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.

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.

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)