Counting Down the Worst Cleveland Browns Christmas Gifts – #7
December 12, 2013The Strong Safety
December 12, 2013As MLB’s Winter Meetings wind down, the Indians have been mentioned as possible landing spots for two free agent pitchers. According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, Cleveland is one of five teams likely to land reliever Joaquin Benoit, whose closer role in Detroit will likely be subsumed by Joe Nathan in 2014.
Sources: Teams believe reliever Joaquin Benoit's likeliest destinations are Cleveland, San Diego, Seattle, Chicago Cubs or New York Yankees.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 12, 2013
Meanwhile, Jasyon Stark of ESPN notes that the Indians are one of three teams showing particular interest in starter Shawn Marcum.
#Indians, #Royals & #Rangers among teams showing interest in Shaun Marcum. Recovering well after Thoracic Outlet Syndrome surgery
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) December 12, 2013
Marcum is coming off a rather severe injury that significantly limited his performance in 2013 with the New York Mets, but could represent the sort of “bounce back” rotation role that Scott Kazmir personified last season.
More if/when/as this develops.
11 Comments
I’ve seen lots of these ‘possible landing spot’ posts as these guys land elsewhere aka Brett Anderson. Meanwhile we’re leaking talent like a sieve. This isn’t inspiring much confidence in me for 2014.
Kazmir & Joe Smith are the only 2 guys who have signed elsewhere (and I think we can all agree that Perez isn’t walking back through those doors).
We have signed David Murphy.
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Honestly, I think the only key guys that are FAs for us this offseason are Ubaldo and Joe Smith. Kazmir (and Albers if he signs elsewhere) are very replaceable though are hits. So, we lost out on one of those key guys. We might lose out on Ubaldo (likely, but you never know how much the market gets dampened by the compensation).
Ok ok….so maybe that is my knee jerk reaction to being linked to but ultimately not landing big name guys. I was hoping they would come out of the winter meetings with more to show than this.
it’s been a slow offseason.
SP market apparently is waiting out the Price deal before moving forward. I don’t think we are in for the top guys there, but few of the 2nd & 3rd tier guys are going to sign before the big-boy contracts get doled out.
it is definitely frustrating as I also think the compensatory picks have slowed the pace the last 2 years. it used to be that we’d see a flurry of activity for the holidays.
Replay of the 2007 off season… we get to the playoffs and get close to going deep and the off-season, the front office sits on their hands and doesn’t tweak anything. 2008 blows.
granted it is early yet, but thus far consider me pessimistic. our last season with masterson and asdrocab – might as well take some chances. we made the playoffs last year – dropping our #2 and #3 starter, set up man and closer – 2014 looking more like it is going to be 2008 redux.
The Dolans blew their tv station money a year ago this is what I expected. Meanwhile Seattle’s $2 billion tv market deal has them spending like Leonardo DiCaprio at a Victoria’s Secret Model audition.
SP is waiting for the Tanaka deal.
we dropped our #3 starter???
I didn’t realize we dropped Kluber!!! Oh, not him, whew.
I didn’t realize we dropped Salazar!!! Oh, not him, whew.
Kazmir was our #5 starter in terms of bWAR barely ahead of McAllister.
the payroll is already at last year’s level w/o signing anyone due to the raises in salary of existing players.
Like I said the Dolans blew their wad a year ago.
2008 was a frustrating year because both Hafner, Martinez, and Westbrook got hurt, Sabathia stunk early, and the bullpen, crapshoot that it is, had issues. I’m not sure anyone was clamoring for a bullpen remake, a #7 starter, or spending even more money at DH, but thats what they needed.