Joe Posnanski has a column up today talking about issues related to age and player development. This got me thinking about the age of the Indians lineup, and particular how the projected starting lineup sits relative to the perceived prime age range of 25-30. After putting together the average age of the Indians starting lineup, by position, from 2004-2012, I do not really have anything particularly insightful to say. The Indians should be pretty well positioned in the peak of the production curve this year, but they pretty much have been there throughout this time period. If all goes as projected, the Indians might go through 2012 with a full seven of the nine lineup spots occupied by a guy aged 25-30 on a regular basis, which would be matched only by 2008.

"...it's better to burn out, 'cause rust never sleeps/ The king is gone, but he's not forgotten..."

Sometime during the 2008 season, mauichuck made the prediction that Travis Hafner would either rebound and become the type of monster hitter he had been from 2004-2006, or flame out altogether. Hafner, of course, was in the midst of his worst season as a pro. Just two years removed from putting up an OPS just shy of 1.100, Hafner hit .197/.305/.323 in 2008, struggling with the after effects of a still amorphous shoulder problem. Chuck's prediction seemed reasonable enough at the time, but has proven to be completely wrong. The past three seasons, in a somewhat strange way, Hafner has been remarkably consistent. Here are his batting lines from 2009-2011:

• 2009: 96 games, .272/.355/.470, .826 OPS, 16 HRs, 1.63 K/BB
• 2010: 118 games, .278/.374/.449, .824 OPS, 13 HRs, 1.84 K/BB
• 2011: 94 games, .280/.361/.449, .811 OPS, 13 HRs, 2.17 K/BB

Hafner has become a steady part-time player, with moderately above average power and discipline. Not bad, though not great for a one-time monster slugger with the team's largest contract. Given his skill set, there isn't really any reason to expect a massive and sudden decline from Hafner in the immediate future, and most projections for him (fangraphs has a few here) show him putting up similar numbers in 2012 as he has over the past three seasons.

What is sort of interesting is the final number I put up in the lines above. In his prime, Hafner put up fantastic walk-rates partly because of his great plate discipline and party because of the unwillingness of pitchers to challenge him with pitches over the plate. Over the past three seasons Hafner's strikeout rates have increased incrementally each year (21.2% last season) while his BB-rates have been on the decline (his 9.8% rate last season was a career low). What I find interesting is that his decline has come almost entirely as the result of his performance against left-handed pitchers. His line against right-handed hitters in 2011 was .302/.404/.482 with a 13.1 BB% and a 20.8 K%, right in line with what he has done each of the past three years. But against lefties he dropped to a .233/.259/.379 line, with a remarkably low 1.9 BB% (dropping precipitously over the past three seasons) and a 22.2 K%. Travis Hafner can't hit lefties anymore.

And more importantly, Hafner shouldn't hit against lefties in 2012. Despite his struggles, Hafner still logged 108 plate appearances against lefties last season, good for more than 29% of his total PAs. This was actually up from the previous two seasons in which he had faced about 24% lefties. One of the reasons the Indians need to have a right-handed bat on the team who can hit lefties is so that Travis Hafner doesn't have to face them. Sadly, of the guys most likely to fill the role of Hafner's replacement against lefties (Duncan, Cunningham, Santana) - none of them really fit the bill of lefty-specialist. But even if they aren't fantastic against lefties, merely being good, which they all have at some point, could represent a significant incremental improvement in the 2012 Tribe.

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This is the first in a series of pieces previewing the Indians starting rotation options heading into 2012

Derek Lowe

Derek Lowe was not a well-liked man in Atlanta, which is part of the reason the Braves were willing to pay $10M just to see him leave. This, despite the fact that Derek Lowe was quite Derek Lowe-like in 2011. A quick perusal of his peripheral numbers shows that he was his usual steady self in mixing an excellent GB-rate (59%) with a decent strikeout rate (16%), the mix he has used throughout his largely successful career. Lowe showed a bit of an upward tick in his BB-rate, moving up a notch from 7.4% to 8.4%, but some of his troubles last season were the result of bad luck. His BABIP was atypically high (.327 vs. .295 career average) and the Braves' bullpen didn't do him too many favors (65.9 LOB%). But Atlanta can be forgiven for not enjoying Lowe's role (0-5, 8.75 ERA) in their historic September collapse.

The bigger issue with Lowe is that over the past two seasons, while still being very much Derek Lowe, he has become something of a sink or swim pitcher. After holding a steady quality start % right around or above 60 for five straight years, that number has dipped each of the past two seasons to 45% and 41%. Part of this was the bullpen's fault a year ago, but it also reflects Lowe's declining consistency. Paralleling this is Lowe's declining usage. While he has been a steady 32+ game starter for every season over the past decade, his innings per start reached a low of 5.5 last season. Lowe's addition looks on paper to be an improvement to the Tribe's staff, but one that will also necessitate increased bullpen usage. Jordan Bastian was talking the other day about finding relievers to fill in the garbage time, and that might be nowhere more apparent than on days Lowe takes the mound.

Slowey is covered, after the jump.

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The acquisition of Russ Canzler is the perfect segue into a look back at Matt LaPorta's 2011 relative to some of my thoughts from a year ago on what has ailed the disappointing "slugger." In the comments to that piece, I suggested a few positive indicators to look for from Matt in 2011.

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A little over a year ago, as part of an off-season series covering some of the key young players on the Tribe's roster, I wrote a review of Michael Brantley's 2010 season with a prescriptive outlook to his 2011 campaign. In that piece, I suggested one of Brantley's problems as a hitter is that his elite contact abilities (he was on top of the league in that category in 2010) translate too often in poor outcomes on balls in play. I came to this conclusion by looking fairly closely at Brantley's ball-in-play data from the 2010 season. In the end, I came up with the following list of positive indicators for Brantley for the 2011 season.

Looking at my prescription, Brantley actually performed quite well. Brantley did appear to give up some contact percentage, and did see a better result on his balls-in-play, particularly on his balls in the air. Part of this is because he was pulling a greater percentage of balls in the air and therefore getting a better outcome. This is actually something TribeJay identified in the comments to my piece a year ago quite astutely. This seems to me to be a very positive indicator. Brantley can still improve some of the peripheral parts of his game, base-running and defense in particular, but there remains reason to be hopeful about his progress as a hitter.

What now appears to be holding Brantley back is not his contact/outcome issues, but rather his willingness to let strikes go right past him. Michael Brantley does not swing enough. He lets too many hittable pitches get called against him. 39% of the strikes on Brantley last year were called strikes, down slightly from the 41% he saw in 2010. The major league average is 28%. Brantley's tendency to give away free strikes seemingly goes hand-in-hand with his inability to replicate his great BB/K minor league numbers at the major league level. Brantley had more walks than strikeouts at every level in the minors, with a 1.34 BB/K ratio at AA and AAA. In the majors, that number has inverted to 0.48. I think Brantley has struggled to adjust to the major league strike zone and the proficiency with which major league pitchers hit the corners. It is great that Brantley is getting better results on his balls-in-play, now he needs to swing at more of the strikes he sees. I think Brantley still has a very intriguing ceiling and has shown steady, though subtle improvements in his batting approach and outcome each season. If Brantley's wrist troubles (hamate surgery) are behind him, I actually think he is a decent breakout candidate for 2012.

Just over a year ago I wrote a piece here asking where the wins would come for a team that had won just 69 games and then made very few significant offseason additions. Perhaps not surprisingly, the same question could be asked today, although of a team that surprised many by starting strong and, despite some struggles late, winning 80 games. First, it is worth noting that the Indians ended up performing pretty close to what I had identified as a best case scenario, though by a slightly different route than I had anticipated. Here is what I wrote last January:

A reasonable high-end scenario for 2011, where some, but not all things work out for the Tribe, has them close to an 81 win team, with a few breaks taking them to the mid-80s. This scenario would put Cleveland into a strong position heading into next off-season, with internal prospects likely in place to fill in the gaps and good incentive to add payroll via a key free agent signing heading into 2012. Here's to hope (and wins)...

Way to go me! Although the Indians accomplished this in ways I did not exactly anticipate. I correctly noted that Asdrubal could be a big part of an improved 2011 squad, that a full season of Santana would help a lot, but struck out on several other areas. Here is how my predictions stacked up against the reality of 2011 (Note: Last year I used fangraphs WAR totals. Based on personal preference, I am using B-Ref's numbers this year)

What follows is something akin to a back of the bar napkin look at the 2012 Indians, based on their 2011 performance and offseason moves.

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Like most teams at this point in the offseason, the Indians have handed out a large number of minor-league contracts with (and some without) invites to spring training. None of these guys should individually be expected to have any impact, but it is quite likely one or two of them will stick and play a role at some point during the season. The obvious soft spot on the 25-man roster heading into camp is the role of a situational right-handed bat that can play OF and/or 1B. The Indians well-honed emphasis on flexibility and depth means that the bullpen, despite being very good last year and returning essentially the same cast this season, could house one or two NRIs at the end of the Spring. Here is a roundup of the Indians off-season minor league signings to date and an appraisal of what impact they might have.

Matt Pagnozzi C (12/02/11) - Pagnozzi is likely AAA depth at catcher, competing with last year's minor league free agent acquisition Michel Hernandez for the backup spot behind Luke Carlin. Pagnozzi has actually seen action in the majors each of the past three seasons - for Pittsburgh, Colorado and St. Louis - but only a handful of games in each of those appearances. The Indians only have two catchers on the 40-man roster (Santana and Marson), so anyone playing the position at Columbus has the chance to make an appearance in Cleveland in the case of injury. Presumably Pagnozzi has some acumen manning the position and working with pitchers, because his offensive abilities (high Ks, low BBs, poor power and hit tools) are lacking.

Jose Lopez 2B (12/16/11) - Lopez is arguably the most decorated off-season NRI, having been selected to the All-Star game in 2006 while playing for Seattle (he was, it should be noted, a fairly poor choice). Prior to that, his performance at a young age in the upper minors made him a two-time Baseball America top 100 prospect (2003 #38, 2004 #70). Lopez, although not particularly old at just 28, is well past his peak years in Seattle. At his best, Lopez was an adequate to plus fielder at 2B with above average power for the position that made up for a lack of on-base ability. The past two seasons, Lopez has simply been bad (.233/.263/.348 for Seattle, Colorado and Florida). As a right-handed hitter potentially capable of playing any of the infield spots, Lopez seemingly duplicates the flexibility of Jason Donald. Lopez is almost assuredly behind Donald in the pecking order, however, who is himself behind starters Cabrera/Kipnis and in competition with Cord Phelps and Jack Hannahan, both who are already on the roster. If he accepts it, Lopez could be the utility man in Columbus.

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Kevin Goldstein has come out with his Cleveland Top 11 Prospect list at Baseball Prospectus, meaning we now have a trio of published lists (BP, Baseball America, Jon Sickels). Looking over the assessments from these three sources, I feel pretty validated in the approach I took to the issue here not long ago, producing what I called a "viewer's guide" rather than a ranking. My conclusion, that the Indians system lacks established talent but has an almost frightening amount of potential talent in the bottom of the system, was echoed by others as well.

In his summary, Kevin Goldstein says:

This was the most difficult ranking in recent memory, and this system will be a monster next year. Whether by monster I mean strong, intimidating beast, or nightmarishly awful is to be determined.

Jon Sickels makes a similar comment:

This is a very difficult system to analyze.

...

Indians fans may be discouraged by the large number of C+ grades, but they shouldn't be. While some of those C+s are future role players or relievers, the younger members of the group are high-ceiling guys who are just too raw or far away to get a higher grade just yet, but who could blossom within the next year or two.

In putting together some of the offseason prospect write-ups I came across a number of interesting numbers that didn't make it in elsewhere. Here are a few of those, highlighting a couple of guys who might otherwise not get much attention.

62% - TJ McFarland's GB-rate last year in 137+ innings of action at AA Akron, good enough for the Eastern League lead in the category among qualifying pitchers. And actually, aside for a few journeyman minor-league vets, right near the top of the list for qualifying full-season minor league pitchers in general. He put up the same number a year ago in Kinston, so McFarland's figure this year was not anomalous. For such an extreme groundball pitcher, McFarland's K-rate (16.9% in A+, 17.5% in AA) is not bad, but he would certainly benefit from some improvement in his control (8.5% last year) which isn't bad, but given his style of pitching could be better. I can't get the numbers, but I would be interested in what kind of double-play rate McFarland experienced with Akron last year. McFarland had what was probably a decent defense behind him most of the time in Akron last year (particularly Kyle Bellows at 3B, but also Juan Diaz at SS and Karexon Sanchez/Cristo Arnal at 2B), so his overall performance probably benefited, but he still might be something of a sleeper to watch this season given his age and experience.

17.6% - Roberto Perez's BB-rate in Kinston, also good enough for the league lead among qualifying hitters. In Lake County in 2010, Perez put up a similar 17.2% BB-rate. Overall, Perez is not a good hitter. While he might take a lot of walks, his plate discipline is still undercut by a too high K-rate (22.4% last year) given his poor outcome on balls in play (.084 ISO last year, .225 BA despite a .304 BABIP, 54% groundballs). Nevertheless, fresh after being labeled the system's best defensive catcher by BA, Perez seems like a prototypical backup catcher. I am a little surprised we don't hear more about him and/or see the Indians handle his development a little more aggressively. He is currently taking part in the Indians winter development program in Cleveland, so maybe this is the year we see and hear more from him.

21% - LeVon Washington's listed line-drive percentage last year with Lake County, good for second in the Midwest League among qualified batters. I have no idea how good the ball-in-play scoring is across the minors, but this (along with Wash's 14.0% BB-rate) might be one of the few encouraging numbers from an otherwise dreadful debut season for the 2010 pick. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that given his LD%, LeVon got pretty unlucky on his balls-in-play, with a BABIP of .298 (compared to the other guys on the leaderboard, with BABIPs between .331 and .408).

30.4% - The K% for Toru (or Tooru) Murata in Kinston last season. Murata, 26, signed as a free-agent out of Japan last offseason (Tony has a nice writeup of this at IPI), so this was his debut season with the organization. Murata is too old to be a prospect in the traditional sense, but was a former high profile prospect in Japan. His strikeout numbers last year far exceeded anything he had put up in Japan and may reflect his mastery over the level of competition, but could also suggest the benefit of adjustments from the Indians staff. He also put up a near 6:1 KK/B ratio, a number that moved upward as the season went on. I would suspect the Indians will be more aggressive with Murata's placement and usage this season and could be another sleeper pitching prospect.

.365/34/6 - The on-base percentage, SB and CS for Kinston centerfielder, Tyler Holt. Holt, like Perez, was recognized by BA for his defensive prowess, earning the "best defensive outfielder" label in the recent Indians overview piece. Holt might be the best of the Indians speedy, no-pop centerfielders (e.g. Jordan Henry, Delvi Cid, Ezequiel Carrera). In his brief 2010 debut with Lake County he was able to use his speed to rack up decent power (.171 ISO) with 8 2Bs and 2 3Bs in just 89 plate appearances. Last year, in a full season of play he only managed 18 doubles, four triples and two homeruns. If he can improve those numbers a little, his defense, on-base abilities and speed might make him a guy worth watching.

Earlier this off-season I previewed the series of annual prospect overviews by pointing out that the Indians lists were likely to look quite bad:

I expect no one not drafted this season by the Indians to appear in prospect Top 100 lists. The past two years, of course, the Indians have graded out fairly well in the prospect world. Three factors contribute to the plummet you are likely to observe in the Indians standing.

1. Graduating top prospects to the majors

2. Trading top prospects

3. An underperforming crop of 2010 draftees

The Indians strengths lie in young talent at the major league level (i.e. Santana, Kipnis, Chisenhall), a reasonably well thought of 2011 draft class (particularly Francisco Lindor and Dillon Howard), the nascent potential of the under-performing, but also well though of, 2010 draft class (LeVon Washington, Tony Wolters...), and a wave of young talent just entering the system from Latin America (Elvis Araujo, Ronny Rodriguez...). Lesser acknowledged, but the Indians do have a rather large collection of potential major league worthy pitching arms (albeit not stars) in the upper minors. It is certainly possible these groups churn out an above-average number of major league players, some of them star-worthy. But we have very little in the way of actual performance at a professional level to evaluate most of them. Since I'm not a scout, and our prospect lists here have tended to be built out of performance, this poses a challenge. I would actually make an even stronger statement, and say that for most of the young guys in the system it would be nearly impossible to produce a reasonable projection for them outside of professionally scouting them yourself, something few outside the organization have probably done. So what follows is more of a 2012 viewers' guide to the system rather than a prospect rankings. I have evaluated players across the upper (AA-AA), lower (A-A+) and early (Rookie and below) levels of the system and put them into what I think are reasonable categorical tiers based on what we have to go on. The post that follows is long, but hopefully it will give you a little mid-winter warmth for your Indians fandom.

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Assuming there are no major changes to the Indians 40-man roster and likely opening day roster between now and April, I was curious to gameplan various lineup possibilities, including potential injury replacements. The starting lineups vs. RHP and LHP look much as they did at the close of last season.

Overall:

The Indians biggest need, shockingly, is a RH bat that can play the corners, LF and/or 1B in particular. It is difficult to evaluate the Indians' lineup given the number of players returning from significant injury, but IF IF IF healthy (emphasis on the IF), the opening day lineup should be above average, albeit more limited against LHP. The Indians would be wise to find potential upside candidates to stash in Columbus at the corner spots. More than recent years, the depth of the squad seems limited, meaning any combination of long-term injuries could create real problems.

Opening Day : Default vs. RHP

Average RC/9: 5.0 / 5.1

Don't pay much attention to the batting order, but do notice how dominated the lineup is by lefties.

Alternate 1: vs. LHP/backups

Average RC/9: 4.6 / 4.7

I didn't adjust the RC/9 numbers based on the pitching split, so this lineup is likely to be worse than the numbers suggest. Barring unexpectedly good health and outcomes from Hafner/Sizemore, we look like a lineup likely to struggle with LHP.

Alternate 2: Sizemore goes down

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The Angels commitment of more than $325M to just two players is only the latest reminder of what the Cleveland Indians lack - money. Bill Shaikin, of the LA Times, writes that the Angels' spending spree is built on the back of an anticipated new television deal with Fox Sports that will likely earn the team more than $100M a year in television royalties, far out-stripping the Rangers recent deal expected to earn the team $80M per year. In case you have forgotten, the Indians opening day payroll last year was less than $50M. It is impossible to imagine the Indians competing on a level ground with larger local markets given the disparity in size and value. I only see one solution - and fortunately it is one with several residual benefits - expand into the emerging market of India.

The organization has already named its major league franchise the "Indians" after all. Making a formal connection to India (a place with more than 1.2 billion Indians), seems, given the current circumstances, an obvious way forward. No longer would we, as Indians fan, have to operate under some false pretense that there is a good reason the franchise is called the Indians (of course this would likely be the end of Chief Wahoo, but I'm sure many adequate replacements would be available). But why India?

India's economy, since 2000 (years that have not been kind to Cleveland's economy), has averaged a quarterly GDP growth rate of 7.45%. The total Indian economy surpasses $2 trillion. To say this makes Cleveland look like small samosas is an extreme understatement. Additionally, India, with its emerging middle-class, has a huge satellite television industry. India has more than 35 million official direct-to-home subscribers, a number likely to grow even further in the years ahead. India represents a huge potential market for revenue enhancement for...the Indians.

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I have had an incipient feeling of dread regarding the Tribe's offseason. The reason, I believe, is a fear that the Indians might be entering into a cycle of mediocrity that is hard to escape. Think Toronto, which has sat between 75-87 wins every season except 2004 (67 wins) since 1998. Certain teams just seem to get stuck in the 75-86 win range - not terrible, but not really viable contenders - year in and year out, uncertain whether they are contending or rebuilding, but really just sputtering in the unproductive middle ground. There are a variety of paths that can lead to the mediocrity vortex, but for the Indians the path seems to have begun with the Ubaldo trade, leveraging the long-term future (i.e. Alex White, Drew Pomeranz) for the near-term future (Ubaldo 2011-2013). That move was a gamble, and one that you can mount a strong defense of. But the risk is that Ubaldo is not enough, the core around him is not enough, and that all the trade really did was put the Indians in the "close, but not quite" range of contention. And that would be fine if the Indians had resources to continue to push forward, but do they? We obviously aren't making major payroll additions, which eliminates free agency for us. After trading White and Pomeranz, and with injuries to the team's core veterans (Sizemore, Choo, Hafner), the team can't really afford to leverage much more in the way of young talent.

So the only real option that seems to remain is getting lucky with what we have. To be fair, it isn't really "luck." Lonnie Chisenhall, Jason Kipnis and most especially Carlos Santana, are all extremely talented young hitters. Justin Masterson's performance last season was a credit to the organization's belief that he could be a front-line starter (and his own work effort). Ubaldo has been an elite pitcher in the very recent past (+12 WAR in 2009-2010).

It just seems like the Indians really need all of that to come together for it to work. The injuries to Sizemore, Carrasco, Hafner and company have hugely thinned the Indians talent base. The failure to get adequate replacements in the Sabathia (LaPorta, Brantley) and Lee (Carrasco, Knapp) trades have added to this challenge. The question is whether the critical mass of talent in play for the organization over the next two seasons is enough? The Indians haven't been so terrible as to merit a spot in the true sweetspot of the draft, so no Bryce Harpers or Stephen Strasbourgs have come their way. And yet the organization lacks the funds to spend their way into contention. My fear is that we won't, under the current circumstances, have that opportunity until the next cresting wave...after we have traded away the hopefully productive young careers of Santana et al., bottomed out in a few nice draft picks, and then had time to develop the returns...in a decade.