With the signing of Casey Kotchman, Cleveland has finally made a move to patch over the black hole that was 1B in 2011. The Indians cumulative OPS at 1B last season was 763, about 30 points below league average. It appears the Indians have already decided to send Matt LaPorta back to Columbus, barring injuries anyway, and there's no reason to complain about that. However, it's at least worth diagnosing exactly how the Indians have upgraded the Cold Corner. I'm going to chart out the 2011 1B, plus Kotchman, both by their 2011 numbers and career numbers. Santana's numbers will be 1B-only, while I'll use total numbers of LaPorta (who was horrible as a DH/PH last season) and Duncan. For reference, the total AL split at first for 2011 was a .340/452 OBP/SLG with a 116 OPS+ and a 2.09 SO:BB.

2011:

Career:

Let's run through each player's profile.

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The Indians added Russ Canzler from the Rays today, acquiring him for cash and a willingness to throw him on the 40. Canzler will compete against Matt LaPorta and, probably to a lesser extent, the pile of LF'ers the Indians have (Felix Pie, Aaron Cunningham, and favorite in the clubhouse Michael Brantley) for time at 1B and LF.

Canzler was drafted out of high school in the 30th round of the 2004 draft by the Chicago Cubs. He never hit at anything close to a prospect-level until he was getting his second look at AA. That was too late for the Cubs, though. Teams get six contract renewals with a player before they are forced to either grant him free agency or add him to the 40-man roster. The Cubs used last offseason to tackle their 1B deficiency aggressively when they signed Carlos Peña, and that plan was certainly already being formed when they elected to let Canzler walk.

Similarly, the Rays must have known that Peña's contract demands were not going to fit within their budget when they entered the winter break and, as a result, they went looking for ways to bolster depth. The eventual solution came in the form of Casey Kotchman but earlier in the ofseason, in mid-November, they signed Canzler to a minor-league contract as a way to backstop their free agent shopping and gird against injury.

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Yesterday, Tigers owner Mike Ilitch announced that his team had signed Prince FIelder to a 9 year, 214 million dollar contract—for those wondering this means Fielder, if paid in $1 bills, is going to receive about 471,790 lbs of money, or about 1716 Prince Fielder's worth of money. Diversions aside, when Fielder's deal was announced there were heaps of praise served to Ilitch and, in some cases, Detroit fans:

#Tigers fans show up in droves despite terrible economy and owner rewards them by signing a star. That's how it's supposed to work.

-John Perrotto via Twitter

First, let's figure out if the claim that Tigers fans supported the team to an unusual extent is credible:

[Source]

Detroit went to the World Series in 2006, the last time they had made the playoffs before 2011. In that context, my cocked-head guess is that Detroit is supported almost exactly at the level we ought to expect. Detroit is something like the 12th largest metro area in the US and, by these rankings for radio market size, about the 11th largest market. Obviously, all of the markets ahead of Detroit have (at least) one baseball team, so it follows that the Tigers, if they don't absolutely poison the well, ought to be about the eleventh best supported team in an average year.

That term 'average year' probably isn't a particularly useful one, and we could anecdotally point out how bad the Detroit economy is, but there's not much of an argument here. The stronger argument would be if Detroit pulled a St. Louis, which consistently ranks much higher by attendance percentage than it does by market size.

Anyway, point being: Tigers' fans don't appear to have done anything particularly inspirational to push Illitch to this move, as Perrotto asserts with his imagined virtuous cycle. Tigers fans didn't show up at any greater rate than they had the previous few years, and, just as expected, fan interest had waned as the Tigers became farther removed from the playoffs. If someone wants to do a more complex analysis (and one is certainly justified), I'm happy to be proven wrong.

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Put together with the help of former serial commenter Tyler (fleerdon) and assists from Adam (APV) and Jay.

He thought hockey was stupid.

Refused to sign the petition to get Ron Gardenhire on the ballot as a candidate for judge in Hennepin County, citing Gardenhire's complete lack of experience with the law. When teammates told him that Gardenhire, "simply knows right from wrong", he was unmoved.

Could not be bullied into agreeing with Michael Cuddyer's assertion that "The restaurants in Northern Minnesota are as good as anywhere in the world" and "way better than anything in New York."

He was seen cutting a piece of the right field Metrodome Baggie to insulate his attic.

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I just went on a bit of a Twitter tear, provoked by the avalanche of falsified identity jokes that followed in the wake of the Fausto Carmona news. If you're living under a rock, Carmona's real name is apparently Roberto Hernandez-Heredia and he is actually 31, not 28. It doesn't take much to see how vitally important that downward shift in age was for his major league success—consider how he would've been viewed as a 25 year-old reliever in 2006, instead of as a 22 year-old reliever. There's a very real chance that he never would've even been considered for the rotation, which of course means he never would've earned his big contract, and a butterfly on a tree in the Amazon, etc. I'm sure someone will produce a nice piece of analysis on how this all informs Carmona's professional trajectory and I believe there's something interesting to be mined there.

That said, I don't want to touch on that. I want to simply point out what a shockingly cold bath this is for me, as it surfaces a lot of the strange feelings that come with having been lucky enough to be born on this continent, in this country, at this time in the world's history, to a certain kind of family. All of that simply adds up to privilege and access—the privilege to choose any sort of trajectory for myself, if I could show I could hack it, and access to a number of benefits that I never have cause to consider, like good food, healthcare, utilities, and the like.

Carmona, as was made evident when it was publicized that the Indians had financed dental work to help improve his nutrition, did not grow up in the kind of context. Here, in a blunt instrument sense, is the situation it seems Carmona faced: remain in 3rd-world poverty or falsify his identity, illegally, and give himself a much better chance of changing not only his own life but the lives of those around him. He chose the latter, and it worked out in spades. Did he make the smart choice? Did he make the ethical choice?

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Each year, the hot stove burst onto the scene with fans chattering and twittering about the possibilities—how our team could look better, smell better, act better, play better, be better. The momentum of cheering for actual baseball leaks across the margins and, for a few short weeks, we cheer for free agency as if it were baseball. Grady Sizemore re-signed? Fist pump. We took a pass on Josh Willingham? Anger, despair, arguments. There's rumors Michael Brantley will play first base? Go to Snow Days, climb into stands, try to order beer.

Then, at some point around the major Christian holiday, it becomes obvious that all of this is essentially boring and I just want it to end. If you look over there on the sidebar, you'll see the top story on Baseball Nation today is the retirement of Melvin Mora. I understand my faintly outlined responsibilities as a blogger; I do not intend to be subversive. I cannot, however, write seriously about the career of Melvin Mora. I cannot pretend like Melvin's farewell, or more speculation regarding the landing spot of Casey Kotchman, or a recap of Jose Lopez's winter ball statistics, is anything that a reasonable person wants to consider. We are all better off hitting the "Random Article" button on Wikipedia. I just did and I learned this about Hardtner, KS (poplation: 172)—

By 1908 the townspeople had realized that they would need a railroad line to the outside world in order to survive. The town's founder Jacob Achenbach, helped set up a company to build a line east to Kiowa. The line would have to cross the Santa Fe's tracks to link with the Missouri Pacific, the planned connection for Hardtner's line. The Santa Fe's Superintendent was not about to stand for that, so he had his private car block the spot where the lines would cross. A local got word to him that the Hardtner people had about 45 cowboys ready to "riddle his car with bullets" The Superintendent moved his car, and the line was completed.

Is anything that interesting happening this offseason? I doubt it. That doesn't matter, though—we'll sit and wait, like Catholics outside the Vatican searching for smoke, hoping Hoynes or Bastian will throw us a signal:

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I'm back after a week out of the country (spent largely internet-less) and nothing of serious note appears to have happened in Indians-land. There are a few more rumors and a few minor moves, though, so we might as well.

Josh Judy is no longer a Cleveland Indian. The Cincinnati Reds claimed Judy after the Indians removed him from the 40-man roster in favor of the newly acquired Aaron Cunningham. Judy has been moving through the Indians farm system since being drafted in the 34th round in 2007. The right hander is a career reliever and he's moved up the chain more or less in the order you'd expect, finally making his (poor) major league debut last season. As a 25 year old career reliever with no significant major league experience, it was no great surprise that Judy was the first to be shown the door when the walls began to close on the back of the 40. However, that doesn't mean he didn't have his boosters. Lastoria has always liked Judy and had tagged him for a possible 2012 breakout in the mold of Pestano. That doesn't seem all that far-fetched—Judy has real stuff, with a fastball that can touch the mid-90s, but the reality is that most relievers in the "AAA depth" pile that Josh calls home never amount to much.

However, Lastoria is also correct to point out that this makes Cunningham's real price tag Corey Burns and Josh Judy and that this could all look pretty stupid if Cunningham can't make the roster and is lost on waivers. We'll wait until that actually happens to consider our misery, though. For now, the Indians have seen a couple of semi-interesting arms walk away in exchange for a semi-interesting bat at a position of far greater need.

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Let's get the first one out of the way—I'm sure you're all pretty familiar with Jose Lopez. Lopez was once an interesting little player for Seattle, hitting a combined 42 homeruns as the M's second baseman in 2008 and 2009. He was never much of a hitter and when his bat fell of in 2010, the fall wasn't pretty. Lopez OPS'd 611 in 2010 and 2011 as he dragged his cold, dying bat from the Mariners to the Rockies and then, to end last season, to the Marlins.

Lopez is, charitably, a utility infielder but his major league career is on life support at this point. As a result, he's not competing for utility innings in any realistic sense—the Indians are already stocked with Cord Phelps, Jason Donald, and Jack Hannahan, so they're pretty flush with backups at Lopez's "best" positions of 2B and 3B. Instead, as sometimes happens with players in decline, he's going to be asked to play a position that wouldn't have made sense for him even at his peak. Lopez will almost certainly try to offer the Indians a right-handed option at 1B, where he played a tad as a Marlin last season. This is going to be quite a trick if Lopez pulls it off—at his very best, he barely had enough bat for 2B so 1B is a stretch, to say the least. This isn't a case of a square peg in a round hole, it's a case of a small peg in a big hole. Still, he's right-handed, so he'll get a shot. I'll be surprised if he makes it to Cleveland this season.

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LeVon Washington was the 55th overall pick in the 2010 draft, and the Indians paid significantly overslot to procure his services. Thus far, Washington has struggled as a player. On the other hand, he's shown himself to be an 80-grade personality and, especially, Twitter-user. All Levon Washington quotes are real.

PASSERBY #1

That man, there in the baseball uniform—is he hurt?

PASSERBY #2

Oh, oh no. He doesn't appear to be breathing. Oh my god.

PASSERBY #1

I'm a doctor but even I am helpless in the face of fate. Hand me your coat so we can cover his face.

LEVON WASHINGTON

YALL GOTTA WAKE ME UP BY STICKING SKITTLES DOWN MY THROAT

[PASSERSBY hang mouths open in shock]

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It's become totally clear that the Indians are out on Josh Willingham (who is, as I'm writing this at 10:30 pm on 12/13, very close to being a Twin) and were never in on Michael Cuddyer. There are still other options floating around but most of the unsigned players carry significant contract demands (Carlos Beltran), significant performance concerns (Casey Kotchman), or significant baggage (Manny Ramirez). The Indians may still be in on a player from the latter two categories but, more and more, there seems to be a chance the Indians will either make a trade or enter the season with the roster more or less as-is and try to make a move if the team contends.

Zack Meisel, Jordan Bastian's second in command, has been making this point in various ways over the last few days:

For a reasonable price, there are really no FA options that would provide Tribe an upgrade. Might as well save $ for in-season acquisition.

Indians contended last year before hit hard w/ injuries. They're hoping for similar start, and another Ubaldo-like add to put them over top.

Again, I'm using logic to give you organizational standpoint, not my own opinion. But the FA market is barren and overpriced. Few gems.

I'd quibble with the idea that the free agent market is 'overpriced', only in the sense that I don't think it's relatively overpriced to its history. The free agent market is a difficult way to acquire talent on the cheap—you go seriously into the free agent market because you're ready to swing a big money stick and acquire guys that are close to proven commodities. This is, more or less, the approach of the Tigers, the Red Sox, the Yankees, and their ilk. It's certainly not a foolproof strategy but it's even more certainly not a strategy built on financial efficiency. It is, after all, an open bidding market.

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MLB Trade Rumors did a nice job compiling all the NL and AL Non-Tender decisions. You can see all the decisions in their Tender Tracker. From their sources, here's the complete list of newly minted free agents. In the interest of attribution, I've used the player's name to link to the source MLBTR listed; if no source was provided, I assume that the links above to the MLBTR lists are the correct place to credit. Complete list after the jump.

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Last night was the deadline for the Indians to offer contracts, and they did so to all the unsigned players on the 40 man roster. This includes the 7 arbitration eligible players—Chris Perez, Rafael Perez, Justin Masterson, Jack Hannahan, Asdrubal Cabrera, Shin-Soo Choo, and Joe Smith. This means, in the simplest terms, that these players will be back with the Indians next season. As for how much they'll be paid, the Indians will exchange salaries with the players by 1/18 and attempt to negotiate a deal; if they're unable to come to terms with any player, the team will head to arbitration where a supposedly impartial arbitrator (get it?) will determine a fair rate of pay.

As we mention every year, the Indians haven't gone to arbitration since 1991. That's almost certainly a decided upon tactic, as arbitration hearings can be acrimonious. Also, I assume it's a big waste of time to prepare all the arbitration documents and arguments. Bastian has been all over this, both on Twitter and his blog. Last night, he tweeted the arb-eligible players and their 2011 salaries, which will serve as baselines for their 2012 salaries.

CLE arbeligibles: Choo (3.975M in '11), CPerez (2.225M), Cabrera (2.025M), RPerez (1.33M), Smith (870K), Hannahan (500K), Masterson (468K).

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