Archive for October, 2011

Turns out declining Grady Sizemore‘s 2012 option and picking up Fausto Carmona‘s aren’t the biggest news to come out of the Indians front office today: Cleveland has acquired starting pitcher Derek Lowe from the Atlanta Braves. The Indians sent pitching prospect Chris Jones to Atlanta for Lowe and $10 million to cover two-thirds of his 2012 salary. The Indians will owe him $5 million of his $15 million salary next year. Lowe, 38, is entering the final year of the four-year, $60 million contract he signed in 2009. He went 9-17 with a 5.05 ERA (3.75 SIERA) this season with [...]

The Cleveland Indians have declined center fielder Grady Sizemore‘s $9 million option for 2012, according to the Plain Dealer‘s Paul Hoynes. Sizemore, who is now a free agent, is still owed a $500,000 buyout. The Indians have exclusive rights to negotiate a new contract with Sizemore, 29, until midnight Thursday morning, at which point the other 29 teams can begin to negotiate with him (already a hot topic of discussion). Sizemore does not qualify as a Type A or B free agent, so even if Cleveland would be willing to risk offering him arbitration he wouldn’t net the team compensation draft [...]

The Cleveland Indians have exercised their 2012 option for Fausto Carmona, according to the Plain Dealer‘s Paul Hoynes. Carmona, 27, also has team options for 2013 and 2014 worth $9 million and $12 million, respectively. He would have been eligible for salary arbitration had the Indians decided to decline his option but still keep him on the team. Carmona has had a tumultuous career, which is why it wasn’t obvious what the Indians would end up deciding.

Three Cleveland Indians officially filed for free agency today, according to a press release from the MLB Players Association. Jim Thome, Kosuke Fukudome, and Chad Durbin are hitting the open market. The Indians have exclusive negotiating rights with them until the end of the day Wednesday, at which point the other 29 teams can begin to bid for their services. Although Thome and Fukudome came close, none of the three project to qualify as Type A or B free agents, meaning they would not net the Indians draft pick compensation if they decline arbitration and then sign with another team. [...]

After months of speculation, uncertainty, and back-and-forth shifts in popular opinion, the Indians will have to make a decision about what to do with Grady Sizemore and Fausto Carmona’s 2012 options within the next 48 hours. All decisions for contract options—exercising or declining, player, team, or mutual—must be made within three days of the end of the World Series, which this year means by the end of the day Monday—11:59 p.m. EDT (or 23:59, in 24-hour time), to be exact. So what will the decision be?

Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals for emerging victorious after a fantastic World Series (after Game 7 in 2001, this year’s Game 6 was the best World Series game I’ve ever seen). And special congratulations to the two former Cleveland Indians players who were a part of the Cardinals’ championship run. Every Indians fan should remember Jake Westbrook, who spent 11 seasons with Cleveland before he was traded to St. Louis last summer. He pitched two scoreless innings in his first Fall Classic and got the win in Game 6 after he shut the Rangers’ offense down in the 11th [...]

Welcome to the inaugural Weekly Wroundtable, a new Wahoo’s on First feature in which the members of the WoF staff will weigh in on one of the most important issues or questions facing the Indians. This week’s question is: Should the Indians pick up Grady Sizemore’s option for 2012? By Tuesday (three days after the World Series ends), the team will have to make a decision about whether to bring him back for $9 million or to hand him his $500,000 buyout and let him test the free agent market. A few years ago the thought of letting Grady walk would [...]

Time is running out for the Indians to decide whether or not to pick up Grady Sizemore’s option. The team has three days after the end of the World Series to choose between paying Sizemore $9 million in 2012 or giving him his $500,000 buyout and letting him test the free agent market. Unconscionable though it once was to think that Cleveland wouldn’t pick up his option, it’s likely (if not probable) that Sizemore will be suiting up for another team next year. As everyone knows, the biggest question mark about Sizemore is whether or not he can stay healthy. [...]

It’s winter, 2006. I was on a bus filled with strangers, in a strange land, and I screamed with joy when I heard the news. I was in my second semester at The University of Toledo, and still didn’t have many friends, so I was riding a bus to my next class alone, and I heard over the bus radio that the Indians had signed Grady Sizemore, the Tribe’s dynamic center fielder, to an extension that could keep the future face of the franchise with a ‘C’ on his cap through the 2012 season. A joyful scream was definitely in order. It [...]

So far this week, we’ve spent a good deal of time talking about Jacob Peterson’s super special awesome new plate discipline statistics. We’ve used his innovative approach to measure each Indians hitter’s “Passiveness” and “Aggressiveness,” and today we put it all together with what Peterson calls “Passive-Aggressiveness”—a stat that can tell us a great deal about a batter’s ability to control the strike zone. This composite stat is simply a player’s Passiveness and Aggressiveness scores added together (for more on what those mean and how they’re calculated, check out Peterson’s original post). In other words, it’s the number of called [...]