peralta hole, scoring the inherited runner, and finally his only earned run of the week on the only legit line-drive hit.  In the second game, he faced the Rangers' 2-thru-5 hitters, getting a strikeout and two groundouts, allowing just a single on the ground to Josh Hamilton — a damned fine inning.  In the third game, he faced the Rangers' 3-thru-1 hitters, and he got three groundouts including a double-play, plus a strikeout and a flyout.  He allowed only a walk, a single on the ground and one line-drive single.  Had that one line-drive not followed the walk, or had there not been two outs, or had the ball not rolled under the right fielder's legs, we're looking at another fine shutout inning.  So while it may seem like Masa had a bad week, I'm not so sure.

Who ate it:  Where to even begin?  Blake, back to playing every inning, responded by slugging .143 — over the last two weeks, he's had one great game (2-4, 6 TB), four decent games (4-14, 0 TB) and eight awful ones (0-25, 0 TB).  Dellucci continued his atrocious month, using his 14 PA to generate just 3 total bases, against three double-plays, three strikeouts, and at least three awful throws from left field — his May OPS is just 444, and even worse, it's just 482 against lefties alone.  The Platoon Of Despair®, meanwhile, crushed any hopes we might have had for them last week, combining for .156/.282/.188, and yes, that's a 470 OPS, and yes, they are slugging a combined .361 for the season — thanks for asking!  Not to be outdone, catchers Martinez and Shoppach combined for an empty 3-for-23 with a 297 OPS.  Jensen Lewis gave up three runs on three walks, three singles, two doubles and one HBP, en route to Buffalo.  Jorge Julio stepped into two budding trainwrecks (from Byrd and Carmona) and made both of them much worse (more below).  Absolute Worst:  Julio.  Relative Worst:  Considering positional OPS differences, it's just too close to call among Martinez (267), Blake (360), Dellucci (445) and Hafner (459).

Who ate it breakdown:  Unlike Masa, Jorge Julio's bad week was even worse than it appeared — and with an 18.00 ERA, it appeared pretty bad.  In the first game, Julio relieved Byrd with men on first and second and one out.  The run expectancy here is 0.97, but Julio was facing the bottom third of Chicago's lineup and had the platoon edge on two of the three.  He gave up a deep flyball double to the righty Crede, scoring one inherited runner and advancing the other to third base with only one out.  He walked the lefty Swisher intentionally, then gave up a long sac-fly to righty Alexei Ramirez, who just-by-the-way is terrible, scoring that other inherited run, then got the leadoff hitter Cabrera to ground out to end the inning.  He started the next inning with strikeouts to Chicago's 2-3 hitters, then the home run to Jermaine Dye — Julio's first earned run allowed in five weeks — at which point he was pulled.  So against five right-handers in that game, he got a strikeout and a groundout but also three very hard-hit deep flies, each of which drove in one run.

Of course, that game was just a warmup for the major gas-can emptying he would do two nights later.  Relieving a struggling and injured Carmona in the 3rd, with men on first and third and no outs — but again, he's facing the bottom of the lineup, so he really should get out of this with minimal damage.  The sequence:  walk, walk, grand slam, line-drive double, line-drive double — so already, that's six runs, two inherited and four earned, and there's still no outs.  Julio finally gets a groundball, but it goes for an infield single, then a strikeout.  The inning ends with two more deep flies that get caught — but the adventure wasn't over!  Julio starts the next inning by allowing two more scorching line drives, but it's just his good fortune that the second one is hit straight at Peralta, who catches it and then doubles off the first guy — so that's two outs, bases empty, despite not one batter really beaten by Julio.  Next it's a walk, and then a double on a groundball to right, and at that point, he gets pulled with men on second and third, two outs.

So even though his ERA for the week was 18.00, it doesn't begin to describe how bad he really was.  Outside of those earned runs, he allowed all four inherited runners to score, while the two runners he left behind did not score.  And while he did get some legit outs, he also pitched into some very good luck, and he totally failed to keep the ball in the infield, even with the platoon edge against the other team's worst hitters.  He was, all things considered, about as bad as a pitcher can possibly be while getting nine outs — charged with just 6 ER, he pitched badly enough to allow 12.

Placed RHP Fausto Carmona on the 15-day Disabled List (hip)

Although Carmona is expected to miss four weeks, his injury is not considered serious in a long-term sense and may ultimately be a blessing in disguise, keeping his workload down in 2008 after a big jump in innings in 2007.   It also basically fits his hypothetical mechanical struggles, either as cause or effect, which fit both his oddly inflated walk totals and Will Carroll's pre-season prediction:

Carmona has never had to come back from a 200-inning workload before, and there's almost always a price to pay for that. I'd expect Carmona to have something happen like did with Westbrook last year at midseason—a minor injury that causes him to miss a month, but that he comes back from strong and actually winds up getting saved from another big jump in IP by the time off.

For any other team, having a starter of Carmona's caliber go down would be seen as catastrophic, but at least on this site, Indians fans hardly registered any alarm at all — perhaps in part because of a learned confidence in the team's ability to heal young pitchers and keep them healthy over the long haul.

But the real confidence is in the Indians' incomparable rotation depth.  Jake Westbrook is scheduled to come off the Disabled List just in time to make Carmona's next would-be start, and even if he weren't, the Indians have at least two other starters ready to step in and already on the 40-man roster in Jeremy Sowers and Adam Miller.  (It's an odd twist considering that last May, Westbrook went on the DL just in time for Cliff Lee to return, which allowed Carmona to stay and further establish himself in the big-league rotation.)

Its main effect on the team might be to spare everyone the agony of sending a highly effective Aaron Laffey to the minors to make room for Westbrook, a topic which had already started to sprout hourly calls for Paul Byrd to be traded.

Depth is good, and another point this drives home is that it's easier for a team to leverage its depth in the event of injury, rather than in the event of poor performances.  With struggling players (e.g., most of the lineup), we have the depth to replace the poorly performing parts but nowhere on any roster to stash them — we're not going to just cut Hafner or Blake, even though we have the depth to replace them.  With an injury, you just put the guy on the DL and leverage your depth right away.  It's just easier.

Designated LHP Craig Breslow for Assignment

Claimed RHP Oneli Perez from Chicago White Sox and Assigned him to Buffalo (AAA)

Six transactions over two days involving just six spots on the active roster, i.e., the bullpen — there should be no doubt, the Indians are as concerned about the bullpen as the fans are about the offense.  And in this sense they're right:  The offense should fix itself, and if it doesn't, there isn't much you could do with one or two moves, and major moves rarely happen overnight.  The bullpen, on the other hand, seems to be more like ending up with the right hand, and if you can reshuffle the deck every other day to get a new hand, why not keep making moves until you're satisfied?

It also points up the essential hairiness of acquiring, deploying and discarding relievers, an area in which the sample sizes are so scarce that it's worth asking whether any statistics are worth looking at, even over a whole season, let alone the murderer's row of dumb stats we always use for pitchers:  "wins," "losses," ERA, holds, saves, blown saves — not a useful stat among them when it comes to relievers.  And unlike position players, you can't just throw a guy in there for a while and see what happens, because the results are too costly.  A hitter can have a miserable set of three or four games and ultimately not cost the team even one win; offense is a collective effort, and even your best hitters will fail 60 percent of the time anyway.  A struggling reliever, however, can torch multiple games in a row, so even if it is a case of bad luck, small sample or an easily recovered-from dry spell, a team just can't take that chance for anyone but the most established performers.

So the team faces a dilemma with a guy like Breslow, who presents plenty to like but an uncertain projection, on a team that feels it doesn't have the margin for error to let him try to develop some consistency.   A guy like Rick Bauer is doing exactly that in the minors, but Breslow can't be sent to the minors.  Ultimately, the team decided it couldn't be tantalized by his raw ability and favorable contract status.  Breslow was passed over by 28 teams on waivers back in March, so we may get to keep him.  Bottom line, though, a team like the Indians needs a guy like Breslow to work it out in the minors, and the fact that they might lose him in the process doesn't change that.  More than assets, we need options, and Breslow doesn't have any.

Oneli Perez, on the other hand, does have options.  He's given up the same 18 runs and five home runs in 2008 that he did in 2007, the difference being the innings:  93 last year, 17 this year.  I don't know what went wrong with him in Triple-A this season, all I do know is that he spent more than a full season at Double-A and racked up a 1.84 ERA, while striking out 109 guys in 93 innings — seriously, where do I sign up?  He'll turn 25 tomorrow, and he has one option year remaining in addition to the current season. That gives the Indians all of this season and next to turn him around and into a big-league reliever, but given his Double-A numbers, don't be surprised if he ends up contributing in Cleveland this year.

Reinstated RHP Joe Borowski from the 15-day Disabled List (ability)

Funny thing about Borowski is that we all seemed to have blocked him out of our minds, as though his cataclysmic last appearance and subsequent trip to the DL meant that we weren't going to have to suffer him any longer.  Like, you know, our long national nightmare is over.  Since it isn't, might as well try to look at the bright side, like, no more mind-numbing "closer controversy," as we're spared the otherwise inevitable and inevitably dumb columns about the evils of closer-by-committee.

Borowski does have a small upside, at least compared to the disasters we're all intuitively expecting.  He was effective overall last season, and while his ERA reflected real mediocrity, it also reflected a little genuinely bad luck on balls in play, .335 BABIP for a guy whose career mark is .296. Some days — too many days — he just doesn't have it, but he never seems to choke, and he never gives it away.   When he's getting beat, it's only because he simply isn't all that good, and if he's a bum, at least he's a bum that Cleveland can get behind.

Optioned RHP Jensen Lewis to Buffalo (AAA)

Recalled RHP Ed Mujica from Buffalo (AAA)

Purchased the Contract of RHP Scott Elarton and Recalled him from Buffalo (AAA)

Confused?  Don't be.  These moves actually make sense.  With Lewis, the Indians reached essentially the same conclusion that they did with Breslow, i.e., that he's not going to work himself into the pitcher the Indians want him to be while in the majors, so down he goes.  It makes sense to see this as a win-later move, as the Indians send down a reasonably effective reliever for a few weeks in the hopes of having him make the kind of big impact late in 2008 that he had late in 2007.  This is Lewis' first optional assignment, so if there's a price to be paid in terms of the option clock, it won't be until 2011 at the earliest.

Mujica has been Buffalo's most dominant reliever for the last month-plus, and yes, I'm including Bauer.  Mujica has only allowed two runs in his last 13 games, spanning 17+ innings, but he had a rough first half of April and gave up seven runs in one appearance on April 6, permanently crapping up his overall numbers.  Mujica first emerged as a star prospect back in 2005, in Kinston and Akron at age 21, and in 2006, he went more than three months and nearly 50 innings before giving up a single run in Akron, Buffalo and Cleveland, eventually allowing one in his fourth big-league game on July 14.  He struggled with injuries and control in 2007, doing little with the big-league club other than making blowouts into bigger blowouts.

Bauer, for those who must compare, has a track record that is almost shocking in its lack of anything impressive over a 12-year pro career.  He had two pretty good seasons in the high minors, at ages 24 and 27, and two solid but unspectacular seasons in the majors, at ages 25 and 29, a lot of mediocre and horrible seasons, even at advanced ages in the minors, and a lot of injuries.  He's put up tremendous numbers in Buffalo this year at age 31, but the Indians would be right to suspect that this is just the luckiest run of a long and undistinguished career, right to let him put in more steady work, and right to want to see a lot more before giving him a bigger shot.

Elarton had earned his shot over the past two months in Buffalo, and he brings with him a strong reputation as a positive influence in the clubhouse, which may have factored into this move, given the team's persistent struggles.  Fans focused on Elarton's past mediocrity might be interested to note his career numbers as a reliever, which include a 2.54 ERA, 553 OPS-against, 1.01 WHIP and 9.64 K/9.  Granted, this was ten years ago, and Elarton doesn't have that kind of velocity anymore, but at least he's done it before, and relieving is just plain easier than starting.  It will be interesting to see what kinds of situations Elarton is put into.

There are plenty of candidates to get removed from the 25-man on Wednesday when Westbrook returns, but it's a safe bet that it won't be Elarton, and it's likely the Indians will go back to a six-man bullpen as long as there's no blowout in the next few days.  Mujica is now the only active reliever who can be sent to the minors, but there's a decent chance the Indians will opt to DFA Jorge Julio instead.  He spent three weeks creeping up to the Circle of Trust, but he just didn't do so well once he got there.

The Indians announced an hour ago that tonight's game has been postponed, and no makeup date has been announced.  While you might expect the teams to double-up tomorrow or Sunday to make up the game, as these same two teams did just last Thursday, Anthony Castrovince speculates that August 18 might be the date.  That's a common off-day for the two teams, immediately preceding a scheduled three-game set between the two at the Prog, but it would also create a 25-day span with no off-days for the Indians.  Both teams might prefer to do a double-header on Saturday, September 13, after rosters have expanded to 40.

Both teams have announced that tonight's scheduled starters (Sabathia and Hochevar) will go on Saturday, with Saturday's original pair (Laffey and Meche) going on Sunday.  With a scheduled off-day on Monday, however, if only two games are played this weekend, the Indians could opt to skip Laffey's turn, starting Sabathia and Carmona against the Royals this weekend and then Lee-Byrd-Sabathia as originally scheduled against the Yankees, all on regular rest

They could in fact send Laffey down tomorrow and keep an extra player on the roster for those five games, recalling Jeremy Sowers to make starts on May 9 and 14.  It was the first rainout, after all, that forced the Indians to bump Sowers back to Buffalo in favor of Laffey.  Neither Ben Francisco nor Brad Snyder is eligible to be recalled this weekend, but the Indians could supplement the bullpen with Ed Mujica, or give a first cup-of-coffee to Wyatt Toregas or Michael Aubrey.  Francisco could be recalled in time to start the Yankees series.

Of course, none of this will matter if the teams instead play a double-header on Saturday or Sunday,  in which case the Indians rotation will move forward as originally planned.

Tonight's postponement also postpones our first look at Wedge's reshuffling of yesterday's reshuffled lineup — lineup 2.0.1 if you will — in which Casey Blake returns to the #8 spot while Franklin Gutierrez ascends to the all-important two-hole.  Blake struggled mightily in the past two series (458 OPS) while Gutierrez thrived (943).  Neither man has put up significant power numbers, and Blake has walked more, but I don't think Wedge is just acting in ignorance of BIP variance here.  You can see the difference in ther body language at the plate, while the numbers show that Blake struck out 11 times in just 24 at-bats.

As I write this, the Twins are pummeling the TIgers 8-1 after seven innings, poised to move just a half-game back of the White Sox, who lost hours ago, while shoving the Tigers into 3rd place, 1.5 games back.  (Tough loss today for Buerhle, who pitched an eight-inning complete game and allowed just two un-earned runs, no walks, four singles and a double.)  The Indians are now just one game back of the White Sox for the division lead.

Yes, the glorious day has finally arrived.  After a 20-month hiatus, I'm finally excavating and updating my ramshackle prospect ranking system, formerly known as the Exciting Prospects Standard and now redubbed with the more apt (but no more humble) moniker, Prospects That Matter.  Actually, it's not really a ranking system, it's actually a separating-the-men-from-the-boys system; the specific rankings are secondary, and frankly, I don't give them a great deal of thought.  It is perhaps best described as a way of organizing the way we look at our young talent.

Why the new name?  Well, my friends, I'm older now, and wiser, or perhaps more tolerant, or perhaps just lazier.  If you really find Chris Gimenez exciting, I'm not going to argue with you about it.  If, on the other hand, you want to tell me that Chris Gimenez should actually matter to an Indians fan, well, then, you might just have a fight on your hands.  The aim of the system remains the same, and that is, for a diehard Indians fan who doesn't follow the minors closely, to identify those prospects that are really worth knowing about -- and not to bother that fan with guys who are merely over-hyped or over-drafted.

PTM attempts to identify:  Which guys are the most likely to contribute to the Indians winning a pennant?  Which guys are going to contribute the most, and which guys are going to contribute the soonest?  To that end, the PTM player must meet one of these criteria:

• In Triple-A: succeeding at age 25, solid at 24, or younger.
• In Double-A: succeeding at age 23, solid at 22, or younger.
• In High-A: succeeding at age 21, solid at 20, or younger.
  
• In Low-A: succeeding at age 19, solid at 18, or younger.
• In short-season leagues: solid at age 17 or younger.

Triple-A players making this list are major-league-ready or nearly so and basically just waiting for an opportunity, while the High-A players on the list generally will be fairly high ceiling, and their success at such a young age makes them fairly likely to be a good major leaguer.  The Double-A players are a nice mix of readiness and likely success.  "Successful" generally means that he performed well enough to be promoted, and I try to take a nuanced view of a player's stats.  I start with basic productivity but keep a careful eye on peripherals, and particularly on K rates for pitchers.

Statements from team officials may also be considered, but ultimately the choice to promote or not to promote a player is more credible than any verbal statement.  Scouting reports are taken into account, but mostly with an eye toward projecting a player's defensive skills and likely role in the majors, which affects how good his bat will have to be in order to make it – in other words, in terms of pure hitting skills, the bar is lower for a standout defender like Brad Snyder than it is for a merely solid guy like Ben Francisco.  Injuries are always considered a negative factor, and in the PTM context, I never consider injuries a mitigating factor for a mediocre performance.

In 2006, PTM stubbornly championed guys like Carmona, AstroCab and Lofgren before they were fashionable, Adam Miller even when he was injured, solid successes like Garko and frustrating cases like Ferd and Marte – the system is fundamentally better at predicting who will earn a shot in the majors than who will succeed there, though it may be no worse than other systems in that regard.  Recent draft picks without track record and over-21 types dominating in the low minors were excluded without mercy, a tendency of PTM that irritated some fans in 2006 and will continue to irritate in 2008.  PTM preaches patience, not only at the plate but in our prospect rankings.  There are some guys I don't like leaving certain guys off the list any more than you do, but if the performance is there, those guys will jump on the list soon enough.

A note about the ages listed – it's their "seasonal age" for 2007, not 2008, listed that way because it's based on that age that we're evaluating their achievements so far.  I also pay little mind to "official" rules as to what makes a prospect.  If a player is 25 or younger and not a fully established major leaguer, he's a prospect in every way that actually matters to a team, or to a fan.

Prospects That Really, Really Matter — players who've met PTM criteria at an excessively young age.

1. Asdrubal Cabrera – 21, SS-2B, thrived in Double-A and was solid in the majors.  As if you didn't know.
2. Aaron Laffey – 22, RHP, not a lot of strikeouts but also not a lot of walks, performed  well and "equivalently" from Akron to Cleveland.
   
3. Adam Miller – 22, RHP, struggled with injuries but way ahead of the curve in Triple-A.  Still very much a potential ace.
   
4. Jensen Lewis – 23, RHP, unusual to rank a reliever this high, but Lewis truly dominated in Akron, and then Buffalo, and then Cleveland, and then against the Yankees in the playoffs, with an ERA under 2.00 and K rate over 10.  Frankly, this ranking might not be high enough — no other Indians prospect performed at this high of a level in 2007.
   
5. Andy Marte – 23, 3B, and you don't have to like it.  For one thing, once a guy has made the list, he only graduates by getting too old or succeeding in the majors.  Try to imagine 2007 was Marte's first season in Triple-A — 766 OPS, 23-year-old third baseman, it's actually pretty good.  But of course, his actual first season in Triple-A was at age 21.  His three-year total, ages 21-22-23, are .268/.337/.473.
6. Chuck Lofgren – 21, LHP, those who were disapointed by his season in Akron were forgetting how young he is to be an above-average pitcher at this level.  Lofgren will spend his age-22 season in Double-A, and he's a lefty with better stuff than Laffey or Sowers.

Prospects That Really Matter — those who beat the PTM criteria with room to spare.

7. Jeremy Sowers – 24, LHP, and like Marte, he would make the list based only on his age and 2007 numbers alone, but the high ranking is for his dazzling 2006 performance at age 23.
   
8. Sean Smith – 23, RHP, not turning any heads but had a very solid season in Triple-A.
   
9. Shin-Soo Choo – 24, OF, obviously slowed by injuries, but as with Sowers, we'd do well not to forget what he did at age 23.
   
10. Eddie Mujica — 23, RHP, also slowed by injuries, and also more impressive in 2006 than in 2007, but check out the great K/BB rates.  Still a potential impact reliever if he's healthy.
    

Prospects That Matter — others who've cleared the bar.

11. Nick "Weglarz!" Weglarz – 19, OF, bounced back from injury to make a stellar full-season debut.
    
12. Ben Francisco – 25, OF, improved on his age-24 numbers and made a solid debut in the majors.
    
13. Jordan Brown – 23, 1B, a knee injury reportedly sapped his power, but he still hit .333, and it will be interesting to see how his power develops this season.
14. Jeanmar Gomez – 18, RHP, suffocated Dominican Summer League hitters at 16 (2005) and dominated the Gulf Coast League at 17 (2006), although a bit reminiscent of Carmona, you have to wonder how a guy manages a 2.50 ERA with just 5.92 K/9.  His full-season debut was merely decent, and he's going to have to show more strikeouts and fewer home runs as he progresses, but he improved in both areas as the season progressed.  He'll be starting his age-19 season at High-A, something nobody else on this list has done or will do – youth and progress, that's what we're looking for here.  Somebody really needs to do a scouting report on this guy.
15. Jeff Stevens – 23, RHP, eye-popping K rates in Double-A and apparently not content to be a footnote, he may well hit the  Cleveland bullpen in 2008.
    
16. Carlos Rivero – 19, SS, marginal overall numbers, but a plus defender with a solid walk rate, and a decent amount of pop for a teenage middle infielder.
    
17. John Drennen – 20, CF, not unlike Lofgren, his struggles caused some to:: forget that he was one of the youngest players in his league.
18. Hector Rondon – 19, RHP, pitched better than Gomez at Lake County but is a year older, will also start the season in the Kinston rotation.
    

A few themes emerge on this year's list.  For one thing, it's huge, which either means I'm getting more lenient, or the criteria are letting in certain types of players too easily, or  that the Indians are justified in their strong confidence about the depth of their farm system, defying most "organizational talent" rankings.  A small core of players has been promoted to the advanced-A Kinston club to start the year at age 19 or 20, and it's a happy mix of two pitchers, one skill position player and one power-hitting Canadian.  This complements well the small core of college draftees who will converge on Akron in 2008 (with a good shot to make next year's list).

The other theme is guys succeeding in Triple-A at very young ages – not just at 25 but at 22 – but then possibly being stuck there, possibly because of a limited ceiling, possibly because that last jump to majors is the hardest.  Spots 5-10 are fairly dominated by a sense of, "Don't give up on me, I'm still young, I still matter!"  They all reached Buffalo by 22, and not one of them is 25 yet.

It may be that a future refinement of PTM should raise the bar in some way for Triple-A pitchers in particular, but then again, maybe the bar is just fine.  Part of the premise of the system is that a guy who reaches Triple-A at 22 may have the same stats as a low-ceiling 25-year-old, but he's got three whole seasons to figure out how to make that last jump.  Some research suggests that unlike a hitter's raw tools, a pitcher's stuff doesn't really improve after age 23, but it takes pretty good stuff just to get this far, and there's more to pitching than just stuff.  Something to ponder going forward.

More lists after the jump.

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