When you shop at the yen store this is what you get!

Sorry for the use of foreign currency but I didn't want to infringe on any trademarks.

Deep discount.  Yep, how's that workin' for us?

We are now 10 games under .500 and have moved into 10th place for next year's draft.  While the latter is good the former makes you wonder why we wasted the following:

$480,000 on Aaron Cunningham.  You know, it would have been better if the guy had never played in the majors.  But he sucked.  He had one good stretch out of 4 years.  He sucked.  Why we wasted this money on him is beyond me. 

$3 million on Casey Kotchman - Yeah, he can catch the ball.  He can't hit for crap but he can catch the ball.  Not eactly worth $3 million.  I would rather see LaPorta flail

$1.135 million for Jack Hannahan - See Kotchman.  I can actually stomach this one a little more as the guy can REALLY catch the ball and gives you more offense, although that is an extremely relative team because he stinks with the bat, too.

$1.25 millon on Johnny Damon - Waste of time.  Carrera had it all over this guy from the get-go

$800,000 on Jose Lopez - The #2 poster child (after Cunningham) for AAAA guy over ML-ready prospect choices the FO continues to make, has now been DFA'd.

$5 million on Derek Lowe - This was actually the best waste of money the Indians had this year.  If we knew McAllister could pitch this well consistently the Lowe trade would have been an extreme waste of money.  But we didn't.  Lowe was a good, solid, half-season pick up.  Unfortunately we didn't trade him soon enough.

$500,000 for Shelly Duncan - Yeah, he's my whipping boy and I just don't like him and I think he is a AAAA guy.  But at least he was a better investment than Kotchman and Slowey and more needed than Lopez.

$1.5 million on Kevin Slowey - The thing that hurts worse than the money here is the loss of a real prospect for a guy who has alternated between "suck" and "hurt" the last two years.

Now, admittedly, you have to factor in $400,000 for each of those guys except for Slowey but we invested $13.5 million at the yen store and, even factoring in $2.8 million or so we would have had to pay their 7 minor league replacements.

I predicted something like 70-92 this year.  Antonnetti said they probably overestimated the talent we had when we were in spring traing.  Well that overestimation cost us over $10 million and prospects like Cory Burns, Zach Putnam and Josh Judy.

Looking back, wouldn't you rather have seen LaPorta instead of Kotchman, Donald instead of Lopez, Carrera instead of Cunningham and so on for the whole season.  Yeah, we would have taken a different path to where we will end up, record-wise, but the endpoint would have been roughly the same.

But that's been my theme all along:  When you are as questionable as the Indians are you don't overpay for bench players.  You play out your season with young, inexpensive bench players.  Yeah, they may struggle as bench players, but, duh, so will the AAAA trash you are throwing out on the field.

It's time to change the paradigm...or the front office staff.  I am SICK of this endless parade of AAAA guys while prospects rot in the minors and, on two week trials, are deemed non-major leaguers while the AAAA guys have already proven that over many years and STILL we give them chances.

This is how you turn into the KC Royals but without the high draft choices. 

It needs to stop and now.  Our only hope for the above AAAA guys is that someone else is more stupid than us and does a Kearns-for-McAllister-like desperation trade this month.

Otherwise, just more crap thrown against the wall that didn't stick...and while our prospects rot in the minors and lose confidence.

I have been saying this stuff for years.  It's time someone tried a different approach.