2011 in Review: General Impressions
by Ryan on Oct 18, 2011 7:03 AM EDT
in Analysis
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PrintAs we get closer to the start of the true off-season, I'd like to give some of my general impressions on the roster as it sits today.
I wasn't expecting much from this season. This was supposed to be the last rebuilding season, the year when they would bring their top four prospect to the majors, let them get adjusted to the majors, and figure work through their young pitching to settle on a rotation for their window in 2012-2014. That largely happened, but they also happened to stay in the division race for five months. Some of that competitiveness was due to the other teams in the division underachieving, but they still fought to stay relevant even with all the injuries.
The rotation was my biggest concern at the beginning of the season, and it still is. The Indians added Ubaldo Jimenez at the July trade deadline, but lost Carlos Carrasco to Tommy John surgery. Josh Tomlin pitched way better than you could hope for from a pitcher with a high-80s fastball. Fausto Carmona had stretches where he was the worst starting pitcher in the majors. David Huff, who at the beginning of the season seemed on his way off the roster, pitched his way into a very good shot at the major-league rotation, though I'd much rather have the Indians use him as depth than in the rotation. Jeanmar Gomez had a nice stretch of starts in September, though he got destroyed by the one playoff-bound team he faced. Here's my major-league depth chart at the end of the season:
2. Ubaldo Jimenez
3. Josh Tomlin
4. Fausto Carmona
5. Jeanmar Gomez
6. Scott Barnes
7. David Huff
I don't think anyone below those nine are really either ready or good enough to stick in a major-league rotation. It's too bad Barnes got hurt, because I think he has the best stuff of the AAA guys. He only threw 99 innings this past season, so that will limit his 2012 innings. But even though the Indians have some depth here, I'd feel a lot more comfortable with a free agent slotted behind Masterson and Jimenez.
I actually feel rather good about how the infield in shaping up. The Indians stuck with Asdrubal Cabrera at shortstop, and he responded with a breakout season. Now their biggest concern with Asdrubal is whether they can sign him to a long-term contract. Jason Kipnis won the second base job with his performance this season, and the Indians have third base covered between Jack Hannahan and Lonnie Chisenhall. Carlos Santana and Lou Marson have the catching position covered, which leaves first base as the only question mark going into the winter. Matt LaPorta looked awful at times, and though he managed a 97 OPS+, he just doesn't look very good at the plate.
In contrast with the infield, the outfield is unsettled. Grady Sizemore may be brought back, but he'd be going into his free agent year with another knee surgery. Shin-Soo Choo also couldn't stay healthy, and Michael Brantley missed a lot of time as well. The Indians don't have anybody in the minors that I'd feel comfortable giving 500-600 plate appearances to, so I think this is the most logical place to add a free agent, or possibly two if they don't bring Sizemore back. Michael Cuddyer would be ideal, as he could also play first base, but Josh Willingham would also be a great fit.
The bullpen was excellent in 2011, and this the one area where the Indians have a lot of quality minor-league depth. I could see the Indians trading at least one of their major-league relievers (most likely Rafael Perez) for help in other areas of the roster. Nick Hagadone and Chen Lee are ready now to pitch in the majors, and there's several other relievers (including Josh Judy and Zach Putnam) that can contribute as well. But bullpens are fickle beasts, and the main group (both Perezes, Sipp, Pestano, Smith) all made at least 64 appearances and threw at least 59 innings.
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Release the Fury?
Matt LaPorta is the bane of my existence.
by USSChoo on Oct 18, 2011 9:22 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Belongs in the “not good enough” group. Plus he’s out of options, and not going to stick on the 40-man roster through the winter.
As well as is Jerad Head.
Fear the Fedora.
by MooneysRebellion on Oct 18, 2011 4:05 PM EDT up reply actions
There are a couple teams with closer situations up in the air. Dodgers — Broxton is a free agent. Phillies — Madson is a free agent and Lidge might be (option). Marlins — Leo Nunez needs a new visa to play in America. I bet the Angels aren’t quite sold on Jordan Walden. Valverde is a free agent for the Tigers.
I am already insanely excited for 2012. First time since 07’ that i’ll be watching the offseason waiver wire expectantly and watching spring training games.
"Mixed emotions. Rather see him hit PEDroia [with that pitch]. I don’t care if he is in the dugout"
I’d like to share your enthusiasm, but I feel like there are plenty of reasons for trepidation. The outfield is a morass of mediocrity and injury question marks. Masterson and Tomlin anchored our staff with career years. Bullpens are volatile by nature, and ours was beginning to fray at the end of last season. We have nobody who can man first base with any level of reliable quality. We don’t have anyone who can swing it from the right side other than Droobs and Santana, both of whom are coming off of career years. Ubaldo looked distinctly mediocre after coming over last year. Kipnis was huge after his call up, but there’s no guarantee he’s going to play at that level as the league attempts to adjust to him. I’m not saying that we can’t compete, I’m just trying to point out that there are a ton of potential pitfalls that I can come up with off the top of my head.
Ubaldo looked distinctly mediocre after coming over last year.
Let’s just say that we are agreeing on the same end result, but I don’t call a pitcher throwing mid 90’s with an arsenal of pitches “mediocre”. His results, yeah they were mediocre, but the skill set (and history) is there for this guy to be an above average ML pitcher. His problem wasn’t looking mediocre it was volitility, he looked fantastic one moment then terrible the next.
The worrying things about Ubaldo are that his fastball velocity was down by 2.5 mph, and his swinging strike percentage dropped 18 percent. Those two things might be unrelated, but if they’re not, then he needs to rebuild his arm strength this offseason to get back to being an ace.
After he was traded the Denver Post ran a story where some of his Rockies teammates wondered whether his velocity drop was due to an injury he wasn’t telling anyone about, or whether he had slacked off on his offseason conditioning (instead of pitching winter ball he went on a European vacation and met the pope). If it’s the latter, then there’s a chance he can come back and be dominant again next year. But you would think that if that’s all it was then his velocity would have started to creep upward toward the end of the season. It didn’t.
The worrying things about Ubaldo are that his fastball velocity was down by 2.5 mph, and his swinging strike percentage dropped 18 percent. Those two things might be unrelated, but if they’re not, then he needs to rebuild his arm strength this offseason to get back to being an ace.
Those things are most likely related.
(instead of pitching winter ball he went on a European vacation and met the pope).
We should find out what this pope character did to him
I thought the issue was that the Rockies didn’t want him to play winter ball, even though Ubie wanted to play it.
So how did Jimenez end up in Cleveland? Let’s begin before the season started. Jimenez didn’t pitch in winter ball in the Dominican Republic and reported to camp soon after a European vacation, during which he attended Mass conducted by Pope Benedict XVI. The combination of the two left him in a position of having to develop arm strength in Arizona. Little did he know that it would mark the beginning of the end of his days in Denver.
Part of that situation was out of Jimenez’s control. His Licey team in his native country didn’t qualify for the playoffs, so that opportunity vanished. But taking an extended vacation so close to spring training — and in the first offseason after his signature season — didn’t sit well with teammates.
Maybe I was mistaken about the Rockies requesting that he not play winter ball, since I can’t find any articles about that.
Still, I think we have to trust the FO on the Ubaldo trade, at least as far as his health is concerned. Just because he wasn’t hitting 99 on a regular basis by the end of the season doesn’t mean that there’s anything physically wrong with him. Injuries in ST and the beginning of a season can potentially set someone back for the whole year, especially if that player maybe came back too soon, which seems like it might have been the case for Ubaldo.
As far as the Denver Post article — it’s pure speculation. Renck is a seriously gossipy reporter. In past articles — when he was a Rockie — Renck wrote glowing stories about Ubaldo, including his conditioning and the trip to Europe. For example, here’s what Renck wrote about Ubaldo’s 2010 off-season at the time:
Jimenez, unfailingly humble and smart, knows the monster he has created in the Dominican. Other than workouts at the local Gold’s Gym, he rarely left home because of the fuss it created…. Prior to his European vacation, Jimenez threw several side sessions in preparation for a playoff run for Licey, but his team didn’t advance to the winter league postseason. He prepped for spring training with more mound work, facing live hitters.
Renck also wrote:
He did not pitch in winter ball this year because Licey, his Dominican Republic team, was eliminated. However, the right-hander did his typical work in the Dominican leading up to spring training, throwing side sessions with teammates.
Later, after Ubaldo struggled, Renck began calling his not pitching in winter ball “a huge tactical error.” But still noted that:
Jimenez would have had time to build his arm strength if he hadn’t gotten hurt in the spring, first to a thumb cuticle and later a hip flexor. He should have spoken up about the leg injury and taken time off to build arm strength, which has been an issue the entire season.
In other words, this is all questionable post-hoc reasoning that Renck has drastically shifted over time. If you’re the Rockies or a Rockies fan, it’s a lot easier to feel good about the trade if you think that Ubie struggled because he was lazy than because of the bad luck of a few minor injuries. (Obviously, one can say we’re doing the same by following the sagas of White and Pom.) After all, Ubie didn’t pitch winter ball after the 2007 season, and 2008 marked a huge step forward for him. So, while he might feel it was a mistake not to last season, or that he should this season to get his mechanics straightened out, had he not gotten injured, he may have had a normal ST last year and been just fine in 2011.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the list of pitchers with electric stuff who got befuddlingly mediocre results is miles long. Ubaldo put it together for one season, but so did Fausto. If neither of them ever had another great season, that would hardly be unprecedented. If they both did it while occasionally throwing innings or games or months that made you wonder why they couldn’t do that all the time, that wouldn’t be breaking new ground either.
Okay, I’ll cop to Ubaldo’s 2007-2009 being above average, which seems to dictate that my case has been overstated a little bit. I hope he gets it back for this coming year, but signs last season were somewhat less than encouraging. Even if he does, there are still a lot of potential holes in the roster, right?
I pretty much agree with the general recap. Our infield and bullpen appear to be our strengths heading into next year. When it comes to our rotation, I think we’ll be very grateful for the “minor” trades Shapiro pulled off (i.e. Barnes and McAllister). The rotation also reflects the odd pathway to becoming a ML-starting pitcher. Gomez has seemingly been around forever even though he is still very young. Tomlin was never a prospect, though always put up good numbers. Huff and Rondon were the most heralded prospects, at one point, on that list. And then our outfield is, potentially, the best or worst part of our team…or somewhere in the middle.
The starting pitching concerns me the most, as we face 2012, so I also generally agree. I have hopes our hitting improves next season, with experience if not free agent signings.
The starting pitching concerns me the most as well. I’m very concerned about it.
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Is OPS+ adjusted by position like VORP is? I don’t think it is which makes LaPorta’s 97OPS+ look pretty brutal when you consider that he plays a position that demands above average production. I think 97 OPS+ middle infielders and catchers are good but 1st basemen should be much better measured with the league average.
All major leaguers had an aggregate OPS of 797 and OPS+ of 121 while playing first base. The AL was a little lower, but a single league is more susceptible to big year-to-year swings.
If you look at only starting 1B on the top 20 teams, you can be sure those numbers go up even more. Adjusted for position, LaPorta ends up with an OPS+ a little below 80.
Ahhh….isn’t Duncan a RHed hitter, or did we DFA him while I wasn’t looking?
Our best players wear suits.
I would question how much of a known quantity Duncan is. If we go into spring training counting on him to start 150 games, something has gone wrong.
Not directly, but Ryan did fail to mention Mr. Duncan anywhere in this piece, which implies to me at least that Shelly would have a limited role – if any – on next year’s club. While I can see him playing ~100 games at firstbase. Unless we acquire somebody like Pujols, Fielder, Kotchman et al. to play first or maybe one of the Molinas to catch and move Santana to 1st permanately.
Our best players wear suits.
You, on the other hand, don’t even know how to spell his first name, which implies to me that you think learning even the most rudimentary facts about him is a waste of time. That you, as an Indians fan, would feel that way in turn implies that he must be a spare part at best.
Right?
by Joel D on Oct 20, 2011 5:19 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Joel, Joel, you don’t know me very well. I can’t – and refuse to learn how to – spell. If you’re gonna hang your hat on my spelling as an indicator of my basic knowledge about a ball player then I guess I don’t know much.
And you’re are – like my spelling – partially correct. Schelley WAS a spare part last year. But if you’ve followed the Indians for any length of time you know that spare parts ccan often become major parts.
Right?
Our best players wear suits.
I wish I had gotten to this string earlier. Jay’s comment is clearly obvious. I don’t get it at all, but it’s clearly obvious Chuck takes pride in spelling things incorrectly. It takes, at most, five seconds to figure out how to spell Duncan’s name.
Yes, and from what I understand of Chuck’s profession, obviously he’s well accustomed to bothering to get a lot of details exactly right, or else a lot of people would be dead.
by Jay on Oct 21, 2011 10:27 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Including Kotchman on a list with Pujols and Fielder makes me chuckle… and then question how much you really know about baseball.
I don’t think Kotchman’s a free agent, but if he were he would be a nice guy to pair with Duncan for a cheap, slightly above average 1B option. Duncan starts against lefties, with Kotchman coming on as a late-game defensive replacement. They could split starts against RHP, again with Kotchman providing a late-game defensive replacement option when he doesn’t start.
Let’s hope the FO thinks so, too. At times in the past, they’ve struggled to grasp the concept of a sunk cost. Maybe this is the result of the pendulum swinging back after giving up on Brandon Phillips too soon, but it’s got to swing back to some happy medium soon.
At the same time, what do we do with LaPorta? Keep in AAA? Just cut him loose? Will anyone want him in a trade? As a sweetener with potential upside packaged with one of the Perezes?
Oh, they get the sunk cost thing all right – after all they’re a bunch of business school educated whiz kids – it’s the “how could I be so wrong about guy’s talent evaluation” thng that they’re missing.
As far as LaPorta goes, unless there’s an underlying injury or obvious needed adjustment, I’d drop him like 1st period French.
Our best players wear suits.
“Monsieur Laporta, êtes-vous passant des notes à Chuck en classe?”
“Désolé, Mlle Michel.”
“Pourquoi ne pas vous la partager avec tout le monde? Allez-y, lisez-le!”
[Lire LaPorta] “Chuck, comment pouvez-vous dire Kotchman dans la même phrase avec les Pujols et Fielder sans rire? Et comment se fait vous savez comment épeler "Pujols"?”
by YoDaddyWags on Oct 20, 2011 9:21 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
In terms of roster spots, I’d say Crowe. But at other times people like Delucci, Barfield, Marte and, especially, Sowers fit into that category. Obviously, in fairness, the examples that come to mind are mostly from the Wedge-Shapiro era, and Antonetti and Acta seem much more unsentimental about roster moves.
by J83 on Oct 21, 2011 12:27 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Here’s the thing. You need to provide examples of who they kept and also who they failed to keep in place of that guy.
This year we had seven injured outfielders out of five, and yet you come up with an outfielder as the guy we should have cut?
Who also spent the majority of the season not taking up a roster spot.
Matt LaPorta is the bane of my existence.
Both points taken regarding Crowe. I shouldn’t have brought the 40-man roster into this, because I agree with you both that it’s not like we lost anyone significant by keeping Crowe. That may come up this off-season, but hasn’t really yet.
The others, though, weren’t — to me, at least — about 40 man roster spots, but more about people who didn’t perform on the 25-man but were kept around longer than needed (except Marte, maybe) because of the investment in the player, not the player’s performance.
The issue I was agreeing with above is that LaPorta has been dreadful and has shown no signs of translating his noted AAA success into the big leagues, and I — along with a lot of other, it seems — are hoping that he isn’t heavily favored or more-or-less given a 25-man roster spot next year simply because he was the big piece in the Sabbathia trade.
Given the lack of alternatives, he got a bit of an extended chance this season, until the demotion. I wouldn’t expect it going forward. I feel like Antonetti will be quicker to part with the Crowe’s and LaPorta’s of the world than Shapiro might have been.
Matt LaPorta is the bane of my existence.
he’ll probably be testing the free agent market. I think there is alot up in the air on the Indians side of it with the Sizemore situation. The sooner that comes to resolution the better the chances that they pursue Fukodome (if they value him…. he’s probably not going to give you much more than Michael Brantley was giving.. league average at best). There is a serious lack of outfield depth within the organization though for sure.
Pretty much this
Brantley is younger, but he also seemed pretty injury prone this year. Since it was all in his wrist, maybe after this surgery he will be fine.
Though, you hope it won’t be chronic. The wrist is very important in a hitters ability to swing the bat well.
If it becomes chronic, he might as well kiss his career goodbye. I was a fairly accomplished golfer (a swing that has similar wrist impact as the baseball swing) and after a car accident gave me deep bone contusions in both wrists, I can barely finish 18 holes once a month now. Obviously mine was caused by trauma, but I can attest to how chronic wrist problems can drain you of power and flexibility.
Matt LaPorta is the bane of my existence.
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