Couple'a funny things about that market, which we know has tightened considerably.  One, the obvious one, is that the few available players are not that great and very expensive.  The other less obvious effect is that it's become extremely hard to spend any free agent money effectively.

As a result, we have the Indians signing a bunch of veterans to one-year deals because, well, they have $20 million to spend and nothing great to spend it on.  So they spend it on something decent, and highly targeted to an area of need, i.e., depth.  Without signing any free agents, they had solid-average and All-Star guys everywhere on the roster except 2B -- which they quickly addressed by acquiring Barfield.  Where they spent money, mainly, was on making sure they had depth everywhere.

For example, we had enough major league ready-ish relievers without signing anyone -- Betancourt, Miller, Davis, Cabrera, Mastny, Lara, Sipp, Mujica, Perez.  That's nine guys for seven spots, plenty, right?  Wrong -- of course.  We signed four more guys, and those 13 have barely been enough.  Foulke retired, of course.  Cabrera and Davis self-destructed.  Sipp and Miller got injured.  Mujica and Mastny have been shakey.  So that takes us from 13 down to 5, so it's a good thing that Jensen Lewis came out of nowhere and Mastny is willing to sit and do nothing for three months.

How does this relate to the outfield?  Well, we had Blake, Michaels, Choo, Gutierrez and Francisco for the corners.  But could we be certain that they would be healthy and acceptably productive?  Hell, no.  So we used the free agent money to fortify against injury and poor performance.  The fact that the injury and poor performance has afflicted our veterans a little more than our rookies is beside the point -- the point is that there's strength in numbers.  If you don't sign those guys, then what do you do if Choo gets injured and Marte struggles?  Hang the fate of your season on Michaels and Gutierrez.

Well, actually, you could do that.  Teams have succeeded by doing worse.  But it comes back again to the question, was there really anything better to do with the money?  We improved our depth to the point where we basically guaranteed that we would get average production out of virtually every spot on the roster, outside of an aberrant month here or there.

And that's why we spent money on veterans.