Going in to the 2008 off season the Indians find them selves is need of another infielder. The Marlins find them selves with infielders Dan Uggla and Jorge Cantu in their arbitration years and have internal options waiting in the wings to replace them. The Marlins will not keep both, if either of them.

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Obviously all teams want to win every game they play and Shapiro and Wedge would tell you that they wan to win as many games as possible this year. But with the Indians officially in retooling mode for 2008, the team priority changes from maximizing 2008 wins to player development. But beyond that there is in fact a real incentive to lose as many games as possible for the remainder of the year, 2009 Draft position.

Being very high in the draft gives a team a shot at much higher ceiling guys. A good illustration of this is In the 2007 draft, we got Beau Mills at #13 but LaPorta could have been had at #7. Shapiro himself mentioned the fact that the Indians have only gotten to pick in the top 10 of the draft once in the past 10 years (2004 #6 Jeremy Sowers) and haven't picked in the top 5 during the CC press conference. He contended that the lack of high picks has left a dearth of "ceiling"/"impact" type players in an otherwise solid farm system.

If that weren't incentive enough to lose, having a top 15 pick also shields us from losing our #1 as a compensatory pick if we were to sign a type A free agent. This could be handy considering the cash we will have to play with this off season. According to Cots Contracts we have 8 guys owed raises next year, to a tune of $13.6M. But if we can unload Dellucci, we will have freed up a total of $35.5M for 2009. That gives us $21.9M to play with with out even increasing the payroll.  We could easily make a run at someone like Brian Fuentes with that kind of cash available. Not having to give up our 1st round pick makes it much more palatable.

Those are some reasons why losing in 2008 is good. Now let's look at how many games we would need to lose.

Shapiro drew a distinction between top 5 picks and all others, so I used being a top 5 pick as the objective. Over the last 10 years the average number of losses required to be the #5 pick in the draft was 93.7, I'll round that up to an even 94. The good news is that's the number of games we are on pace to lose at our current .420 clip.

But can we keep up this torrid pace? I think it is pretty obvious that we can. There is no telling how bad we can be after the trades. My hope is that Shapiro cuts quickly and deeply to maximize our losing over the next month or so while our core guys heal. I think the ideal situation is total ineptitude  for the remainder of July, say 5-14, followed by a bad but better August, 11-17, and ending the season with a gloriously mediocre September at 15-13.

That would give us a solid 95 losses and a little bit of positive momentum going in to 2009. So in summary, I hope it gets really bad in the short term to make things better in the long term. We are already bad, we might as well be really bad and get the most out of an off year.

The last photoshop thread we had on here, started by the inimitable emd2k3, really helped me vent my frustration over the whole Blake/Wedge situation. So what better way to lament our latest and greatest additions to the DL (Victor and Barfield) and the subsequent loss of all hope for the 2008 season than with another photoshop thread?

With that in mind, here's my first attempt at capturing the current mood...

Lets go Tribe!

With the Oakland rebuilding firesale in full swing I think it makes sense for us to take a shot at getting Huston Street.

He's a legitmate shutdown closer and is under club control for the next 3 years. The only slight down side to him is the elbow injury he had last year that knocked him out for 6 weeks or so. He was extremely effective after coming back though so I'd personally disregard it.

I would of course be nervous about making any sort of deal with Beane, with him possibly being Marginally better at bargaining than Satan himself. But to get something this perfect for our 2008 team, I would definately pay a lot to help us win now. But after the Swisher deal I am not optimistic about prying a piece like Street away at a price that won't cause a major long term damage.

How much do you think Beane would demand? Do you think Shapiro would pay Beane's price?

Personally I don't know what it would cost but doubt Shapiro has the stomach for any sort of impact trade like this. We have been playing with notions like this all off season with Rios, Haren, Bay and others. Shapiro isn't going to make any sort of "win in 2008" move if it much impacts 2009+.

Ken Rosenthal said the following in his latest article:

Mets general manager Omar Minaya always takes a high-energy approach, but it would be understandable if he was even more motivated this off-season.

The pressure on him is growing.
Minaya, signed through 2009, has been thwarted in his attempts to land a contract extension, according to major league sources.

His job, in the wake of the Mets' late-season collapse, is less secure than it was a year ago, when the team was coming off an appearance in the NL Championship Series.

His recent trade of outfielder Lastings Milledge, 22, for catcher Brian Schneider, 31, and outfielder Ryan Church, 29, reflected the Mets' desire to satisfy short-term goals.

Minaya's principal objective this off-season is adding a top-of-the-rotation starter. It will be difficult for him, rival executives say, because the Mets' top prospects aren't as attractive as other clubs'.

Minaya has been the Mets' general manager since Sept. 2004.
 

I'm not too familiar with the Mets farm system, but this could be a good opportunity to replenish the farm system a bit.

BONUS
Cliff Lee is a former Expo. That fits in with Manaya's Expo fetish.

 This is purely speculative at this point. But based on the way things are going, this seems to be how things might fall out. The NYY could spend more or a little less, but this should be in the ballpark.

AROD: $280M/10 + $30M+ in HR boni.
Rivera: $45M/3
Possada: $52.4M/4
Petite: $16M/1
Santana: $150M/6
Rowand: $60M/5
Wang: $4M in arb (not sure about this one)
2 Relievers: $12/3 + $8/2 (guess)

That's $653,400,000. Yikes.

That should give them a $123.5M starting line up, complete with a $13M 4th outfielder.

That will go nicely with their relative bargain of a $56.4M starting rotation and $28M or so bullpen.

Add on another $4M or so for the rest of the bench and you are looking at a payroll of around:

$225,000,000

There's your NYY tradition.