MLB Playoff

Hot Offseason Action: Cleveland Indians

This is one in a series of posts in which we denigrate each team for their flummoxing offseason gaffes, or flatter them for their perspicacious pre-season tactics.

Over the last 20 years, baseball has seen only two teams repeat as World Series champions. The 1992-1993 Toronto Blue Jays, and the mighty New York Yankees of the late 90s. Both of these franchises ensured their return to the promised land by assembling a powerful line-up complimented with pitching and defense. But although that’s the goal for every single team every offseason, so few World Series winners have been able to replicate their success the following year.

So what does it say when a team that missed going to the World Series by a single game, effectively decides to play it safe and field 99% of the same team it fielded the year before? That’s like earning a big fat bonus at the end of the year, only to pad your mattress with it, and that’s exactly what the 2008 Cleveland Indians have done.

Back in January, when we here at UmpBump were contemplating what each team still needed in order to make this offseason a productive one, I was at a loss. The Indiands had barely made any moves in the transaction list, signing Japanese reliever Masahide Kobayashi (no, not that Kobayashi, though you wonder what kind of impact it would have on the OPS), trading for infielder Jamey Carroll and signing Brendan Donnelly to a minor league deal.

And what has changed since? They’ve signed Jorge Julio to another minor league deal.

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