What Should Bob Bradley’s Future Be?
June 28, 2010Brandon Phillips Trade Continues to Haunt Cleveland
June 28, 2010
Now that Russell Branyan is no longer a Cleveland Indian (and Ezequiel Carrera and Juan Diaz are), we’re left trying to evaluate the Russ-Bus’s third stint with the team. What, exactly, was his organizational purpose , and to what degree did he achieve it? Whyd did we sign him in the first place, and why did we turn around and trade him before July? Let’s try to sort through some positives and negatives that that resulted from his brief 2010 tenure to determine, in hindsight, what this signing meant for the Indians.
Pro: Branyan hit 10 HR and led the team in slugging percentage.
Con: He prevented Matt LaPorta from getting regular time at 1B, stunting his development.
Pro: Matt LaPorta may have begun the season injured, so Branyan served as a stopgap.
Con: Usually, stopgaps for injured players are healthy; Branyan started the season on the DL.
Pro: Added a veteran presence to an otherwise young and inexperienced team.
Con: That “veteran presence” too often appeared to be disinterested in actually competing. Branyan did not epitomize effort or hustle, and between him and Peralta, our veterans often looked like they’d rather be knitting scarves than playing baseball for the Indians.
Pro: We traded Branyan for prospects at the (probable) height of his value.
Con: None of those prospects are considered “impact players”; the front office thinks they have “upside”, but that’s typically a nice way of saying that they’ll be organizational filler.
Pro: The team only paid Branyan about $600,000 for his time this year; that’s not very expensive for a middle of the order bat.
Con: If the Mariners buy him out at the end of the season, the Indians have to pay the $750,000 buy-out.
Pro: So worst-case scenario, the Indians pay $1.15 million for 3 months of Branyan plus two mid-level prospects: a fairly cost-effective approach to adding depth to the system and allowing LaPorta some extra time to get his bat going.
Con: The Branyan signing killed LaPorta’s confidence—causing him to get off to an awful start.
Pro: The Branyan signing led to LaPorta’s demotion to AAA, where he excelled, had a fire lit under his butt, et cetera.
Con: Branyan was a serious public relations disaster; that signing exemplified to the fans that this team wasn’t going all-in on the young kids, and it allowed people to claim that the front office had missed on the Sabathia Trade (both LaPorta and Brantley were impacted by Branyan’s roster spot).
Pro: Stopgaps like Branyan are often forgotten, so the PR disaster won’t last. How many people are still angry that Josh Bard was the starting catcher in 2003, even though Victor Martinez was hitting the snot out of the ball in AAA? Fans forget these things, and are eventually happy if such a decision helps a team control a player for an extra year on the back end.
My take is that the Branyan signing (and eventual trade) served its purpose for this club. I don’t believe LaPorta was healthy at the beginning of the season and that was borne out by his early numbers. I also think that there’s some real danger in going with all young players for an entire season. Most rookies (Santana aside) go through some struggles as they adjust to MLB, and it seems unwise to have no alternatives during a 162-game season. Further, I think that for a rebuilding team, it’s wise (and cheap) to add young talent via mid-season trades: right now, the Indians are shopping Austin Kearns to contending teams in need of outfielders (Boston comes to mind), while Jake Westbrook or, to a lesser degree, Kerry Wood are auditioning for pitching-starved contenders. Shapiro has a good deal of success finding other teams’ minor league talent for marginal MLB players—Ben Broussard, Eduardo Perez, Einar Diaz, etc. So while I don’t believe we’ll get impact players from these trades, they might get one or two pieces that will eventually help in some way.
That’s my take anyway, but what say you? Was the Branyan experiment worth it, or is this just another mistake by a front office that’s taken a team from contention to disaster in three short years? Sound off below.
15 Comments
I didn’t like the Branyan signing at the time, but I don’t see how it can really be construed as a mistake.
as you noted, at most, $1.15mil for 2 mid-level prospects. pretty cheap considering the other high-priced mistakes we’ve made (Hafner, Wood, Westbrook*)
*only due to injuries, but still hurt
Wait, Branyan got traded? And we got something for him? I think he worked out great.
Pro: It gave us that most excellent ISO shot that we get to crop into other images.
Holy proofreading, Batman!
Pro: The Branyan signing gave Indians fans a cheap, neutral lightning rod and probably saved Jhonny Peralta from getting pounded worse by the fans.
Con: Jhonny Peralta was saved from getting pounded worse by the fans.
Overall, no harm, no foul. The Indians got a couple players and it isn’t like he was the difference between contending and not. All in all, nothing matters in a year this bad.
We should have traded them straight up for Jay Buehner.
Clearly, Shapiro and Antonetti view taking middling guys and trading them to Seattle for perceived-cast-offs-who-then-turn-into-players as a “lather-rinse-repeat” way to build a club.
Everyone is kidding themselves. Branyan is not gone. He’s never gone.
if Branyan gets bought out this fall, how quickly do you think it will take Shapiro to call him so we can trade him back to Seattle next June?
or do we wait until July next year?
Russ did not take away LaPorta’s at bats. The combination of Kearns playing well and LaPorta’s slow start did it. The plan by the tribe was to play LaPorta as the everyday LF and Russ at 1b everyday amd keep Brantley down. Then come July, the tribe would trade Russ for prospects, move Laporta to 1b and call up Brantley and Santana. But the tribe had to play kearns because he was ranking and it did not make sense sit LaPorta on the bench.
How many middle infielders have the Indians traded for now, anyone know?
in the 116 year history?
I said at the begining of the season. Russ was here for a specific reason, and that was to indirectly help LaPorta. The team needed some veteran presence and somebody to back-up LaPorta if he failed to hit.
Truth of the matter is those two should have stayed down at the begnining of the season with Santana. That would have been more helpful.
@12 In Shapiro’s tenure of course.
If Matt LaPorta is the future at first base for the Indians, which I fully believe he is, why are we planning to work Santana out at first base next spring? Will we give Santana “days off” by putting him at first? Where does LaPorta go? To left field? If LaPorta goes to left field, where does Brantley go (assuming he is in the majors by the time this is all taking place)? To center field? To right field? If Brantley goes to center field, which is occupied by Grady Sizemore, or right field, which is occupied by Choo, where do they go? That leaves us with an interesting quandary, who sits? Brantley, the supposed leadoff hitter of the future, LaPorta, the middle-of-the-lineup power-hitting first baseman of the future, Sizemore, the most popular player on the team, Choo, the acknowledged best all-around player on the team right now, or Santana, the REAL best all-around player on the team right now even though he’s only been in the majors for a couple of weeks?
What I believe is that this is all being planned with the assumption that Sizemore is not long for Cleveland. That won’t totally break my heart, as I think he has been overrated thanks to one really good season and his popularity, but I think he can be a piece on a championship team. He’s a good teammate by all accounts. He plays phenomenal defense, though his arm is not as strong as it could be. His batting average needs to get north of .285, but his power numbers will be helped by a drop to the middle of the order.
Where do you see this headed?