Neil Wagner is about to be called up by the A's. Wouldn't it be great if he made his ML debut in Cleveland? [NOTE: He did tonight, throwing up to 98 mph in his one scoreless inning]. If you remember, in a roster crunch last year the Indians let Wagner go after only 13 appearances. He had had success at pretty much every level until then and I thought it was pretty darn premature to sell him to to Oakland for a few bucks. Well, now we find out that it was. Not that he looks unhittable now but he always threw hard and had some command so you wonder how we could have let him slip away. Wagner will not be the first minor leaguer to make the majors after he was jettisoned by another team but, still, the guy is in the majors just slightly over one year after the Indians got rid of him AND with the team they 'traded' him to. Seems like a mistake for me
Meanwhile, Jose Constanza continues to outhit (.341 to .274) and outhomer 2 to 0) Ezequiel Carrera. Not that either are ML starters but I would have guessed they could have given Constanza a shot last year. It is pretty obvious he earned it.
Jared Goedert continues to be hot in August as was predicted. To me, Goedert, Josh Judy and Zach Putnam should be called up. I don't think Chen Lee has to be rostered this winter so I wouldn't use a roster spot for him.
BTW, the Indians 2005 draft ranks 26th best in baseball for that year. I disagree with that but it is hard to disagree with the disappointment that Trevor Crowe has been, the stall in Nick Weglarz's career and the failure to sign Desmond Jennings or Tim Lincecum. Still, from that class, which was made incrementally better by Neil Wagner's ML debut tonight (can you believe the Indians gave up on a guy who can throw 98 as he did tonight and had sustained minor league success?), we have Crowe, Lewis, Jordan Brown and Wagner make it to the majors and the best prospect left from that draft, Weglarz, who may, if he can stay healthy, have a better ML career than all of them combined.
People have bounced around the idea of trading for Lance Berkman. The thought is that he would be too expensive. However, what if we 'rented' him, trading him for a lesser prospect with the idea that we trade him right back to the Cardinals after the season ends and before he can sign up for free agency. Can that even be done? I think so as guys have been 'rented' before, I think. I just can't remember one of them. In this way the Cardinals save a little money, get a "C" prospect, get to play one of their young guys, get Berkmann back into a pennant race, something that he would appreciate. Everybody wins and the Cardinals only impact the race in the other league so it doesn't look like they are playing king-makers in the NL. You know, stranger things have happened, like when I said that we could get Juan Gonzalez to waive his clause of no offer of arbitraion, when I said Nick Adenhart would sign for a reasonable bonus and, last winter, when I said we should put Goedert on the 60-day DL and was shouted down for that idea because the Indians would never pay him ML minimum when they could pay him minor league money during his rehab. Turns out that I was right on all of them so why not Berkman?
Finally, we need to trade Joe Smith if you can get a good return for him and trade Shelly Duncan and Chad Durbin for whatever you can get for them or release them to clear up roster space. We can win this division without any of them. Now, Jack Hanrahan you have to keep as he can field it and he is hot right now. Still, with the right offer I would even dump him right now, but it would have to be an offer of a player a tad better than Thomas Neal, and I doubt that will ever happen.
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