I was looking up the publication date of the Indians' Top Ten and Best Tools lists on Baseball America earlier this week (January 6th, if you care) when it occurred to me: Do we really need BA for this anymore? Not "we" as in, "all of BA's potential readers"; "we" as in, Indians fans who followed the last two seasons closely (and God help us for it).

I mean, what does that article really consist of, anyway? There's that run-down of the organization's previous season. Does anybody really want to read a run-down of 2009? If you do, allow me to distill it, right now, to its essential words and phrases: "...continued disappointment...scatter-shot approach to starting rotation...commitment to Kerry Wood?...bit once again by the injury bug...payroll directives from ownership...blockbuster trades...questions about value of returns...depth, if not necessarily star power...Brad Grant." And there's five minutes of your life back.

What else do we have to look forward to? The Top Ten list? Well, look, it's not going to mean anything. We have a blindingly obvious number one prospect. You could defensibly put the next seven guys in any order, really. And as for numbers eight, nine, and ten -- well, we've got at least six of them. Take your pick.

That leaves you with two entertaining, if not all that useful, items: the Best Tools list and the Projected 2013 lineup. I respect the BA analysts and everything, but I suspect they're mainly working off word of mouth and conjecture. If those are your sources, then wouldn't it be better to get some more heads involved?

Knowing that, why wait for BA to bore and misinform us? Why not bore and misinform ourselves? I'm proposing the Pre-Emptive Let's Go Tribe BA-esque Top Ten Prospects 2010 Article Thingy (Which Includes Neither An Article Nor A Top Ten List). I'll start the festivities. Submit your own candidates, and maybe, by consensus, we'll be able to draw some of our own conclusions about the state of the organization.

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More photos » by Andy King - AP

IN TONIGHT'S EPISODE: Did Michael Aubrey do too much stretching with his wife, or too little?

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This is the fourth installment in a 12-part series.

The Indians are four days from finishing a second straight season of no significant injuries to a starting pitcher. In the age of multimillion dollar salaries and exploding offenses, it is a significant achievement. Pitching coach Carl Willis immediately turned and knocked on his wooden locker. He then credited the pitchers for buying into what the training staff has preached, and also credited head trainer Lonnie Soloff and strength coach Tim Maxey for being proactive.

Priestle, Scott. "Starting pitchers free of major injuries."
Akron Beacon-Journal, 28 September 2006.

Ah, to be young.

Three years later, do we still believe that the Indians medical staff is all that and a bag of bosu balls? How do we account for that stretch of seeming medical invincibility in the mid-aughts, in light of more recent, less encouraging developments? Was it an unusually young team that slid off the back of the treadmill of time? Have the team's strength and conditioning methods changed for the worse? Or was it merely a run of preternatural good luck, and now the injuries have returned, like Fate in the Final Destination movies, to finish that which was left undone?

Objective analysis of these questions is just this side of impossible. Professional athletes, by definition, can generate physical forces at the extremes of human capability, but few are blessed with the durability to withstand those forces indefinitely. Baseball players, especially, must subject themselves to a brutally long season, and the stress of the sport is borne disproportionately by their dominant-side joints. Add to that the average MLB player's miserable diet, hard-partying lifestyle, and hectic travel schedule, and you have to wonder if the Indians' preference for "high-character" guys is little more than a pretense for choosing players who are, at a minimum, not of a disposition to wreck themselves.

Mind you, baseball is somewhat famously mired in the Dark Ages of fitness. It's a game decided by explosive movements and a short series of 90-foot sprints, but slow bodybuilding-style weightlifting and plodding long-distance runs are still common training protocols. I once was talking to a friend-of-a-friend who had pitched through high-A ball with the Braves before he bowed out with a bad shoulder. "What was your training regimen like?" I asked. He scoffed -- really, he scoffed. "I went back and trained with my college coach in the off-seasons," he said. "You gotta remember, it's such a long season, and the team invests so much in you. Most guys lift like idiots, and what the team wants more than anything is for you not to get hurt."

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My baseball card collecting career lasted from about 1989 to 1994. Save for some oddities -- I seem to have every stage of Chet Lemon's career covered -- it's a thoroughly unremarkable collection of maybe a few hundred cards. I remember listening to my dad waxing nostalgic over the jaw-dropping value his childhood card collection might've attained had my grandmother not pitched the thing sometime in the late '60s, or if he hadn't stuck many of the '59 Yankees through the spokes of his bicycle wheel. So I diligently saved up my pocket change, pestering my mom for a pack of cards on a grocery store trip every few months.

It didn't take a college-level understanding of economics ("What the hell is a revenue curve?") to realize that EVERYBODY had heard my dad's story, or a similar one, which meant that baseball cards would never again be so valuable. And it only took one trip to a professional trade shop to understand that serious baseball card hobbyists were grown-ups with disposable income. Beyond the finances of the thing, though, I wanted to PLAY with my cards. I didn't really care how a spirited game of dice baseball would affect the quality ranking of my '91 Fleer Nelson Santovenia; even then, in fact, I didn't care who Nelson Santovenia was.

Life moved on; girls grew curves; my binder and my plastic display cases were relegated to a back shelf, where they turned into, like, a rain gauge, but for dust. Even after I moved back home for grad school, I hardly ever noticed the baseball cards, until this afternoon, when I turned my room upside-down in a mildly successful attempt to fell less unemployed.

There are a few jems in there -- a "coming attractions" card featuring Jeter in AA, a prime-of-life Bo Jackson, an early Griffey, Jr. The whole kit and kaboodle might net me a C-note or two if I took the time to organize and sell the cards individually, though I doubt it's worth the effort. Mostly it was fun for me to pick out names that ring a bell for me now -- I know these guys as grey-bearded utility players, as broadcasters, as fathers of current players ("Hey, it's Jesse Barfield!"), and as coaches. There's a bittersweet delight in seeing them when they were my age.

As ever, my interest lies mainly with the Indians. I stopped worrying about fake baseball about the time that I started worrying about real baseball in earnest. I have 15 Indians baseball cards, and for me, they encapsulate the team as it existed just before I became aware of it. Curious about the seasons these cards represented, I took some time to read up on them. Here's what I learned.

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1991 Fleer Jerry Browne
Value: $2.25

Browne was ostensibly just hitting his prime in 1991. At 25, he had just had two above-average years after coming over from the Rangers, demonstrating a good eye at the plate and enough speed to leg out doubles. As it turned out, that WAS his prime. He would collect only 334 miserable plate appearances in 1991. Browne resurfaced with the A's as a reasonably useful utility player, but he was never a regular again, and his last MLB plate appearance came in 1995 with the Marlins as a 29-year-old. Browne now works as a minor league hitting coach in the Nationals system.

1989 Topps Greg Swindell
Value: $1.83

On the surface, it looks like Swindell backpedalled a bit in 1989 from his 240+ inning 1988. At 24, he would make his first and only All-Star Game appearance, but his innings total fell off, and his walk-rate slid up to 2.5. Things got worse before they got better for Swindell: After an 89 ERA+ performance in 1990, he had what was probably his career year in 1991, his last year with the Indians. He worked as a starter for four more years before re-inventing himself as a lefty reliever. He had a nice late-career surge with the Diamondbacks (IN...THE...), finally getting a ring in 2001 before falling apart the next year. These days, Swindell's working as a post-game analyst for FSN Arizona.

1989 Topps Julio Franco
Value: $1.75

Surely there's little I can say about Julio that hasn't been said elsewhere, not least by Ryan in his much-missed retrospectives. 1989 was a good year for him: His first in Texas, and the first in which he would work exclusively on the right side of the infield.

1991 Fleer Sandy Alomar Jr.
Value: $2.25

1991 Donruss Sandy Alomar Jr.
Value: $2.06

I remember Sandy from his healthiest three-year stretch, 1996-1998, the only years in his career when he put up more than 400 PA in back-to-back-to-back seasons (at ages 32, 33, and 34 ... maybe it WAS time to trade Victor). In 1991, though, fresh off his Rookie of the Year performance, Sandy struggled to stay on the field, and didn't do much while he was there, posting a 47 OPS+ through 199 plate appearances.

1991 Charles Nagy
Value: $1.98

The Tribe's (low-ceiling!) first-round pick from 1988, Nagy would have his first full major league season in 1991, making 33 starts. He did a nice job keeping the ball in the park, but he struck out a Jason Stanfordian 4.6 batters per nine, which summed out to a thoroughly average rookie season. Nagy found his stride a year later, the start of a nice five-year run marked by good control and insane run support. I'm surprised to remember that Nagy pitched into his mid-30s, especially since the air really seemed to go out of his career around the turn of the century. Nagy is currently self-employed in antagonizing Rick Manning.

1990 Tom Candiotti
Value: $2.74

Candiotti did two things well: Throw lots of innings (he had 17 complete games in 1986), and prevent home runs. In that sense, 1990 was a perfectly ordinary age-30 season for him. Of course, "ordinary" is a difficult-to-define word when you're talking about a 15-year, 5-team career.

1993 Paul Sorrento
Value: $0.48 :(

I guess I used to think of Ben Broussard as a reasonably valuable left-handed first baseman (who then played for the Mariners) because I equated him, for whatever reason, with Paul Sorrento -- a reasonably valuable left-handed first baseman (who later played for the Mariners). 1993 was the third year of Sorrento's seven-year peak. His average fell off, but he still got on base at a .340 clip and put 18 in the seats. Sorrento went to the Mariners in 1996 and played good baseball through his career year, 1997, at age 31. Wikipedia tells me Sorrento's currently coaching a "select baseball team" in Bellevue, Washington. Whatever that means.

1991 Topps Kevin Wickander
Value: $1.88

A few of these names perplexed me, but none more than Wickander. A 1986 Indians draftee (ceiling = ?), he had pitched in parts of 12 games with the Tribe during the 1989 and 1990 seasons. He would pitch in parts of zero games with the Tribe during the 1991 season. It seems like he had good stuff, but serious, serious control problems. After stints with the Reds and the Tigers, his professional baseball career ended with the Brewers in 1996. Relievers: so it goes. If some kid pulls out a 2006 Topps Ed Mujica in 2027, he'll know how I feel.

1989 Donruss Bud Black
Value: $2.26

Nobody actually cares, right? It was Bud Black. I would pay somebody $2.26 not to have to write 100 words about Bud Black. Great schnozz, though.

1993 Topps Mark Whiten
Value: $1.54

Whiten became a Cardinal shortly after this card was printed. A toolsy switch-hitting outfielder, Whiten kept getting chances, but the 626 plate appearances he made in 1993 were far and away the most he would make in any one season of his career. Wikipedia says Whiten pitched one inning, in his late-career return to the Tribe, versus the A's, in 1998. His career pitching line is 1 H, 1 R, 2 BB ... and 3 K, giving him a career K/9 of 27.

1990 Fleer Andy Allanson
Value: $2.05

The Indians drafted Allanson in 1983. I will concede this was a low-ceiling pick. The Tribe was the only team that ever used him as anything more than a back-up. Allanson's last major league at-bat took place in 1995.

1990 Fleer John Farrell
Value: $1.98

They say great players cannot coach. I have very high hopes for the coaching career of John Farrell.

1991 Fleer Dion James

Value: $2.25

James was a high-ceiling first-round prep pick (being serious here) by the Brewers in 1985. He was traded to the Indians for (former high-ceiling first-round pick) Oddibe MacDowell in 1989. He lasted two seasons in Cleveland, sort of, barely hitting enough to pass as a fourth outfielder (on any team but the 1991 Cleveland Indians, that is). James ended his career as a reserve player for the Yankees in 1996.

1. John Meloan is not helping his cause or ours...

On a 40-man roster this shell-shocked, it's hard to muster up a complaint about any one given minor leaguer. But it's telling that the Indians turned to journeyman relievers before the young and (presumably) healthy Meloan, whose 2009 was supposed to be a dramatic return to form, since he'd been decoupled from the starting duties to which the Dodgers had so irrationally shackled him. As it turns out, the problem may have more to do with John Meloan, and less to do with how John Meloan's being used. Take a look at his numbers since he left L.A. (as a starter) and came to Cleveland (as a reliever).

YEAR (TEAM): AVG / WHIP / FIP / LD%
2008 (LAD): .285 / 1.66 / 4.31 / 19.0%
2008 (CLE): .235 / 1.43 / 4.43 / 16.7%
2009 (CLE): .293 / 1.57 / 4.61 / 27.0%

Whatever's gone wrong with John since his standout 2007 season, moving him back to the 'pen doesn't appear to have fixed it. It's especially frustrating because even a modicum of effectiveness probably would have earned him a call-up by now.

2. Michael Brantley might be better than Trevor Crowe right now

Lost among the commentary about Brantley's rocky AAA debut was the fact that he kept getting good wood on the ball -- a LD% over 20% in April and May, and nearly that so far in June. As his discipline has caught up to the level of the competition (BB:K in April, May, and June: 7:14, 15:14, 6:4), Brantley's become a legitimate threat at the plate, not to mention a Net-demon on the basepaths, stealing 20 and only being caught twice. If Brantley's June level of performance is what he's really capable of, Sackmann's MLE predicts a Major League OPS in the mid-700s.

Should Grady's elbow turn out to need a good ol'-fashioned athroscropic scopin', the Indians will have some tough choices to make regarding the outfield. Obviously they could replace Francisco with LaPorta, but that still leaves a significant offensive hole in center, barring a turn-around from Trevor Crowe. The front office would have a number of reasons not to add Brantley to the 25-man -- not the least of which would be that he also would have to be added to the 40-man -- but doubts about Brantley's capabilities probably won't be one of those reasons.

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