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January 26, 2015The Cleveland Indians have a pretty crowded outfield picture entering the 2015 season. But rumors circulated at the end of last week about their interest in yet another guy to add to the organizational depth.
MASN’s Rich Kubatko tweeted on Friday that Cleveland is interested in signing free agent outfielder Nolan Reimold, the former long-time Baltimore Oriole. Reimold, 31, was injured in most of 2014 and then spent time with the Toronto and Arizona organizations. A Reimold deal obviously would be for a minor league contract with a spring training invite.
In his MLB career spanning 315 games, the right-handed hitting Reimold has a .251/.324/.439 batting line with 47 doubles and 44 homers. He has appeared in only 85 major-league games over the last three seasons. Last year, be battled a neck injury, was claimed off waivers by Toronto in early July and then claimed off waivers by Arizona in late August.
On Sunday, MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian wrote about how incumbent right fielder David Murphy is already likely to see a decrease in playing time this season. The acquisition of Brandon Moss, hopeful health of Nick Swisher and continuing presence of Ryan Raburn, Michael Bourn and MVP finalist Michael Brantley leads to a crowded — and quite expensive — outfield picture. Both Moss and Swisher are aiming to be ready by Opening Day.
“I think everybody can logically see that there’s only so many spots out there for so many players,” Murphy said to MLB.com. “I’m prepared to lose playing time, but not to the point where I’m going to get 150 at-bats. If that’s the case, and that’s the best-case scenario for them and for me, I’m open to [a trade]. But I feel like this team has a great chance to win, and for that reason, I would love to be here.”
Tyler Holt, who played 36 games down the stretch last season, and Carlos Moncrief are the other two outfielders on the 40-man roster. Young Zach Walters, who also played a few games in the outfield, is still around and the Indians already signed Tampa Bay’s Jerry Sands to a spring training invite.
7 Comments
Just what this team needed! More outfielders to add the platoon, although I guess with as many as they have it is more like a full blown division than a platoon.
Ummm, I don’t think Reimold would be an issue you’d have to factor in unless we traded some assets away.
Murphy said to MLB.com. “I’m prepared to lose playing time, but not to the point where I’m going to get 150 at-bats.
Well, with the injury histories of the other OFers, it should not be an issue.
Yeah, just injury protection and/or organizational depth.
YES! I have absolutely loved what this guy does when he’s been healthy. This is a great lottery ticket to have – he needs to get lucky one of these years and have a full healthy season…..when it happens, look out – he is a force as a hitter.
Absolutely in the wheelhouse of the Shapiro/Antonetti off-season procedures: throw some rehabbing, formerly productive guys at the wall, one year contract but a shot at redemption. Even if it works with just 10-20% of the guys, tribe usually gets at least one productive, incentivized player way below market value, and the guy cashes in next year elsewhere.
As long as the “john” doesn’t fall in love (*cough* Raburn) nobody gets hurt, nobody’s confused, win-win.
Gonna go with three infielders and four outfielders. Francona is pulling a Maddon on all ya’ll!