Cubs claim Brad Snyder off the waiver wire
Longtime disappointment Brad Snyder is no longer with us. We didn't need the 40-man roster spot immediately, so I assume the Indians had concluded that (a) they weren't willing to forgo protecting another prospect in the offseason just to hold onto this guy, and (b) that this was as good of a time as any to try to sneak him through waivers and outright him to ... uh ... Columbus. Anyway, he's history.
over 3 years ago
Jay
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Reid Santos looked great in 2007 and seemed like a potential candidate to step in this season like Jensen Lewis a year ago. Didn’t happen. Struggled badly in Buffalo and didn’t look much better after getting demoted. We’ve got better arms (or arms we should prioritize more) coming through the system.
I’m not sure why we’re making all these roster moves now except the notion of “sneaking them through”…but neither Snyder or Santos is a loss we should feel bad about. Even if they do have flashes of not sucking at the big league level.
Could be with an eye towards getting some 40-man spots clear for the Rule 5 draft, figuring that a lot of teams have full rosters right now with the September callups & all.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com -- just in case.
Almost seems like a change in approach, or maybe they just like the guys coming up a lot more than the guys they added a year ago.
Remember when we lost Ryan Goleski & Jim Ed Warden? Good times.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com -- just in case.
I haven’t seen this confirmed elsewhere, and Lastoria doesn’t mention a source. Still, I’m assuming Tony wouldn’t post it if he didn’t feel it was confirmed.
Santos superficially looks like he was a little better than in 2007. Thing is, though, he was a full-time reliever this year, and his peripherals were solid but hardly eye-popping. In particular, he had only an 8.20 K/9 against lefties, and it came with 3.42 BB/9. Those numbers really aren’t nearly good enough to be a lefty relief prospect.
maybe the PTBNL is actually tied into the number of innings Sabathia pitches with the Brewers, and we’re now actually getting the entire Huntsville (AA) roster
I have to believe Elarton, Fasano, Marte, and maybe some from the group of Barfield, Dellucci, Donnelly, Mastny, Rincon will be gone due to free agency, trade, and release.
Elarton might be a guy who comes back on a minor league deal. The Indians seem to like him, and there might be a decent one or two year late career run as a reliever.
Did we ever get word as to why Elarton’s on the DL? I believe it’s something like “personal issues,” and while I don’t want to pry into the guy’s life, I’m curious if he’ll even be back next year. But yeah, we’re going to lose Rincon & Donnelly from the 40-man right after the season since they’re free agents.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com -- just in case.
I suspect you’re right about most of those. I’d add Slocum and Bullington as guys who they don’t have a lot of commitment to. I don’t know if they have options left.
I’d guess Marte and Barfield will go only by trade OR if/when the Indians sign someone else at 2B or 3B. Otherwise, they don’t really have another guy as a viable back-up and they don’t NEED to dump them if they clear spots by eliminating some of the other guys you mention.
Yea, I don’t think Marte will just be put on waivers. And there’s no chance Barfield is exposed to waivers—he’d be traded. The Indians have made very clear that Marte is not in the plan for next season, so I wouldn’t be surprised if their only course of action is to just expose him to waivers to try and remove him from the 25 man roster. And when that happens, a team like the Giants, As, or Marlins would, I assume, take a look.
He has a chance, but I think that chance is based not at all on what Marte does but on what acquisitions are made in the off-season.
I agree with this.
I will be surprised if he returns to the club in a backup role, but in the absence of an acquisition, I don’t know why they wouldn’t have him share time with Carroll.
Truth is, we could do a lot worse than to just go with the five guys we’ve already got for 2B-SS-3B. That’s three 2B, three SS and two 3B. Barfield doesn’t bring a lot to the table, but he’s a cheap backup, and at least he can run.
Cabrera, Peralta, Carroll, and Marte, okay. As I see it, Barfield brings nothing to the table.
I think we need a lefty hitter with pop to platoon/compete with Marte. Somebody like Dallas McPherson would be nice. I might be willing to give up some of our surplus at 1b (Garko?) or OF (Francisco?) to get a guy like that.
by ken from alexandria on Sep 23, 2008 8:42 PM EDT up reply actions
Every single year I get the crazy notion that we should bring back Branyan, and every single year he brings something to somebody’s table.
I actually was, in all seriousness, going to suggest exactly that this past offseason and never got around to mentioning it. Later on, when he started mashing, I decided not to bother mentioning it, since it just seemed like hindsight at that point.
Having said that, how much better off would we have been flipping Blake to another team for — fill in the blank here — and then setting up Branyan and Marte to share the work at 3B? Branyan also plays LF and 1B, so it’s not really that different than having Blake around — especially if you refuse to play Blake in the OF anyway.
Hello Ken,
I’m not so sure on the Marte being a lock over Barfield – Marte still doesn’t hit enough to warrant his being an automatic lock; while Barfield is hardly a lock either, he has actually shown more of an ability to hit over a full season than Marte has, who can’t hit consistently enough to convince the Indians to play for a full season, and in a ballpark that is easier to hit in than the one Barfield hit in (San Diego,) albeit against the arguably weaker NL.
Plus, as mentioned above, Barfield does have speed, something that can be useful in a back-up role, especially since I’m not convinced Marte is the type of hitter who can provide the power you’d want from a back-up player/pinch hitter because his swing seems to need more constant play in order to be effective. I fear he’ll only get a few ABs a week and not be able to hit .200 with any power because he’ll stay constantly out-of-whack – it’s only because he’s been getting regular or even more than half the regular playing time that he’s been able to get that BA up to .220 or so (and it’s because each time he gets a hit, his BA goes up 5-10 points or so, not 2 or 3 points like most of the other Indians who have played regularly all season).
Regarding McPherson, he has had significant issues with the strike zone in his brief appearances at the ML level and at the Minor League level. Plus, he’s (turned 28 in July) older than both Francisco (turns 27 in October) and Garko (turns 28 in January), both of whom are more established MLers than McPherson is.
Additionally, I think McPherson is not signed long-term by the Marlins, as he signed as a 6-year Minor League FA. Therefore, I’m not sure we’d have to trade anything to get him, and personally, I don’t think he’s worth a Francisco or a Garko – two guys who have shown more in the MLs than McPherson has. McPherson is an unknown quantity that could deliver 30 HRs, but is probably more likely to fall short of that because of relatively weak plate discipline and lack of ML experience (less than even Francisco, who has 489 ML ABs; McPherson has just 330 ABs).
Therefore, I wouldn’t mind adding McPherson to the Indians as a Minor League FA, but giving up more established MLers like Garko or Francisco would seem like overpaying for a guy who has good raw power, but has had trouble making consistent contact throughout his professional career and who has been pretty much overmatched in his brief ML trials (SSS understood), especially in terms of his BB/K ratios. And, as mentioned, he’s not young where you can expect him to improve much – he could figure it out and deliver, but being that he’s entering the prime of his career, he should have figured it out by now and shown some signs of controlling the strike zone better than he has (14 BB/64 Ks in 205 ABs in 2005 at age 25 and 6 BBs/40 Ks in 115 ABs at age 26 – the SSS trend is going in the wrong direction, which doesn’t inspire me with much confidence that he’ll ever control the strike zone enough to put his power to enough use to be able to rely on him).
Just my 2 cents – no offense.
The "cream of the crop" doesn't always rise to the top.
But why compare Barfield’s one year in SD to Marte? Barfield played 130 games for the Indians last year, and managed a .594 OPS, not that much better than Marte’s performance under substantially less favorable circumstances. Given equal opportunity, I expect that Marte would outhit Barfield, probably significantly.
I’m still kind of shocked that Marte is batting over .220 for the season, given where he was not that long ago.
Pinch-hitting Carroll for Marte at this point in the season is inexcusable. I’ve had it with Wedge. He’s a younger, paler Dusty Baker.
I’m not sure what your getting at here. Sure he was below the Mendoza line but he wasn’t accruing at-bats so its not like he overcame a full first half of a season hitting below .200. Its not that hard to raise your batting avg. up to .220 given a large enough sample size (i.e. at-bats). He still has only had a .644 OPS in the second half of the season and baBIP isn’t the problem (.293)
Actually a 667 OPS since he started getting regular work in July — truly the “second half” — and note that his batting average in that time is closer to .300 than .200, albeit just barely (.251). The point being, nobody should be concerned that hitting .200 is actually a challenge or an accomplishment for this guy.
I already said back in July, it was already too late by that point to get a proper read on this guy this season based on the stats, and that was before realizing that Wedge was still going to bench him for two or three games every week for the rest of the year. Had Wedge played him just a little more in April and May, and had he plugged him in full-time when most of the lineup was sucking anyway, then we might now know something about Marte, i.e., at least we’d have twice the data.
Those who want to jump to the “this is the real Marte” line are still (in my view) totally overlooking the effect that he basically didn’t play for three months. Nobody else in the organization has had to deal with that kind of layoff, and there’s no reason to think he’d be especially good at dealing with it — quite the contrary. What he’s shown is that he isn’t totally lost as a major league hitter, which is what he looked like based on his first 62 PA spread out over 96 days.
But even the past three months, it’s only 195 PA, and again, it’s after shaking off three months of quasi-rust, and he’s still not playing every day. I take that 667 as encouraging but far from thrilling. Bottom line, for anyone who subscribed to the theory that Marte just needs to be left alone to “warm into” being a good hitter, we haven’t seen anything to dispel that theory.
I gotta come back to this.
I can show you four whole months of Garko getting more or less all the playing time — all the benefits of regular reps — and putting up a 630 OPS.
If you prefer, I can show you FIVE whole months — 118 games, 473 PA — where it’s a 673 OPS.
And last I checked, Garko is not a plus-defender at a defensive position.
So anyone who wants to draw conclusions about Marte, based on much more sporadic reps and three months of nearly a comparable OPS, ought to be absolutely hell-bent on seeing Garko off this club next season.
Now ask me about Ben “adequate LF” Francisco’s four months of 720 OPS. I beg you.
What about Ben Francisco? What can we surmise from his four months of 720 OPS while playing an adequate LF?
You could also surmise that the Indians roll out an OF with OPS+ of 103, 131 and 145, which actually isn’t bad compared to other AL teams. Of course, that assumes the Choo Choo keeps on rolling.
Yes, we should upgrade LF, but it could be worse.
You’ve got no argument from me that the Indians should look to upgrade over Garko (who will likely be optioned to AAA next season) or Francisco.
My original point was that because of Marte having so few at-bats in the first half of the season, it shouldn’t be impressive that he raised his season batting avg. to .220. And the fact that he’s hitting .251 since getting semi-regular playing time isn’t that impressive either. Particularly when it is accomplished with little to no power. In effect you have a high K rate without the power. I mean if he was showing a little power we could look to a guy like Mark Reynolds and hope that Marte matures into that.
But getting back to your other point, which I agree with in principal, we simply don’t have a large enough sample size of consistent playing time to tell anything at all about Marte. My assumption is that the Indians through their other means of player evaluation (scouting reports, psych profiles, etc.) have determined that they have little faith in Marte for next season.
I don’t think Garko will be sent to AAA. He may play less, or be traded, but Wedge keeps stressing his role as a “run producer” and his RBI totals have gone up. I know they’re not meaningful, and the front office is smarter than to think that’s the key statistic to look at. But, I think he’s actually a relatively trade-able guy (not old, relatively cheap, some ability) who has some numbers that might look attractive to another team — don’t be surprised if they shop him and try to acquire pitching in exchange. If they can’t trade him, the platoon with Victor we’ve been seeing may be the fall back.
Are you serious? Garko has no trade value right now. Some team would hope to buy low on him, get him into a deal as a throw-in, then hope to turn him into something more valuable.
The problem with Garko is that he’s entirely one-dimensional. If he has a bad month at making solid contact, he becomes the least valuable player on your roster. This year, he had four of those months.
I didn’t mean he SHOULD have trade value, but I think some team might get tempted by the argument that he’s a run producer (good in the clutch, good BA with RISP and two outs — that sort of thing). He obviously won’t bring much, but I still think someone might be interested, especially if he’s part of a package of players (as opposed to Dellucci, who I think is un-tradeable).
I totally agree with your assessment of Garko as a player. There’s really only one thing he can do, and he’s not all that great at that. I would very much like to see him NOT be on the team next year. I’ve chosen my current avatar with that in mind.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the self-delusional capacity of GM’s other than Ed Wade. The words “run producer” do not easily stick to a first baseman with 12 home runs.
By the way, here’s a list of middle infielders and catchers with more than 12 home runs.
I’m certainly not going to trap myself into arguing that Garko is a good player. I give up — we’re stuck with him.
I think if Garko reaches 90 RBI’s he’s going to be an attractive option to a team looking for an upgrade at 1B, especially an NL team.
I think is twice as true if he gets his batting avg over .270.
Remember, the market sets the value of a player to a large degree. I’m not saying Garko SHOULD have decent trade value but I think he definetely will.
by world dictator on Sep 26, 2008 9:58 PM EDT up reply actions
I am not sure what you mean by decent trade value. With his recent play I think it is possible to trade him, but I’d be very surprised if we got anyone of value at all. Just a month ago even that didn’t seem possible.
I don’t know what to do about Garko. Maybe we hang onto him and platoon him with Shoppach / Vic / Travis? His strikeout and walk rates have improved slightly.
Against RHP:
Martinez (1B/ DH/C), Shoppach (1B/DH/C), Travis / Aubrey / other (DH)
Against LHP:
Martinez (1B/DH/C), Shoppach (C/DH), Garko (1B/DH)
Garko is the least important piece of the puzzle, but there’s conceivably a role for him.
First of all, there will always be someone willing to take a 1B that’s 27, cheap, and hit .270 and 90 RBI’s this season. (Marlins?)
That said, the complaints about Garko are highly overstated. When you look at most of the stats of AL 1B he’s a middle of the road player.
Among AL 1B
-4th in Avg
-6th in RBI’s
- Among 1B with at least 400 AB only two have struck out less than he has
Garko’s biggest problem seems to be that he doesn’t walk very much and his power is marginal. But he still has a .747 OPS this season which has his 8th among AL 1B.
Not Great, but not horrible either.
I’m sure an NL team like the Marlins or the Giants would be interested
by world dictator on Sep 28, 2008 11:57 AM EDT up reply actions
There’s a reason we call those the “idiot stats.”
Garko’s biggest problem seems to be that he doesn’t walk very much and his power is marginal.
I would call that two problems, and I would say that those two problems are almost synonymous with being a bad hitter. Getting on base is the inverse of making outs; it is not the only important thing you can do as a hitter, but it is unarguably the most important thing. Hitting for power is the second most important thing.
Hitting for simple contact is nearly as important as hitting for power, but it is more difficult to measure, and it leaves the hitter and his club more subject to luck and the whims of fate.
The overall stats are the overall stats. Fine, fair enough. Fact is, he still hit worse than the average catcher or middle infielder for four solid months of the season.
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